Oconto County plans to reopen fish cleaning station in Oconto, but no timetable for fix

The opening weekend for Wisconsin fishing brought joy to people glad to get back out on the water.

It also brought headaches to the Oconto County Forest, Parks and Recreation Department as its fish cleaning station at the North Bayshore boat landing in Oconto repeatedly clogged.

The station gives fishermen a place to fillet their fish and dispose of the remaining carcasses. However, the intake ended up clogged both on Saturday, which was opening day of the season, and Sunday.

"We got it unplugged and less than 12 hours later it was plugged again," said Monty Brink, the department's administrator.

On Monday, they announced the station would be closed for the rest of the season, but in reality they hope to fix the problem and let fishermen resume using it this year. However, they don't have a timeline for it to reopen.

They have to figure out if some mechanical issue is the root of the problem, or if it is user error.

Brink said because they had to clean 30 to 40 fish carcasses "jam-packed" into the intact chute, the thought is the latter plays a role.

"The chute gets plugged cause the fishermen don’t read the directions sign, because the unit needs to be running prior to inserting your fish," Brink said.

Pushing a green button starts the grinder, where fishermen are told to feed in their fish scraps one at the time. The machine pulverizes the waste and it flows down into an underground tank before the grinder automatically turns off.

"You should be able to plop your five fish in, no problem, in the two minutes that it is running," Brink said.

The station was installed in 2018, and has clogged up before. That prompted placing an 8½-by-11-inch sign with directions on how to use it.

Due to the occasional clogs, that signage was later increased to one that was 5-by-6-feet in the hopes that more people would see the instructions.

Monty said he plans to see if the company has a technician who can come out to "tear it apart and see if there is a tooth missing on the grinder, or if there is something out of alignment that won’t grab the fish, or if it’s just plain misuse."

The county does have the largest grinding system offered for the Barracuda fish cleaning stations.

Oconto County Administrator Richard Heath said the station is "a really great service that we provide to the public" and the county needs to figure out how it can best continue.

"I think it’s a pretty simple system but we have to make sure that it’s safe and usable and we can keep open for longer periods of time than just a few hours at a time at this point," he said.

Plus, the man-hours required to put in to fix the fish cleaning station taxes the department's staff.

Heath said it takes a two-person team about four hours to unclog it every time. That's hours that are not able to be spent preparing the county's other parks and recreational facilities ahead of Memorial Day weekend.

Heath vows the county will get the station reopened "as soon as we can."

"We need something better in place so that service can continue and people coming off the bay can have a place to clean their fish and property get rid of their … fish carcasses," he said. "We’re searching through some options right now and seeing what the best one might be for this situation."

Contact Kevin Dittman at 920-431-8416 or kdittman@gannett.com.

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This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Oconto County plans to reopen North Bayshore fish cleaning station