Eight jars full over there and it's
a bigger hatchery so it'll be
better for viewing.
We like to see the difference
because part of what we're talking
about is you're doing this in more
than one place.
Nine locations this year.
But yeah, those are the eggs we
got yesterday.
We talk about ounces of eggs.
There's 4,000 walleye
eggs per liquid ounce.
And we have about 54 ounces in
there. So there's a little over
200,000 eggs in that one jar.
And we try to put 80
ounces.
That's our optimum in each
jar.
And a 12-jar hatchery, then that'll
give us a little more 4 million
eggs.
And if one half of 1%
or 4 million make it to 15
inches long, that's 20,000
fish.
So we're all about numbers.
And all this costs the state of
Wisconsin nothing.
We're a self-funded non-profit.
That's what we do.
We need to go get on the boat
And this is another whole end of the
situation when the
fries start to happen.
Nah, I don't want to tip over right
away.
Ready? No, you gotta smile, Tom.
Taking your picture.
Thank you.
For a two-minute tie-off, we've got
a lot of knots.
Safety first.
It's safety first.
That's right
I'm sure Mike will be moving
around.
Yeah, I'll move the station.
That's why I have this time to be
here, so I'm not as scared.
Well, yeah, but it's better to...
This will be the seat, guys.
That's the seat. You're up to the
CR.
Here
pretty much yeah
big cedar is over
there and the creek runs
from big ceder into here and this is
up this is all here all
the way to big cedars
all muck and mud and we didn't
catch any fish.
This is our third year.
The nice part is the
first year we set nets here we
didn't have that many eggs but this
winter the guys that were
crappie fishing here were catching
all kinds of 10 inch fish 10
inch walleyes and they haven't
caught that forever
so it's kind of
justification of what we do.
You're going to work off the anchors
in?
So, take care.
Oh,
you've got two nets over here.
I didn't know that.
I haven't been coming out.
I've been stuck on shore.
I'm gonna pee on, you know.
The way the wind's blowing,
the buoy will be this side of the
net.
The net, I don't know where it's
tied to, I'll just have to find it.
Go ahead Tom.
Oh, wait a minute.
Yeah, I see that
We've got two big ones.
Shoot that one in here,
two big ones.
Well, one of them's a sucker.
That's a bit rude, isn't it?
We catch everything that's in the
lake.
Yeah, I was a sucker.
We've got two suckers.
We got three suckers.
These are all suckers
Sucker, a bluegill, and a perch.
That's it.
Did you have walleyes in this one
yesterday?
I gotta know why I gotta get my foot
out of this thing first.
We're on the frequency, Mike.
I see that.
How do you think this is working
with the folks like that?
We're not going to strike it.
Yes, no.
All right, go ahead.
Whoa!
Tom, stop pulling.
Let me pull with the rope.
I gotta get that anchor out of the
muck.
So did you guys see any fish up
under the lanyard?
They weren't spawning yet, but they
were.
You're right over the top of the
rope.
Which way are you gonna go?
Have you got the anchor out?
That was just usually the acre here.
All right,
don't pull back, go
ahead.
You're staying on top of it.
Back!
We have no fish.
There's none in this bed at all,
Tom.
Nope, back up.
No, back.
We're hooking up.
I've got to get it open.
Enough fish to have
enough eggs to
do any good.
Back up.
Walleyes are really not a fish
of small weight.
So I'll report one time that the
optimum lake in the state of
Wisconsin would be a 5,000
acre lake like Geneva or
Shawano or Green Lake and
you know 80 to 100 feet deep,
that would be the optimal.
They can survive but the
reproduction is the problem.
You'll see more on Big Cedar,
I promise you.
I don't believe it.
This is the true walleye experience.
You go out and you catch nothing.
Not with him, he's a pro.
Ha!
He's won more money in fishing
tournaments than
many people.
All right.
It's not tied shut.
No fish this
has to wait
a minute Tom
What is this?
This net is not
set up right.
All right, coming up.
Yeah, it should be, because they're
just the most common.
In fact, it probably has
to be.
I guess they don't get the fish.
So why are you doing this?
If the limit there is one, then...
Come on.
Called a bowling knot but I'm not
used to using this kind
of roof to tie a bowling.
Alright you can back up now.
Hang on!
Now!
That net was laid down, there was no
reason, no wonder it wouldn't catch
this fish.
We did,
we've done two
sawger projects on Lake Winnebago.
One lasted 10 years and one
lasted four years.
And in order to catch sawger in the
lake, they spawn out in the Lake.
So we tie two nets end
to end and those are
35 pound anchors.
We have to have a 35 pound anchor
on either side because
when the wind really blows, it can
roll the nets. So,
I'm...
I made those a
lot of years ago, 15, 18 years
ago.
But I didn't expect to see one here.
Two clips and they had the ropes
going this way so it never pulled
the bag
in closed.
I mean, I've owned boats forever
and she's been in one of my boats
twice and that's it.
She's not a water horse.
And that was only because I dropped
my anchor over and I said I'm going
to go diving and get my anchor back.
It was stuck on a rock pile and went
a bit, I got it back,
but I said, I have to have somebody
in the boat legally for
me to go in.
The rope is right underneath us,
Tom.
Back her up.
I'll get the rope.
Go that way oh you did you
put the anchor down oh all right
well I'm gonna take the rope up
on this side
And we have a fish.
We got fish in this net,
I don't
know how many but we got fish
Let me get the,
get the buoy rope out
of the way.
We gotta pull the buoy up and get it
out.
Of the water.
Let me go ahead.
Come on.
All right.
Rookies.
Well, we got quite the
assortment.
Get that ring on the other side a
little higher.
Hang on.
And at least a couple of wives.
Hey, look down in there now.
I'm not going to sort the turtles,
I'm just going to throw them in the
tank.
Hope not.
Snapping turtles are a pain.
It's a big one, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I'll bring them up slow.
Ooh, one nice female, anyway.
You can tell a female,
that's a nice female walleye.
Nice pump belly.
We can make
Yeah
We'll get back a bit more here.
Like I said, we get a little bit of
everything.
That's an order of pike.
They call them slimers for a reason.
They're real slimers.
He's got a fish hook in his mouth.
We'll take that hook out later,
turning loose.
That was some turtles.
Yeah, they just come out of
hibernation, so they're swimming
along the shoreline.
Another nice female.
Oh
Another nice female.
We got one more male.
Oh, two more.
That one might be a female.
Hang on.
Back her up.
Because it's going to get
Those are little blue girls, right?
But this one is partially digested,
you can see it turned white already,
so one of them spitted up when I
threw them in the...
That's a little boogaloo.
This one would probably be a mature
bluegill next year.
They're mature at about three years
of age.
You have to watch painted turtles,
they carry salmonella.
Yeah, I don't see him.
Well, we'll take him...
I'm not sticking my finger in his
mouth.
Yeah, he swallowed it.
I can't bite the line at that.
I'll put him back in the tank for
now. I'll get out my knife when
we get back and I'll cut it.
You do any good?
Yeah at least two right females
maybe a third one I'm not sure.
No fishing.
Yeah, it's a peanut.
Come on, get out of there.
This is a female, so treat her
nice.
If they haven't said.
I think there's that.
So you got all of that stuff?
None of those, I
had to retie two of them,
they were laid down.
These are all males, I think.
Yeah.
Just a nice fat female.
It's always nice.
Yeah.
Yeah, just throw him in the tank.
We'll get rid of him later.
Nice work.
We've got two slimers.
You're denied.
Yeah we did all four we only got
fishing one yet one over by the
island
That's it, that's it.
All right.
I think there's...
Yep.
What do you mean you can't, Mike?
I don't know, I didn't count.
That's above my pay grade.
You
There's no math that's going to be
involved.
Bring up three buckets of water,
would you? Three five gallon buckets
of water.
Nah.
It was a great day.
Am I still on?
Yep.
Okay, they'll bring me a female.
I strip the eggs into a bowl.
At first, I lay her on here and
I lay on a damp towel with
rollers to get the excess water off.
And then strip the egg into the
bowl and then
switch bowls to bring two
males.
We have enough males.
Do that one at a time.
Put the milk in here.
And then
Water
Yeah, it's wires over here.
Over here.
Up here.
I add one pitcher
of water to the milk and what
that does is it releases the sperm,
it's seminal fluid, it releases
sperm and we pour that
onto here and we stir them for
90 seconds.
After 90 seconds hypothetically
they're all fertilized because
out in the lake after 90
seconds the egg dies because
there's an open port and never an
egg on one spot on the side of the
egg. And out there, fungus
and bacteria and virus will
also enter that.
So this, for whatever reason,
90 seconds is the
time.
Move out of the way.
Carry, move that bull out of the
way.
So how many nets did you get them
out of?
Just one. Just one?
Yeah. Just soft one?
Oh, she's ready.
Over the 25 years that
we've been doing this,
we average 85,000 eggs
for every female that
we use for eggs.
Eggs out of any female over
24 inches long.
We don't know how old they are.
Oh, where's the measuring board?
Hey you guys!
Hey, we don't need six people
down there.
Hey!
Where's the madam?
We don't have to do that.
We're not fin-flipping.
You don't do that no more?
We only had to do that for one year.
So then we measure her,
and she's 17 and a half inches
long.
Give me that and turn her loose.
It didn't really slip.
Yeah, I'm going to head aboard.
Nat!
And she's sick.
He's 50.
We need another male.
Now, these eggs are inert.
As long as they're not in water,
they're good to sit for a
while. Same way with the milk.
The sperm receives its.
And
Does this compare to the board?
Yeah, bring it out.
There's another mailman.
Might not look like a lot of milk,
but there could be three million
sperm in that little bit of milk.
This guy is 16 and a half.
Both of the males were 16 and half.
Switch places.
Oh, he's got time.
Do it slowly Jerry.
Go ahead and watch.
Count, one to ninety,
slow.
The timer on my.
Started.
How long?
Ninety minutes.
Ninety seconds.
Ninety minute.
Ninety second.
You couldn't soar right in the
stern. Ninety Minutes Jerry.
All we need to do with this process,
if you let the eggs lay in a
mass, the sperm would only be able
to fertilize the top layer, so all
we need is to keep them up in the
water column for the sperm
to find the egg, and that's the
purpose of this.
Didn't think you were going to be on
TV today, did you?
No.
You guys are out of madison
yeah what
channel would it be on here
This is a whole documentary.
It's not going to be on an
individual.
I don't know how you're going to do
it.
They're not going real fast.
It'll end up on PBS Wisconsin.
And what?
PBS Wisconsin.
PBS.
Wherever you watch PBS.
On like it's channel service.
Probably not till next year.
Probably channel.
You'll be long gone by the time you
see it.
And the reason we do it for 90
seconds is as soon as the
egg is fertilized, the outer
membrane becomes very adhesive.
If we don't add the bentonite clay,
they start sticking together in the
bowl.
And then that's another, we can get
them apart, but it's another whole
process.
Now 90 more seconds.
No, two minutes.
Two minutes. You're good.
That's 120.
And I'm gonna move here.
To get you out of the way.
Do you want another fish?
Another female.
E-mail!
I'm pretty crazy.
They don't cooperate,
and the bigger they are, the less
they want to cooperate.
Who are you talking to up at point?
It was Tyler Furkus.
I don't know.
Okay, bye.
Yeah.
That was the first batch, right?
Yes.
Two minutes, I have to say.
You got to bring that one back.
Yeah, when he's done with it.
What are you struggling with?
Are we recording something here on
the log? Just the length.
Yeah, just the length
Okay, this is a female
and she's nineteen inches.
Yeah,
the sperm
don't have any
nutrient reserve at all.
They're absorbing all their
nutrients from the milt.
And they can swim about a half inch
in their entire life.
And we tell everybody, that's like
I'm swimming a marathon.
I mean, when you're microscopic,
half inch is a long way to swim.
And that is it.
We, uh.
Two minutes, Mike.
Alright, if you're done with that,
pour that in one of those
containers.
Recording some fish.
Yeah
Yeah, I'll get them for you in a
minute.
This one is 17 and a half.
15 and a half.
We're in here, we're all saying.
Yes.
You might want to separate them
things first.
Take it like this and just
cut pretty much good.
Okay.
No, I got to drain this bowl.
Okay, this one is sick,
the very last day.
The guys were going to pull the
nets.
The hatchery was full.
So they went out to pull their nets
and they had four fish in their
nets.
All right, we'll take them back and
we'll just take the eggs out of
them.
No, I got a clean bowl.
Yeah, go ahead, bring me one.
EMAIL!
So they brought them back,
and they stripped the female into
the bowl. They had them in a tank
like that.
They stripped a female into
the bow.
Okay, give me a male.
So they went looking.
They had one male.
They had three females and one male,
so now what do they do?
So they took.
This is a green female.
She's not ready to spawn.
I can't get eggs out of her, so we
don't force them out.
I'll measure her.
16 and a half turnarounds.
So anyway they've got these
three females so they stripped all
three females into one bowl went
and got the male and this is the end
of this morning season they got one
single drop of milk in
this in the other bowl poured
the water in poured it on the
they had 90% fertilization
and that was probably, huh,
that was a
female.
Yep, this is the mail.
Yeah pour it in.
That's enough.
But we had about from one
single drop and they were probably
making the assumption we get 85,000
eggs.
Quarter of a million eggs and
all of them got fertilized from one,
single drop. That is how many sperm
are in the milk.
People don't realize.
It's not a very
efficient way of doing things,
but it works.
Those clade eggs in
a separate container, they
go through a process called water
hardening over
the next four
or five hours, however long you want
to leave them in.
No more females.
We'll probably only leave them in
there maybe an hour and
they absorb between the rocks.
They got to be fairly substantial
How am I doing?
Sore arm?
No, but I want to overdo
it.
If you can't overdo that.
That's essentially what we do and
we'll have more fish and more help
at Lake Cedar.
I think we'll have more help.
We've got a young girl.
In ninth eighth grade.
She is as about as gung-ho as
you can get.
She wants to skip
class and school to
help us do our thing,
and of course her dad won't let her
do it.
They're sticking to the bull.
Give me some water.
This is not our invention.
There was a biologist named Gordy
Preagle.
The biologist in Oshkosh,
back in the 70s,
and he transferred
to Fitchburg to
be the supervisor down at
the Fitchberg office.
And he built a portable hatchery
in a Volkswagen bus.
He was gonna take it around for show
and tell at schools.
Well, we saw it, and we said, we can
do that.
I worked for Aliant Energy,
and the Columbia Generation Station
over in Portage, when they built it,
they had to have...
Did you get rid of this water in the
lake?
I didn't.
They had to have air quality
monitoring trailers set up.
And it was their 20th anniversary,
so they could get rid of the
trailer. So I asked them if they'd
donate them to us.
That was our first two hatcheries.
We built them in those trailers.
These trailers, on the other hand,
this has a double axle.
This is the frame off of a
modular mobile home frame.
We buy them from
mobile home dealers, cut them in
thirds, and build three hatcheries
off of each frame.
This is one of the, this is a small
one. The bigger ones that we're
building now,
actually we can get bigger frames,
have a back door and a side door
so people can walk through.
It facilitates show
and tell.
So how many did you count?
So could you walk?
This is just our, we keep
this record, not required
by the DNR to do it,
but when we get over
to Big Cedar, I'll show you
every day, we'll
have a lot more fish.
We'll have 60, 70 fish,
and it gives you a, it's called a
link frequency chart,
shows, it'll
start up, a very
first year male will maybe
be 13 inches, sometimes 13.
Here's how many fish they got.
We like to keep track when we first
when we started working on the
lake because over time that
will shift.
Yeah, you can go ahead, Dave.
Especially as a female.
Not so much the males.
Am I going to Big Cedar?
Yeah. At Big Ceder, we're averaging
five males per year.
He wasn't planning on it.
That's about what we have here.
The 15th today.
Anywhere I go.
I just wanted to see how many fists
they got in the net compared
to the other ones.
The water pump is out on the pier
and it's pumping water and it
comes up that inch and a half pipe
and it goes up and we've got a
filter on each side.
We filter the incoming water to get
rid of all the debris that the pump
sucks up.
And we've gotta overflow so the tank
is generally three-quarters
full and then
it comes out the bottom and
it is manifold fed,
gravity fed, through all
the and
we control
the flow,
a hatching jar,
incubation cylinder, whatever you
want to call them.
Has a central delivery tube.
The water comes down the delivery
tube and it sits off the bottom on
these fins.
So the water comes down, goes
up, and it lifts the egg.
We keep constant flow of water,
24-7, because they breathe.
And you can see they're moving on
the bottom.
We keep the filter up here,
because somebody had the water
turned up
too fast so some of them floated.
But that keeps them so
they incubate.
Depending upon water temperature,
they will be in here 20
days.
And what we do is we record
the temperature in the morning.
I'll use easy numbers.
Say it was 42 degrees in the
morning and 42 degrees in
the afternoon.
Average daily temperature is 42
degrees.
Subtract 32 from that and
you get 10 for a remainder.
So that day these jars
accumulated 10 temperature
units.
It takes about 290 accumulated
units for them to start to hatch.
Nothing we can do about it.
We don't modify water temperature.
Everything is ambient that we do.
Everything.
So we don't
want to modify ambient temperature
because when
the little guys hatch and we catch
them out here, the zooplankton
that's out in the lake is also
multiplying in concert with
these guys.
If we force them by having
warmer water and we turn them loose,
There may be nothing there for you
to eat.
So that's.
But we do, we also...
Well, we have what's called a
plankton tow.
It's a net that we pull behind
the boat and
like out.
We never found many zooplankton
here at all. It was kind of weird.
This is the shallow end, it's 20
feet deep.
The other side of the lake is 54,
56 feet deep and
we put the net out in the water and
we pull it and there's a canister on
the bottom end and zooplanking
their exoskeleton is
tight just like on a crayfish or
your fingernails.
So they're brown.
So we pull the toe, we
pick it up and look at the jar, it's
pretty clear, not many old plank in
here. We keep moving around the
lake, and where we find
the most,
the day we release the fry, that's
where we take them.
And we,
I'll show you how we do that,
we don't have a big release hose
here, but yeah,
we try to give them Thank you.
Put them where their first meal is
available, and after that they're
on their own.
There's nothing they can do about
it.
But, you know, I can
live with it.
And
I can lift these a little more,
but that's the basis of it.
We only have six jars here
because we don't ever get many fish.
Big Cedar, we have 12
hatching jars.
Lake Geneva has 19.
Shawano Lake has 32.
Their hatchery is different.
They have the countertop is down
the middle and we've got a manifold
system on either side.
So we've 16 jars
on either sides.
Green Lake has 36.
And we've had the Green Lake Hatch
over there for 25 years.
It's been there a long time.
Is that one already done for the
season? They haven't set their nets
yet.
Oh really, when does that happen?
This coming weekend.
Yeah, he called me today wanting
a boat because the
sightseers want to come out and
watch. We had a boat fail.
One of our motors crashed
on us.
It's only 25 years old.
It's an old Mariner, but
it won't shift gears.
So we're short of boats this year.
That's why we're hauling this boat
back and forth.
That other one was supposed to be
here.
And up here, we typically
record how many ounces
of eggs we put in the jar.
Oh, there's another thing that we
have to do.
Talk about falafel.
Fungus wants to form in this
jar on dead eggs because
not every egg of fertilizer and
not every fertilization works
come dying.
So what we do, we have an
applicator here,
we need to drain it.
Yeah, what we do with this,
we use hydrogen peroxide,
and it's a 7% solution.
What you buy in the store is 3%.
And it's not an arithmetic scale.
Exponential?
Exponencial scale.
So this stuff at 7%, if
you put your fingers in it, they'll
come back white.
It sucks the moisture out of your
fingers right now.
So we must wear gloves.
We buy it at 34%.
And this has been,
this was a
five gallon bucket of 34%.
And I dilute it, and what's really
weird, you can't dilute it by
volume, you have to dilute by
weight.
34% hydrogen peroxide
is much more dense than
water.
So I weigh wheat,
I weigh four gallons
of water, find out how many
ounces or pounds they are.
Water runs about 8.4
pounds per gallon.
And then...
Divide that by four because we
do four to one to
bring the 34% down to seven.
What we have here is we've got an
8 inch hole drilled in the bottom.
This is a chick waterer for watering
baby chicks.
So you just stick that down in
there.
Up here and
let it run.
And it slowly drains down here, it
goes to the bottom, it welds up
through there, and it
sanitizes the dead eggs.
And we spill
a lot of water.
Our floors are this way on purpose
because we spill lot
of waters. Those trailers that
the lion gave us had solid plywood
floors, they didn't laugh.
They delaminated and
yeah, we ended up
just tearing the trailer right off
the frame and building a frame like
this.
So I think that's across
the street.
Yeah, it's pretty bad
stuff from a
hazardous standpoint.
And we do these every day
for the first five days they're in
hatchery.
After that, as needed.
Some places the fungus is really
bad, and some places it's fungus
isn't so bad.
Green Lake doesn't have fungus
problems because they use artesian
wall water.
Their hatchery is not on the lake.
So they don't have near the fungal
problem that other lakes have.
Big Cedar is a lake, it's
crystal, it is very clear and
deep.
We have to
go with the flow, there's nothing we
can do about it.
And you learn doing this.
Don't get excited about anything.
There's not a lot we can do about a
lot of things.
It is what it is.
We do the best we can
to sanitize, to clean them,
to make sure we get the maximum
amount of fertilization that we
can get.
And then the little guys, when we
turn them loose,
these eggs will, these are new
eggs, They'll turn really really
dark And the reason for that
is there's an embryo inside of each
egg, and they have two little black
eyes.
So you'll have a whole jar of little
black-eyed eggs in here.
Once they start to hatch,
we take the filter off the top.
As they hatch they're lifted out
by the water and they go outside
and we catch them in the tank.
We monitor them with a real
scientific piece of equipment,
a white boat.
Initially, they have quite a
large yolk stack on their abdomen,
and they're really negative buoyant.
So, they lay on the bottom
of the tank, but as
that is absorbed, they try to
swim.
They don't have any fins, they don't
any scales, they do not have any
gills, they don't fully form mouths.
There's just a little fish about
that long.
They have a few muscles, and that's
about all there is to them.
They're not a fully formed
fingerling for 15 days.
It takes about that long for all of
them.
But they start to feed.
Their mouth opens, and they start to
feed after about four days.
So we already have
them in the water by that time.
Otherwise, we could try
to hold them, but we found that if
we miss, they starve to death really
quick.
So we're better off if we put them
out a little early. They're not.
But we use a bowl like this.
They'll be, initially
when you scoop, well you can see
them, obviously.
But when you're scooping, they all
lay on the bottom of the bowl.
And then 14 hours later,
there's a few of them swimming.
24 hours later most of
them are swimming and most of are
swimming, we turn them loose.
The reason we do that,
a little fish like this,
We, another thing we have to do
is match water temperature.
That's why we use ambient
temperature, ambient water, ambient
temperature.
If we took them from here
to a colder body of water,
they can only withstand a drop
in three degrees water temperature
or they get cold shot.
And if they get a cold shot, they
may come inert and down they
go.
In Green Lake, we turn loose in 290
feet of water.
They can swim, but not
if they're cold shot So
at Green Lake, the water comes out
of the artesian well at 54
degrees, 24-7.
So we load them into the coolers
and take them to the lake.
And what we do now, because
the lake is always cooler than 54
degrees.
We take a gallon jug of ice
and put it in each cooler.
So as we drive to the Lake and get
out under the water, it's slowly
bringing the water temperature down.
One degree every 15 minutes is
what's recommended for water.
So we get out on the lake, and if
it's still too cold, we'll sit
there with pictures of water,
slowly pour them in the lake.
And we have digital thermometers to
get it within three degrees
of lake temperature before we turn
it in.
Mm-hmm.
It takes
knowing what you're doing to be able
to do it right.
Most of what we've learned has
been trial and error,
with the exception of when we did
our solder project.
We had an extraordinary
fish technician
named Bob Olenek that worked with
Oshkosh.
He was detail-driven
to the nth degree.
Which was good. He taught us
the right way of doing things.
And Bob went into the literature
and looked to
find what he could find, and it's
not much.
Nobody does what we do here.
They have big hatcheries, but they
don't do this kind of work.
So with Bob, over the course
of 10 years, we learned
a lot.
And we also, we have a
book called
While I and Sawyer culture and
management manual,
we received a phone call from an
individual, and I don't remember his
name, asking if we would
give them seed money
for a grant to publish a book.
And it was to the American Fisheries
Society.
And they took the book,
they took the process, and they
looked at all the historical.
Thank you.
Thesis papers and research papers
and they combine them into
14 chapters in
this book and that's
my Bible.
I don't really care how many fish
bones are in fish, or
what their name is.
So there's three chapters in the
front that I don't really care
about, but when you start getting
into morphology and
physiology of the fish and
reproduction and that sort of thing,
there's eight chapters I've read,
probably four times every chapter,
just to learn things.
And we learn things every year.
Every year we learn something.
Let's... Mike, you wanna go get some
B-roll to surround?
I'm going to wreck your video here.
I'm gonna steal a container.
Can you put the H3 in
the same bottle?
What?
Can you pour the H2 in the bottle?
No, we're not going to.
And the
We don't use a real
fancy thermometer to check
temperature, but temperature today
is, ooh, it's up there,
48 degrees.
And like I said, we
spill a lot of water.
Kids love it to come in here and
watch me jump water on the floor.
Good for you.
These are the eggs that we put the
clay on, and they've
gone through what's called the water
hardening process.
They've doubled in size and taken
in water, and the outer membrane
has become very
resilient.
So what we do then is we take them
and we pour them.
I'm getting rid of my water
And then we lift it up and down
and what we're doing is we're
removing the
The clay from the eggs.
And that's what they look like after
they've been water hardened.
These eggs are maybe an hour.
We've had these eggs for maybe an
hour.
And we put it back in here.
Don't get in front of the camera.
So I don't have my picture taken,
do I? Yeah, but you're back in...
Tom.
Tom!
You got time?
No, I want to measure the egg.
Do you want to do what?
Measure the eggs, go over here.
Don't get in front of the camera.
OOF SIR You guys and you
walk in it.
I'm an old celebrity.
Yeah, wait a minute, I'll pour off
the water first.
On the road too.
Yeah, they're dead.
If they're floaters, they are dead.
There we go, settle.
Need some water then.
No, that's good for us.
I had to do more.
How many ounces?
Okay, warm in here.
Did I pour it off?
No, pour it in. OK.
Don't stand in front of the camera.
I'm going to determine.
I never liked my pictures taken
in.
I'm not very photogenic.
Okay.
Did I get any on your van?
Yeah, for what?
Don't shake.
So you can see.
It is 5.
I need that water.
29.
29 ounces.
So you had 30 ounces.
How many thousand is that?
4,000 per ounce.
I don't know, they look like a man
to me, shouldn't they?
$120,000.
How many have we got in here now?
24.
20 ounces, mate.
29.
Really I don't know.
And humor.
Blame.
And if we had 80 ounces
in here, they would be up to about
here.
And then we turn the water on, and
you'll see them at the other
hatchery. They'll be lifted up to
here for 80 ounces,
and that's 320,000.
That's what we try to get for
a jar.
Get that many we can combine later.
Over and over and over,
over and
This one's done, for
sure.
We'll try it at the other
hatchery.
$126,000 and
$80,000 yesterday,
about $200,000.
Yeah.
No, we've got
eight,
and I think we'll have 11 by today,
and we'll fill that one tomorrow.
Yeah, we'll pull them up.
I don't know because of how many
eggs we get.
Well, no, I meant four total
in the boat because
he, and he's one.
Oh, you'll be full before Saturday
here. You'll be.
Tomorrow. Really?
Well, if we have days like
yesterday, yeah.
Well, you got
eight full right now.
He likes to talk.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, I guess I'll sit back
here.
Make sure the rope isn't tangled.
Okay, tie a saw.
Hey, there's a fish in there.
No, find it hard to believe.
We're swiping on it.
We're gonna have to keep it in gear,
we're slipping on that anchor.
I haven't seen a big fat female yet.
There's been one or two little ones.
But nothing that...
Those are really strong year-class,
and they're all the same, like beat
17, 18.
Most of it.
Like here, we're 900
acres and about
two fish per acre, so two
adult fish per acre.
So that means you only have about
1,800 adult fish in this
whole lake.
And that's only 200 something.
And I doubt there's one fish per
acre.
I'm going to have to rev the
engine up here.
In there.
Holy cow!
Your your hook rope is
around is a smoother
You
Come on!
Probably do that every strip come up
to it how shallow does it get
along that you have to worry about
it you're fine yeah
I'm fine I'm getting wet
You won't get wet over there.
I'm trying to block all the
spray on the mic.
We'll be the bodyguards, we'll be a
good shield.
You know your 18 inch size
limit on this aren't getting 18
inches.
The very few that do are getting
cropped off.
Alright,
I've known that, we've known it.
Well, we'll have to talk to
somebody.
And that's the advantage
of us keeping track of all these
fish numbers.
I mean,
it's a visual verification
of what we say.
Nice over here.
Way cooler.
Thank you.
What's that?
My grandpa's here!
Oh, did your dad bring him?
Are you sure?
Did you get a lot of them?
A lot of em, a lot a lot.
One, two, three.
Maybe 40 fish, but I don't know if
it's more than one or two even.
I didn't see many big fat females in
there. There may be some smaller
females.
16, 17 inch mails.
I mean, she might be a female,
that kind of a...
Ah, perfect.
Cool.
You got some big males.
A lot of males.
I think there's a...
No, we've got probably 40 fish.
One, two, three, four, one.
We could probably.
I think if we got one or two
females, we'd be lucky.
I didn't see any.
Okay.
Big content, big news.
That's a nice looking fish.
That was one net.
Five to go. One net?
Yep.
That was it for the day.
Good day.
Good night. Good night, everybody.
You're a photographer fish.
You're right, there is a lot of
fish. I told you, there's
a lot fish in your wake.
Oh, girl.
Oh
Must have had them.
Alright, exactly.
Alright. Male. Alright, boy.
Oh!
Male 18.
Oh, I thought the mic was right
there.
Who's releasing?
Who's got the net?
Male 16 and a half.
Matt, you want to go? Take my life
jacket.
You want to out there?
Next trip. The next trip to Paris.
What?
Matt, do you want go?
Good one.
If you want another guy, I'll come.
But if not, no worries.
Go.
Matt, yip and out there.
Here, take this life jacket.
Yeah, there's more nets.
There's one right here.
There's a one right there.
Oh, this is...
Oh, okay.
I was looking.
17 inch male.
That's a good one.
We'll see if there's more nets in
the trailer.
I think it's behind the door,
there's one.
18 inch male.
I'm yacking, you gotta talk louder.
Yeah, that's a male.
19 and a half inch mouth.
16 and a half inch mount.
16 and a half inch male.
Male. Nice.
17.
Meal.
17
We'll probably just get done and
they'll be back with us.
Bye!
You made it, huh?
Good job.
Somebody gotta do it.
That's what I'm talking about.
Yeah, that's what we're talking
about here.
Good job.
I mean, we could hold some if you
wanted to.
That was a good one, that was a nice
one.
Hand fold.
Yeah, I've been doing this all day
like you.
So.
Where'd you get that hat?
I've had it for like,
four years maybe.
It doesn't really cover my ears
anymore.
She's about a gung-ho, yeah.
All right.
Yeah, this hatchery is at Big Cedar
Lake, before we were at Little Cedar
lake. As you can see, we have
more eggs.
There's more fish in Big Ceder,
but each one of these yards,
like this yard here, we keep a log
of how many eggs.
We put 70 ounces of eggs in
this one, and 80 in this and 72
in this, and when we turn the
water on, we try to pick them up so
that the good water flows through
the eggs.
You can see there's a little bit
of difference in color.
These are getting a little darker.
That's the embryo starting to form
inside of the egg.
These three jars are the ones we got
yesterday, and they're
lighter colored. As the
embryo develops, they will...
Develop eyes, and the eyes are
black, so by the time they get ready
to hatch, all the jars
will be very, very dark in
color, all of the eggs will be dark
in colors.
But set up the same way, we
bring the water in from the tank, or
the pump water into the tank.
It's fed through the manifold.
There's a separate valve for each
one. We regulate the amount
of water that's flowing to keep the
eggs up and oxygenated.
We have nine of these hatcheries
now.
Two of them, the one at
Green Lake and the one at Shawano
Lake, they're bigger physically,
but the countertop comes right
down the middle and there's one
of these manifolds going in either
direction.
So the Green Lake hatchery
has 32 of these hatching
jars, hatching cylinders.
And the one that Shawano has 32.
And right now the one that Shawno
has 10,800,000
eggs in it.
It's full.
So that's what we do and
it's all a matter of survival once
we get them in the water.
We tell people if
we have one half of one percent
of the little fish that
we turn loose make it to 15 inches
on a 12-yard hatchery
that's about four million eggs.
One half of 1% of four million
than this 20,000 fish.
We're all volunteers, so across
the state of Wisconsin,
essentially nothing to have us do
this stocking work, and
we're now working on nine different
lakes.
Totally volunteer organizations,
great people, the best people I meet
in the state of Wisconsin work for
our hatcheries.
They're dedicated, they get out here
with cold hands and cold weather and
cold water in their face.
Do what we can do every year.
We've been doing this now, we've
had it at trees now for 25 years.
So it works, we know it
works by virtue
of a number of things.
When we started on Pewaukee late.
The DNR estimated there
were 0.17 walleyes
per acre.
That's the equivalent of one adult
walleye for every five acres of
the lake.
Right now, we're at about four
adult walleyEs per acre,
and the only thing that changed is
we've been running one of our
hatcheries there now for 12 years.
What do you think would happen if
you guys weren't doing this?
Many lakes in the state of Wisconsin
have an issue now
with wildlife population going down.
By classification,
they're considered sustaining
natural reproductive
lakes and declining natural
reproductive lakes, and
many of the lakes in Wisconsin right
now are declining natural
reproduction lakes.
Global warming is a problem.
Lakes are warming up.
Fish population dynamics change,
head spawning habitat changes,
you know we're nothing really.
Vilas County has 2,500 lakes
and Vilas county alone will be
working on nine statewide.
So really what we do is
a drop in the bucket but
people love doing it
so we're going to keep doing it.
So do you, I'm guessing you do this
from what, April to November?
No, or is it just this time of year?
Yeah, now these fish will
be in this hatchery, the eggs will
be in this Hatchery for 20,
20 to 25 days for
round numbers and then
we shut the hatchery down and it
wraps up until next spring.
We have hatched northern pike eggs
in these on
Lake Puckaway many years
ago, I'm talking 20 years ago.
The DNR guys when they were
gathering northern eggs and if
they'd only get one northern they'd
bring the eggs and we'd put it in
our hatchery and they hatched just
like the walleye do.
A little bit different.
When these guys hatch,
they have a yolk sack attached
to their abdomen so They can't
really swim, but the up-flowing of
the water lifts them out of
the hatching jars.
And there's a trough, a distribution
trough.
Can I hold on a minute?
Yeah.
All right.
Alright, yeah.
So, but when they hatch,
the upwelling water washes
them out of the hatching jars,
and there's a PVC pipe that goes
out and exits that into the
hatchery. And we have a series of
blue tanks outside where we catch
the, they're actually larvae.
They don't have any fins, they don't
any scales, they don't have
gills, they have
a swim bladder,
they absorb oxygen to
breathe through their skin.
And it takes them.
About four days for
their yokes to develop
so they can breathe.
In three to four days, their mouth
actually opens up so they can start
feeding on other creatures.
And at about 12 days of
age, they're considered a fully
formed fingerling walleye.
And after that,
well, we don't see them until
the fall.
The DNR does what's called a fall
Ringling survey and they're They're
called Young of the Year, Y-O-Y,
Walleyes.
Every lake is different for growth
rate goes. Lake Winnebago, I'm real
familiar with that.
The DNR runs a trawler there every
year and for
the last 20 years I've been riding
on the trawlar once or twice a year.
And the Young of The Year on
Winnebao in the fall generally
run you know five to seven
inches long.
This is in October.
They're only five months old and
they're five inches long.
Amazing growth, an inch
a month.
And that's making the assumption
they have enough to eat.
And Winnebago is fortunate to
have a lot of the appropriate
size forage for
little fish to eat Lake
like this has a different
ecosystem, not quite
as fertile as Winnebego.
So these fish The
guys caught in the net the other
day, they had a walleye that was,
it couldn't have been hatched this
year because everything is just
spawning. It was only three inches
long, which is very
slow growth for the walleye.
Yeah, that's what we do.
So the last question I got is how
many people, how many volunteers are
in this organization, and are they,
you said you have nine of these
around the state, I'm guessing
you have all of your
locations staffed right now doing
this.
Yeah,
like the Shawano hatchery,
Ken Bandipas is our chapter chairman
up there. That's the big hatchery
that has 10.8 million
eggs right now.
He probably has 15 to 16
people working when they're
putting the hatchery together,
or putting the eggs in the
hatcheries.
He estimated last year
from the time they set the
nets in the lake until they were all
done releasing the fry.
He had 840 man
hours of work,
donated work running that hatchery
and there's only 2,000
man hours in a given year,
a person working 40 hours a week
for a whole year, so it is
a lot of work.
I mean, and we're
self-funded, we're a non-profit,
we have fundraising activities
to raise our,
the money that pays for all of this.
This hatchery This
hatchery, we just built it
and that hatchery cost
us about $10,000.
Looks like the boat's coming back.
We have one real quick thing.
Why do you do this?
What do you get out of volunteering?
Why do I volunteer?
Sometimes I wonder.
Ah, yeah.
What else would I be doing this time
of year? It's cold, I don't turkey
hunt, I love fish.
Fish are my thing.
It's my, personally,
it's my way of giving back.
People can talk and do a lot of
talking, but really it's
what you do in life that produces
a product or produces something
that's for the benefit of everybody
else. It really counts, And
I guess that's what I'm all about.
That's good.
What is that weird thing?
So we catch the fry in these tanks,
and that valve will be shut off.
The first day, this valve will open
and we have a manifold that goes
down, goes over, and comes up.
The water wells up and creates
a dead zone on the bottom of the
tank because of the larvae.
They're larvae, they're not even
actually fully formed fish.
When they have that yolk sac,
they are couch potatoes and they lay
on the bottom.
And then we have filter assemblies
that cut two filters that come off
to keep them in the tank.
And then the water comes out.
But we'll catch day one's hatch
in here, and day two,
24 hours.
Say we shut it off right now.
Then the next day at 5 o'clock
we'll shut them and open these two
and we'll lose those.
I think Ben and I want to hop on.
I'll see you then.
There's one quick.
Alright.
I think there was one.
So we gotta get lucky.
We got.
Yep.
Good boy, good boy,
you're the only thing in the house.
18 and a quarter.
That's a nice male, it's a male.
You get rid of the male, 15 and
a half, 18 and
so on.
Male, 17 and recorder.
Male, 14 and 3 quarter.
Still, 17.
Male, 16 and three-quarter.
Male, 18 and a quarter.
That's what I mean.
There's no, you see the problem.
Do you see any size limit that
females go faster than males?
We're not seeing females.
You're females if you're knocked
off.
Now 16 and a half.
There's about 60 or two.
And now 15
and three quarters.
Big one in here, wasn't it?
Yeah, I heard that one.
Here.
Put her in, put her in.
We'll strip the one female and do
the male. Should I bring it up,
Mike? Yeah, wait a minute.
Okay.
You've got milk all over you.
I know.
And you just, you're like
a, you like a.
I feel like the post.
Like you said, washing machine is
good.
Alright, wanna bring that female?
And we'll need a net over here,
too, because as
soon as we do her, she gets turned
loose.
We'll need a net right away because
we'll turn her loose as soon as he's
done with her.
You're not really that ripe, is she?
Well, there we go.
She is.
20 inches, turn it over.
Need a couple mails?
We'll only do one male because
there's almost no egg.
Only one male.
We don't need another male.
Another one.
Well, there's another female.
That's good.
OK.
This male is 16 inches.
I think we got one more female in
there.
All right.
Mmm.
Somebody want to stir eggs?
Slow hands.
Don't squeal your...
It's coming out like crazy
There you go, she's
ready.
Come on.
Are you in a minute and a half yet?
Just about
10 seconds help.
It doesn't matter how long I surf
over here. Two minutes.
Thank you.
16 inch 18
inch female turn
I'm gonna lose.
This right here because if they're
not fertilized right you
might as well kiss the rest of the
process goodbye right
You can put all the eggs in the
hatchery you want, but if you don't
have good fertilization percentage.
Bring it to the mail.
He's got
17 and a half.
That
40.
That's good.
Are we still?
No we're not straining, we're
just dumping, that's what I thought.
Yeah, we'll call.
Make the assumption they don't have
another female, right?
There's not another female?
Okay.
Yeah, thank you.
If you guys want to go measure fish,
I'll just keep doing this.
Okay, do you need a timer?
Are you good?
I'm asking.
I'm just askin' It was
Mark, Mark, and Mark.
Okay.
Thank you.
The Red Mice on the other end.
Well, when the egg is
fertilized and it seals
itself off and the outer coating
gets immediately sticky, because
out there in nature,
the first thing it touches,
it sticks and stays put while
the water hardens for 20 days
before they hatch.
So we don't want them to stick
together because in our hatchery,
if they stick together and you get
clumps, the ones in the middle
suffocate.
They breathe like we do and they
die.
96.
OK. OK.
In nature,
that opening in the egg is
susceptible to having viruses
and bacteria and fungus get
into the egg. Then we measure the
eggs to see how many we have.
There's 4,000 in a
shot glass.
One ounce of eggs is 4,00 eggs.
So we measure them to keep track of
how many eggs we have in these sort
of hatching jugs.
We've got to have at least two and a
half of them to keep them from
drying.
I don't know exactly, I didn't
keep track of how many.
We didn't put in, we don't have any
jars this year that we put more
than 80 in.
Eight eights
are 640,000,
640 ounces,
and that's 24,
that's 2,560
eggs.
We got over 2
million, 2.5
million. Twenty-five, two and a half million.
Oh, there he is.
Can you move by it?
Set the vents.
I'm going back to my car.
Let's go out there.
We'll do that.
We'll get you.
The guys on Winnebago
will argue, no sizing.
They are adamant they
will never have a sizing on
Winnipeg.
You limit exportation
by bag limit.
Yo, you were talking.
You were talking to me.
Two is only a meal for
two people, maybe.
Uhhhhhh
Oh
But that's what it is
Yeah, put those in there.
Sure.
We'll take it outside for school
today.
Put some in here so there's more.
There's a bunch over here.
If that's a male, that's hell of a
male.
Okay.
I think that one's funny.
What happens when you get these big
girls?
They've got a little more color in
them, look at those.
Yeah, me too.
Hey, can I bring the...
I don't know.
Thank you.
Is there another female in there?
Okay, bring them.
How many nuts was that Paul?
I don't know.
Okay.
Can we get to go?
We get to go?
And if they don't come and
do a survey after the fact, we're
wasting our time, effort, and money.
We only do clip-clips.
Yeah, you guys.
Let's go ahead.
There?
Yeah. True.
Drew, I'm out of water.
Okay. Yeah, he was a congressman.
Yeah.
Nice guy. Yeah, no,
I felt bad for him.
There were a lot of guys coming after
him last night.
And it's not him.
That's the thing is, I almost
wanted to raise my hand and be like,
guys, he's not the one making it.
He's just here to read the
questions.
He's been around a while.
He's not a little kid.
Well, because he's never done this
before, this is his first year.
But he's been,
been around awhile.
Twenty and a half.
There you go.
May I have a word?
Mail, mail, mail...
How'd you get off so early?
Oh
Hey, well, you don't
have to commit to me.
Ha ha ha!
That's for me to watch.
In a little bit.
Nineteen and a half.
Hail.
We'll do this one and we can
just bring a male up and you can
practice.
Thank you.
Not too big, too small.
19 and a half again, pour
the whole thing in there.
You're up, bud.
Let's go. Do you want to wear these?
No, I think you got to wear the
little green one.
The little orange guys.
That's fine. That's not empty.
Wait, we've got to measure it before
you turn it loose.
You mean those ladies in
Madison didn't give you enough
practice?
Thank you very much.
Second Is that so?
90 seconds here.
Is that okay? Yeah.
40 seconds. That's all you get per
quarter of a mile?
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
That's it?
17 and a half.
One more and I'll be good.
Is that fine? One more?
Fine. And then the females, it's the
same exact process, except you get
to press harder or you just.
Just a longer stroke because the
females are bigger.
And the mills.
You have to kind of, you've got to
kind of roll your fingers because
their body is bigger and
you got to remember now the ovaries
are down both sides.
Right, so you've got to get both.
Yeah, so you I use three fingers
and roll with three fingers,
okay
Bring it as a male.
Males, you gotta get closer to the
bag to shoot, because they're
desiccals. That's what I was, I was
like pushing up his stomach and
nothing was going. Yeah, you got to
go down further. OK.
And the males.
Females you can go, you start up.
No, no, not on this leg.
Is there another female in there?
Oh, okay.
Fill us up.
Oh, what the he-
That's poop, poop.
Ugh!
Contamination!
Demonstrating such great restraint
and quality amount of jokes.
That may be all we have.
Measure it.
Sorry, buddy.
17.25.
No, 16 and
a quarter.
You're a nice tool.
I am nice.
Okay, I'm out.
That's my...
Well, we'll pour it out.
That's it.
I didn't know there were more
females. I didn't either.
You ready?
Green, green, green.
It's green.
It should be
a few days, I think.
Thank you very much.
Green team.
That could be the phone you can turn
it back on when you want to.
Bring us the mail.
Bring your mail.
Do you have another female?
Okay, bring another female.
Thank you.
Well, it's okay.
We have eggs.
We still get a lot of the things in
there.
Can you do that for a little while?
That's what I'm saying.
Thank you.
You better watch it,
some lady's going to want to put a
stamp right in front of you.
That's one holy moment.
20 and a half.
Ahead.
Yeah, that's a big one.
They just set the milk
aside, so...
Yeah, it's a female.
I see a lot of them.
And
I don't know what to do with it.
Yeah, let me see.
That's it.
We'll do
it.
Thank you.
Stop. I'm not going to keep talking
to you.
It's always like this over here,
whole different crew.
No!
Thank you, Lord.
Do you want me to just
use the political
stuff in there?
I mean, I'm into politics,
but I'm not sitting and watching TV
doing it. Yep
All right.
They're bringing one more net in.
I don't know.
We have an apple.
I'm sorry.
Time to quit, I'm getting hungry.
I get home at 7.30 the other night,
and it's certainly five o'clock,
sucks.
Well, that part's pretty packable,
don't you think?
Of course, starting at 2.30
is a lot better than starting at 6
in the morning.
I retire.
I'm not doing that anymore.
They check the other 530 every
morning.
I get a kick out of these
legislators that want to talk about
wind turbines and solar farms.
I worked for Atlantic Energy for 24
years.
I supervised building big
substations.
Those guys, they need to stop
talking to lobbyists and learn the
things they need to come up with
power.
We'll be putting that in there in a
minute.
Yeah, this is a good lake as far as
numbers go.
This is a bluevilla.
I don't know how you catch them in
here. We catch them now in the
night, but... This lake has a famous
name. It's called the Dead Sea.
I'd like to keep it that way.
Yeah, well that's
like Winnebago.
I mean if you don't know how
to fish winnebagos.
Well I learned a long time ago as a
fisherman I like catching way more
than fishing.
I like fishing but I really like
catching a lot better.
See I'm in that middle stage like
you know when you first start out
you want to catch fish.
I'm at the stage where I'd rather
catch two fish all day if there's
a great fish.
But, I mean, give me a few tenths
of a year and then I'll be back.
You have more?
Me? I can sit there and catch
bluegills all day long.