You like,
I guess I don't know if you want me
to like, tell you in
advance what I'm going to do and
then take a picture.
So yeah, I'll just kind of follow
the reaction then, and then I might
just have you, when we get the
phone up to the lens, I might try
to reframe the, get a shot of
through your phone.
Okay, cool.
Um, cool.
So like, well, do you want me to
talk while I'm doing it?
Yes, if you want to kind of narrate
what you're doing as you're doing it
and what you are looking for if you
can.
Um, yeah, so these are walleye
eggs we collected this morning when
we were fike netting.
Um, and I'm just taking
them out of the vial and putting
them on the scope so that I can
photograph them.
And I, I can like make this
process shorter. Normally it takes
like each sample takes a little bit
to like spread them out good.
So I can just take a picture if
that's easier.
Oh, whatever you usually
do, that's fine with me,
I've got nothing but time.
Um
So what's the process for someone to
get a permit to fish here?
Super simple.
So basically, like anybody that
would like to fish here, they
have to pop into the station here.
And it's literally just this
right here.
And so we just give them a little
pencil.
We get their address and a
couple of things, a little bit of
demographic data from
the anglers.
And then that's really it at
that point.
I'm just going to
turn the macro off.
And then you can just line it up
through the scope, and I'll take it.
This is actually looking about it on
the mind if they don't
report out when they get done.
We've got a letter, we try to call
them, send them that stuff.
So then after they would go out
fishing, we would
mark down the date and stuff
like that, what time they started
fishing, the methodology
here.
And then later I
just put these photos into
image processing software
and what we're doing
is looking in the diameter
of the eggs and
the yolk basically to
look at how walleye
eggs
and stuff like that, so we just.
You know how like different let
me think of the right thing to say
basically like how
do walleye eggs influence
recruitment how are walleye egg
part of
before we're facing summer.
How does that like set up?
Official or combination.
Let me rephrase, sorry,
I'm thinking.
Basically, like, walleye recruitment
is declining and one of the things
that kind of came out was maybe that
maternal effects could be important.
So how might
the female walleye
influence recruitment?
Well maybe it's something to do with
the eggs.
And there's studies that have shown
that if eggs are bigger,
that the larvae will be bigger, so
maybe they'll have some sort of
advantage. Distance data and then
how you know, that yolk and that
nutritional investment in the egg
could influence that as well.
So, like, and we looked
at all these different, so we did a
study recently that
was published and we look at
female size,
female age, we looked at
environmental factors like
variability,
looked at like different kind of
population level factors like yellow
purge and just looked at.
You know how it was exercise being
influenced by all these things and
it did seem like
for the last 80 years, every fish
that comes to that here, we have all
that information.
One thing.
Probably 2014 or 2015.
The main focus seemed to be that
environmental variability can
influence eggs, so if in years
where forage isn't as abundant,
it seems like maybe the eggs are
less provisioned, they're not as
nutritionally dense, and
it seemed like some of these
factors, the most
important factor ultimately seemed
to maybe be a genetic
factor, so maybe some walleye
are just generally better at
producing eggs and have generally
better, and which might influence
their Is it true?
Yeah, so that's why we're keeping
the study going even though we
already published on it, because
we're trying to build up that
long-term data set.
So in that paper,
because all of our female walleye
are tagged in the spring and
so we catch the same fish year
after year after year.
So every in multiple years you
could get egg samples from the same
fish so you can look at how
different factors have influenced
those eggs and then we can look
recruitment later.
So we're kind of looking at...
That long-term kind
of egg quality and
maybe recruitment potential.
Oh, so you had quality looking so
far, and no one's used to you've,
uh... Well, I ha-
Well I haven't measured them yet, so
I have to like take the
photo and put it into the software
and then um I
do little measurements on 10 of
the eggs and then we can kind of
look and see per female,
okay how big were her eggs on
average, how big where the yolks on
average how variable were
they and then,
um we can kinda like it.
And we can relate those back to,
well, this year, what was the ice
like this year?
What was ice like last year?
What was the perch like last here?
How are these things influencing
eggs and potentially
recruitment?
Yeah, so that's what I'm doing.
All right.
Yeah, I don't know.
For about two years and there
are a few people out there who are
still in a 120 purge, you know,
in an outing, and there's still
people, excuse me.
I actually, I'll be going straight
to probably DeGaulle and Knax,
and then I'll get in after, and so,
then we'll go up to Sanford,
and like I said, everything should
be there, the boat should be ready
to go, and gas stuff,
and the hooks and the rope to tie
off the boat is
in the back seat of the truck
there.
We are going to go home for the end
now.
Yeah, so in the 90s it doesn't
take long for something
like that to happen.
Some people are harvesting at that
level.
But it's funny that even...
Well the purpose came out of Nevis.
We've gone through a while.
But one of the purposes of why...
Originally the regulations were set
up. So when they did open up the
fishing...
I think the natural mindset would
be like...
One, the lakes are going to be
absolutely loaded with fish and
they're all going to huge.
It works the opposite way with fish.
And so you have too many mouths to
feed, and so they were all small
and stunted.
And so the no clothes season,
no bag room, no size limit was
originally put on to basically
how much harvest does it take to
kind of put back in the right
direction and balance that out.
Like Mac was talking about, he loves
to fish small mouth on pallet.
And his little dog, his little white
dog, has died now,
and he had those heart issues.
He'd be in here every two days,
you know.
Older gentleman, dragon is canoeing
in there in all his glory with his
little dog.
So you get a lot of that stuff,
which is kind of cool.
You get to know new people.
Warner.
Warner, yeah, we get dirty old
men in here.
The gals and all that stuff.
You can imagine.
Warner's one of them.
Here's another one.
He and his brother, his brother's
passing them up to you, but they
just exclusively push them out.
So, I mean, this is the
main building that was remodeled in
2008.
It's all solar and generator-run.
A lot of history.
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Oh, I have a section of YouTube.