Jilin’s 2026 report describes Chagan’s usual winter-fishing season as running from early December to mid-February of the following year, with the work tied to seasonal ice. A 2017 Guangming Daily feature republished by Xinhua records Zhang Wen leading a 55-person crew onto the lake before dawn during a 2016 operation, with a net about two kilometres long.
From the journal
A Net Beneath the Ice: The Teamwork of Chagan Lake’s Winter Fishers
Follow the winter fishery from a net routed beneath the ice to the lake rites, selective mesh and local businesses that carry the catch into the cold season.
In the same city · Songyuan ↗A crew assembles on the lake
The net has to travel under the ice
In that 2016 operation, fishers opened more than 300 holes along the net’s route; preparing them took about four hours. Long poles guided the net beneath the frozen surface, while Zhang Wen read bubbles and water movement as clues when choosing where the crew would work.
Retrieval was a separate stage. The report describes a horse-powered capstan pulling the line for four to five hours as fishers handled each section that emerged.
Recording a fishing custom
China’s national intangible-cultural-heritage register lists the Chagan Nuoer winter-fishing custom in its 2008 second batch under folk customs and associates it with Qian Gorlos Mongolian Autonomous County. Separately, a report on a 2016 operation describes a long net carried beneath the ice through hundreds of holes and retrieved with a horse-powered capstan.
Mesh size is part of the working fishery
A 2026 Jilin report says the winter net mesh was enlarged so smaller fish could pass through while larger ones were retained. The report presents this as a size-selective practice.
Winter fishing is one part of an annual fishery. The 2026 account distinguishes the winter catch from open-water fishing and hatchery work.
From the ice field to a local table
A 2026 Jilin report profiles Qu Limin, who began a food business in her family’s three-room tile-roofed home about twenty years earlier so winter-fishing visitors could have hot fish soup. In a separate 2025 report, courier Ma Liang is described as having worked at the lake for four years and handled more than 100,000 kilograms of shipments cumulatively by publication; it also describes a faster frozen-fish packing process.
