From.
With these walleye ponds,
beginning of the year, they're going
to be utilized for our small
fingerling fish.
At that time,
our biggest issue with our
location here is proximity
to these wetlands and
toads.
So toads are going to come in, they
are going lay their eggs in
our ponds. Those eggs are going
hatch, those tadpoles are going swim
around, and when it comes It's time
to take those small, fringling
walleye out of the ponds.
We are counting them by weight.
So, if you can imagine a bucket
brigade of,
you know, five or six people
bucketing fish up to a distribution
truck and
you've got a bucket that's an
unknown amount of tadpoles and an
unknown amount of fish at that point
makes it hard.
So, there's a lot of toad patrol
that goes on down here.
Got to get those guys out of the
pond.
For large-fingering fish, We do
have some wading birds.
That might come by.
We're mostly worried about them
taking our minnows and to be honest
with you their beaks are
sharp enough to puncture our liners
so you know
honk your horn at them just try not
to let them feel welcome here but
other than that
walleye are left you
know they're fed and they're left to
do what they need to do to grow.
As far as the water chemistry
goes if we
notice any issues After
our water chemistry test, the only
thing we can really do is run water.
So we've got right here,
our shallow fill is on,
flowing water through this pond.
At the catwalk,
there's a series of dam boards that
maintain the water level, and
we're actually flowing water over
the top of those, so the water's
flowing in one direction.
If water chemistry has started to
get...
Really worrisome.
We can turn on what's called our jet
fill, which is
how we can add the most amount
of water as quick
as possible.
And then there's a downspout to
add water directly below
the catwalk.
Typically, you know, this time
of year you might come here and see
all of our ponds running at the
shallow fill.
Long, hot, sunny days.
The pH is going to start climbing up
And...
You know, associated dissolved
oxygen as well.
I should mention these ponds have
all been fertilized before
any fish got put into them
early on in the season.
So fertilization is,
you know we use brewer's yeast and
ground alfalfa to
kickstart some zooplankton growth.
We typically leave one pond
without fish for a period of time.
We treat that as our bug pond.
Are able to take
zooplankton out of that pond and
inoculate the other ponds with that.
During the middle of our
growing season here, once
we're not worried about
zooplanking and all our walleye
are feeding on minnows, we will
add a blue pond die to
these ponds.
That pond die refracts
more sunlight than it allows to
penetrate and really helps us
control photosynthesis.
So without that, we would have
major allergy problems all the time.
At this time of year, we've, we
flowed, is that a word?
We put so much extra water into
these ponds at this point
that that pond die has
left anything
that leaves our hatchery,
either the building itself or
the ponds, any of that water
does not get reused.
We're not a recirculating system
gets pumped out from that little
station behind you up
over the top of this hill to
a three-acre retention pond and we
let mother nature filter our water
for us.
We're coming up pretty quickly here
to large fingerling harvest
so the way that works
is a little different than with the
small fingerling.
Instead of bucket brigading and
counting by weight, we're
able to use a fish loader
which allows us to
basically just add fish with
no water to our distribution truck
so at that stage
we're counting those fish by water
displacement.
It's a pretty nice system.
At the bottom of each of these ponds
is what's called a catch kettle.
If think of a U-shaped
concrete structure, if I was
standing in it the water level would
be right above my knee and
you're able to put
intake of that fish loader down
into that catch kettle.
It sucks fish and water up to
a hopper where there's a series of
grates that the fish kind of bounce
along and the water falls right
back into the pond and just fish
once again are loaded onto the
truck.
For that it's kind of an all hands
on deck operation so you've got
multiple people in the pond
kind of herding the fish towards
that catch kettle.
You've got someone manning the
hopper because occasionally
you have to help those fish keep
bouncing along those grates.
Of course you have to have drivers
for the distribution trucks and
people monitoring the water level
in those trucks.
For stocking fish,
we use two
B-class semi
trucks and one
F450 that usually
gets us by. Sometimes we have to put
a tank on a smaller pickup truck.
We'll salt the water, so you're
adding salt to the distribution
truck water, that helps calm
the fish. And we're able to
put much more
on board than otherwise.
So you're able leave here with
sometimes enough
fish that you won't have to send a
second truck to that lake.
I'm trying to think of what else for
stocking.
We service predominantly
the upper Wisconsin river
strain of walleye.
Uh, at this time we also
have some extended growth
walleye from the upper Chippewa
river strain.
Those were given to us by Spooner,
the Hatchery and Spooners.
So, uh, for our purposes,
we're spawning our
own upper Wisconsin fish.
Um, those fish, our upper
Wisconsin, fish might
be stocked anywhere from Lock
Butte is there down to
Lake Dubay in Stevens Point.
Our upper chipfish, it's kind of
all up to Spooner where they'd like
them, but you know think like
Yellow River area, something
like that.
So I always have
people on these tours ask me you
know the genetics of these fish
and the state of Wisconsin doesn't
discriminate between lake to lake
basis. It's all by watershed.
So.
Chippewa, upper Wisconsin, Green
Bay, and is the Fox
considered different or is that part
of Green Bay?
I think it's up to a certain
impoundment it's considered Green
Bay but then
past that I think it's its own
watershed as it were.
How many typically come through
here?
Fish wise?
Yeah. So this year,
I think we've got 140,
I'd have to really double check my
numbers, but maybe,
okay, don't include this, like
140,000
large fingerlings
and
about maybe half again as
much for the smalls.
We can produce quite a few smalls
the reason we
even worry about small
fingerling people always ask
aren't you just feeding
other fish with those they're very
small two or three inches maybe the
lakes that those get put into have
been shown to be receptive to them
and they're very cheap
to make.
So, you know, large fingerling
walleye. There's a few dollars for
the state to produce, whereas
the smalls are cents.
I can get you some numbers before
we're done.
But that is one of the other
people have talked about like by the
time the number that survived from
the egg Yeah, this to like an
actual trophy fish.
Oh, it could be hundreds of dollars
for that one
Hundreds of dollars and a
very low percent chance too.
So most of our lakes around here,
just three to five years before that
fish is gonna be 15 inches.
And the closer they get to like a
magical 30 inch mark,
more slowly they're gonna grow.
Females especially will grow
quickly in the beginning and then
they start putting a lot of energy
into making eggs every year.
So this slows down their growth
rate.
So when someone asks, is it
worth it, like,
is it worth, because there are
researchers that say, you know, we
shouldn't be putting effort into
stocking, we should put effort into
making the lakes more habitable, or
at least when we stock only stock
in the lakes that we know will
actually sustain a population.
Yeah so that's two different schools
of thought there. You've got people
who think that
kind of return everything to nature
and if you were
to do that there's quite a few lakes
in northern Wisconsin that would
have no walleye.
The only reason they have walleye in
the first place is because of
the hatchery system.
We are you know we've been around
since 1901
and only the fourth
oldest hatchery in the state
so it's a legacy that's
been going on for quite some time.
As far as supplemental stocking
goes, if you're going to supplement
an already naturally
reproducing population,
that has been shown to be...
Not as productive.
What we do a lot here
is our
biologists will identify lakes with
declining natural reproduction,
maybe zero natural
reproduction.
And if you start looking at
those lakes you're talking about
really high dollar
tourist attractions that
people wouldn't want to to if they
weren't walleyeing them.
And then there's some lakes that
managed more as a trophy fishery
and you know supplemental
stocking along the way might be
helpful for them but
generally speaking
if
you were to eliminate you
know rearing of walleye and
stocking of wall I I
think the major outcome is suddenly
there'll be
much fewer walleye destinations
in the state especially
you know if you
look at when this place started
focused on black bass that
was what people were wanting
to catch they started
bringing walleye all over the state
and that became
you know why
people wanted to come to Johnson,
so.
It's interesting that that
history, like Wisconsin in
many ways, literally grew its
walleye tradition.
Yeah, yeah, so
funny like anecdotal stuff with
muskie any
you know world record muskie back
in the 20s and 30s seemed to be
caught by someone who owned a bar or
tavern walleye
kind of started following suit with
that and
people were advertising they'll
come to my resort we have
you know swingers
of walleye you can come catch
The state realized pretty quickly
they had to support that effort.
And because of
that, you've got two
of the world's
largest walleye
hatcheries in northern Wisconsin
with Austin Spooner.
I think, as far as,
you know...
It's kind of a self-fulfilling
prophecy in a way you
put the money and time into it and
people will enjoy it.
To say that it's a waste of time
depends on what you're trying to get
out of it.
Would it be awesome if we could
move to
all habitat protection
development rehabilitation?
Sure, I've yet to see anything
that says that that's 100%
successful.
You look at even some
fairly recent studies on
creating habitat for walleye
spawning. They don't seem to have
much promise.
So, we seem
to have reached a point with
walleye in particular where,
and you can talk to
biologists who know a lot more about
this than I do, but
there's lakes of greatest
concern when it comes to walleye
that despite many
efforts to kickstart
natural reproduction don't seem to
be responding to those and
therefore facilities
like ours are going to have to
responsible to keep while I end
them.
Most people don't know that walleye
are a river fish.
Yeah, yeah.
So how many of the lakes up here
that people like became Wolleye
destinations like were
originally stocked maybe not by the
state but like Wolley weren't native
there to begin with?
It's hard to say, so until
the modern genetics they'd
be really hard to pin down
a number of lakes.
You can pretty safely say that
you know these small
acreage landlocked lakes
with you know Poor
spawning habitat to begin with
probably you were never meant to
have walleye in them just because
they can naturally reproduce
somewhere doesn't mean that they
belong there as it were uh
they of course belong there now if
you ask people but um
you know a lot of
larger deep water
clear water lakes
probably have a walleye population
in them to begin with but
you go.
Back in the 1800s, there were people
just filling up a milk
jug, a fry, and
bringing it wherever they wanted.
So, it's one of the reasons we work
so hard to maintain the
genetic integrity of our fish
leaving here.
We're trying to avoid, obviously,
creating what's known as a hatchery
strain of fish where we're breeding
spawning the same fish again
over and over, but
also there's a reason why
they're genetically diverse and
maintaining that seems to help with
natural reproduction as well.
What would happen if the
state stopped doing this like and
there were no more walleye?
People just move on to something
else and
Another fish would take its spot in
the ecosystem, but sure what would
be lost?
Sure, ecosystem
wise, most places
would be fine.
There's other fish species that
would fill that niche.
I guess I've talked to plenty of
people. I pull up in a truck
to a boat launch
and I go and I start getting
ready to dump fish off.
And I have plenty of of people ask
me, hey, what do you have in there?
What are you bringing to us?
Walleye, thank you.
No one is mad that we're putting
walleye into the lakes.
If I were to say, I've got to load a
smallmouth bass, I'd get run
out of there in some places.
So smallmouth Bass,
it's a public opinion matter.
They think it's major competition
for walleye.
Maybe it is, maybe it's not.
I think it really depends on the
system you're talking about.
I thought it was largemouth bass
that were actually more competitive
than smallmouths before habitat.
It is.
It is yeah but you
tell that tell that to a
60 year old with a $200,000
boat they don't want to hear it
so i
think the fallout from not
having any walleye on
the landscape it'd be more
you'd see it more with how
people use the resource you wouldn't
necessarily see major
changes to the ecosystem
i'm sure there'd be some but
It'd be a lot less money spent on,
you know, coming here with your
boat from Illinois.
You'd get a lot of less time spent
on the water at
certain times of the year.
You got to think spring walleye
is a big deal, ice fishing is a deal
for walleye.
So it'd just be less
tourism dollars coming in the
winter, coming in spring.
So people might gravitate more
towards muskie
fishing in the fall for that reason,
or Bass
fishing has kind of taken a foothold
in Wisconsin and it's an important
driver for tourism,
but I don't
personally think anything's going to
replace walleye.
There's just something different
about it.
Yeah, yeah, and it's part of
the culture in a way that
it's hard to sell a
certain demographic of people on
bass or musky,
you know, both of which have become
a very catch-and-release-oriented
species.
People like keeping a few walleye a
year. Some people keep more than
that. People like keepin' a few
while you're having a fish try.
It just wouldn't be their vacation
in Wisconsin without it, honestly.
People aren't coming to take tours
here to watch a smallmouth or a
bluegill.
Right right no and there's
we have two types of people here we
have the musky diehards
and the people who
want to learn more about walleye
there's really no one
who's coming on a tour
taking time out of their day just
to learn about our white sucker
production or just to look
at our nice 1933 buildings
it's you know people love these
fish and you know
i think a good reason, but.
I'm not going to say that
if this was a largemouth
bass hatchery, we wouldn't
have any visitors.
It's not quite that far,
but there's a certain type of person
who comes
here in the first place.
So what's it like for you when you
get to actually like see the full
cycle of this and bring them to the
lake and let them go?
I like it a lot.
So I start the year on a spawning
crew, you
know, get out of here,
go do something hands on.
Very enjoyable.
I am starting to really enjoy
working with the ponds more as I've
been here longer.
The full, I have
pictures on my phone of here are
eggs that we spawn and here are fish
leaving my truck and it's
fun.
I feel like you have a little bit of
stake in the game, a little
ownership of the resource in a way,
but yeah,
I really enjoy it.
And do you catch and release while
away, or what's your fishing
technique?
Yeah, um...
He was a genus
I mostly bass fish in the
summertime, I don't really like
eating fish unless
it's something I caught through
the ice, personal preference,
but I like walleye fishing in the
wintertime.
Yeah that makes sense.
I know there's a lot of people that
like, especially summer, they won't
touch a crappie or...
Yeah, that too, yeah.
Think that covers what we wanted out
of this. This was great.
Okay, can I get you to say and spell
your name and give your title just
so I have it correct?
Sure.
So I'm Ryan Flaherty, that's
R-Y-A-N-F-L-A
H-E-R-T-Y,
and I'm a fisheries technician
advanced at R&M Key Fritch Hatchery.
Excellent. Thank you so much.
You're welcome. Really appreciate
it.