MINNEAPOLIS - Lake Superior bluefin herring is finally back on the menu at the Bluefin Grille.

"We hadn't had it all summer until last week," said Ed Douglass, executive chef for the fine-dining restaurant at the Bluefin Bay resort in Tofte, on Lake Superior's North Shore.

The Bluefin Grille had to make do without its namesake fish because commercial fishermen's nets on the world's largest freshwater lake (by surface area) kept coming up empty of herring this summer. The culprit, according to fisheries experts, was an unusually cold summer that kept water temperatures even lower than usual.

Despite the poor fishing, the Lake Superior fishery is in good shape, said Don Schreiner, Lake Superior fisheries supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Herring stocks are good, if not quite as high as a few years ago. Lake trout numbers continue to rise. And commercial and sport fishing have bounced back thanks to the unusually warm weather of the last few weeks.

Harley Toftey, one of the few commercial fishermen left on Lake Superior, explained that when the water is really cold, the herring remain dispersed in the lake. They don't concentrate and become easier to catch until the lake temperature rises to a certain point.

"Right now we're getting all the herring we can sell," Toftey said. "We've had a surplus of herring for a couple weeks. But it's just timing. When the tourists are here the fish are never here, but when the fish are here the tourists are long gone."

Douglass said the herring supply dried up about a week after he printed his summer menus. Bluefin Grille was able to offer its guests Lake Superior lake trout and whitefish instead, but he said customers missed the herring, which the restaurant serves breaded and fried, lemon-pepper broiled, or pan-roasted with a cucumber and tomato relish. It's also the Grille's standard smoked fish - when it's available.

"It's one of the standards we run with all summer. ... It's one of the freshest local fish we can get," he said.

Toftey, co-owner of the Dockside Fish Market in Grand Marais, said he's gotten used to ups and downs in the 30 years or so he's been fishing Lake Superior. In fact, he said, he doesn't count on summer herring. He just considers it a plus when they're available.

A more important part of his business comes this fall, when the herring come in close to shore to spawn. Among Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ontario, he said, commercial fishermen bring in 600,000 to 800,000 pounds of herring each fall. That will yield about 65,000 to 70,000 pounds of herring roe that's processed locally into caviar, most of which is exported to Europe, particularly Scandinavia. The fish flesh is shipped to New Jersey, where it's made into the Jewish standby gefilte fish.

While the Minnesota DNR licenses 25 people to fish Lake Superior commercially, Toftey estimated that only four or five actively try to make a living at it during the summer. The numbers rise to maybe 10 for the fall herring fishery, which usually runs from late October to early December.

George Wilkes, co-owner of the Angry Trout Cafe, next to Toftey's fishing operations on the Grand Marais waterfront, said his restaurant made up for the North Shore fish shortfall by offering more whitefish from Wisconsin's South Shore waters. He said lake trout availability was sporadic, as it often is, because the Angry Trout gets its lake trout from a few Native American fishermen from the Grand Portage reservation who fish in small open boats and can't go out in rough weather.

One of his suppliers is Butch Deschampe, who's made part of his living from netting lake trout since 1968. He said about three or four people on the reservation fish commercially, but it's mostly a part-time job for them, and it was a tough summer for the one who fishes for herring.

"It's been a good summer for me," Deschampe said. "It's been the usual up-and-down thing, but I usually get enough to keep most people supplied. ... The lake trout fishing gets in your blood and you just can't seem to get out of it once you start."

Wilkes praised the DNR for keeping the North Shore fishery sustainable. He said keeping it a small-scale local fishery fits well with the local food movement that his restaurant champions, as well as the tourism on which it depends.

"It's the best fish in the world," Wilkes said. "This is cold water. Lake Superior is a very clean lake and the fish is of extremely high quality."