Habitat

Burbot can live wherever they can find cold (55°F or less), oxygenated water and plenty of food.  They don't care much whether they live in a river or lake, so long as the water is clean and cold and their belly stays full.  Burbot also love darkness and cover, and often can be found lurking under rocks and logs, or beneath undercut banks, slithering out only at night to gorge themselves on whatever prey they can find.  Rock crevices, shipwrecks, and logs are favorite places to hide, but where no cover can be found, the burbot does not despair.  In Lake Laberge, in the Yukon Territory, hundreds of burbot hide in a series crater-like depressions at night. It is theorized that many generations of burbot have excavated these wide, circular holes by swimming repeatedly in a circle.

In the southern part of their range (including all of the lower 48 US states), burbot most often live in deep, cold lakes. Few rivers south of the arctic region are clean and cold enough for burbot year-round.  In the far northern reaches of Canada, Alaska, and Siberia, burbot can be found in most rivers and lakes.  European and Russian Burbot also exist, although this wonderful fish has sadly become extinct in many parts of Europe.   

Burbot, like all codfishes, spawn in the wintertime.  Some populations migrate out of their home lake and into connected tributary streams to spawn, while others spawn on rocky reefs and shoals right within their home lake.  A single lake may harbor both migratory and non-migratory populations of burbot. Male burbot make a "drumming" noise by rubbing special sound-producing muscles against their swim bladder. Their mating call sounds almost exactly like a grouse drumming.

Spawning burbot form a tight, wriggling ball of males and females.  Eggs are deposited randomly from the spawning mass.  Noted wilderness writer and conservationist Sigurd Olson encountered the spawning burbot in the winter of 1945:

 

"It was February and the mercury was down far below zero. We had come in the middle of the night to watch the spawning of the eelpout, those brownish, eel-like deep water fish that thrive in the coldest lakes of the north ... As we neared the upper reaches of the Burntside River, we could hear the rapids murmuring through the dark. It was at this spot we would see them for they need shallow water, gravel and sand for their breeding. Not until we were within ten feet of the bank did we shine our lights, and then saw such a sight as few have ever seen—a struggling, squirming mass of fish, the long brownish snaky bodies twisted around each other, the entire contorted mass turning over and over beating the water into foam ... I had seen that night a primitive picture that I could never forget, a picture of what might have taken place in some cold primeval pool millions of years ago. There was life in the raw obeying the great urge to reproduce, the one implacable law of creation."

Sigurd F. Olson

 

The timing of this spawning event can be difficult to predict.  In general, it occurs between the beginning of January and the end of March, with southern populations spawning earlier than those farther north.  There is much speculation with regard to exactly what natural phenomena stimulate the burbot to migrate and spawn, including full moons, dark moons, equinoxes, water temperature regimes, and day length.  Establishing solid run-timing is essential for mastering your local burbot population.  All that can be said with certainty is that spawning happens in the wintertime over a period of 1-2 weeks.  The smaller males begin arriving in the river several weeks before the spawn.  In the days just before and after the spawn, the large females appear.  During this time, rivers with good burbot runs can positively fill up with fish and spectacular winter angling can be had.

Burbot eggs are very small.  A large female can produce several million eggs during a single spawn.  Young burbot live in shallow water, often curled up under flat stones in riffles or on the tops of rocky reefs and shoals in lakes.