Is it too like dramatic for some
viewers to see a needle?
Public broadcasting just is
very...
You go by the most
profit?
Is that just like a
part of like...
You gotta guarantee your funding so
you can't make people do...
What was the claim to most people
doing this? Yeah, I don't know.
Oh, I really don't need a needle.
I don't want to anymore.
That's one of those
things where no one is going to
call in and say, oh
I love seeing that needle on there,
but someone might say I didn't like
it.
Alright, I'm flying a little bit of
flying here.
You good whenever.
Don't worry about the boat though.
Hopefully it's waterproof too.
We're ready whenever you are
so just give us a second.
Sounds good
Right now, the framing, you're going
to get a lot of this table in the
foreground.
So if we kind of frame it
up.
I don't know if we're just bad at
cropping, if we need to. Yeah, it's
4K.
Yeah.
You're good.
Awesome.
So these are
a Chippewa strain of walleye.
So they have, just coming from this
region, they have been
domesticated for a number of
generations. So they are technically
known as a domesticated
strain.
But here, this was
a cohort.
Was probably about a
two-year-old fish,
so a little bit
slightly slower of growth than what
we're used to.
But you always kind of have that
tapering. You have your
fastest-growing fish, and then you
have your ones that grow a little
slower.
So with a walleye,
the main pieces of meat that we
use are just the two filets,
so the best way to start.
Just get right behind the gill.
I like to angle it a little bit up
towards the head of the fish,
because there is a good amount of
meat right in this pocket that's
often missed.
So you get that angle down
to the spine.
And work your way down the spine.
Just as flat as possible.
Then once you make it to
the top of this fan, I like to
punch all
the way through, then
keeping your knife flat,
working your way.
Down through the edge of the tail.
In general, probably our fastest
growing fish are going to reach
about this size in
15 months.
We have plenty of these fish left
from this cohort.
With just a couple fish tanks, we
have to kind of
be very strategic about
our bio plan, make sure we have
enough fish to support our plants
that make sure they're providing
enough nutrients.
So I know there's some people who
cut right through the ribs and then
take the ribs off after.
Are you more of a carp around the
ribs?
I'm more of a carver on the ribs
when I don't have an electric
knife.
Otherwise, if it was an electric
knife you'd just buzz right through
that and then work your way
around the ribs. You can do it quite
a bit faster, especially if you're
doing this in a commercial setting.
The way we're getting these filets
done right here would be too
slow.
So that's a beautiful piece of wood.
Yep, yeah, we try to,
and we do a little bit of a purge,
too, and no food beforehand,
and then once they're dispatched,
we put them in a little water and
then you're just left with perfect
white flaky piece of meat.
And then the only bones on this
filet are going to be right here
on that walleye.
So generally you just do a y-cut.
There are pin bone machines that you
can take care of that.
But quite expensive, you need to
reach a certain economy of scale to
get there.
So, this would be a great
filet for the frying pan.
And you just do the same thing on
the other side.
And there are these
walleye that we have here today are
probably just big enough where there
are a couple kind of hidden pieces
of meat that many walleye
fishermen will be aware of,
but maybe it will be news to
some of us.
This is the famous YG.
The walleye cheeks and
also walleye wings.
It's something I picked up at
up in Eagle Lake in
Canada.
At a resort up there my family
goes to,
once a week they did a
fry and they would bring out these
walleye wings that end up
being more of a sea foodie
rather than that nice white
flakey. It's a little bit different
texture but a really nice piece of
meat that you can get a
good bite from on the bigger size of
walleye.
So how long is this fish?
Um, this is probably...
About a 16 or 17
inch fish.
It's a legal keeper for most of
the state.
In about a
probably 1.5
pound fish and
we'd be hopefully harvesting
we'd probably get
Maybe about eight ounces worth of
meat off of this fish.
And those are ready to go.
So you're not the first
nor the last traditional to do it
on a newspaper.
Right.
This rap is...
I was going to go with
a nice Wisconsin cutting
board, but I figure it's true
to the Wisconsin fish fry that it's
right on newspaper.
But the walleye
wing, so the wall eye cheeks,
you can pretty much filet
them out right here.
And you can feel it.
You can see the little squishy piece
of muscle that is more seafoody as
well. And then
right here are the walleye wings,
so it's that space in between
its two bottom fins.
You can see there's a nice
layer of meat right there, about a
half inch.
So you just try to cut around that
and then you can fry the whole thing
up and you kind of
slurp the meat off the
fins then.
Can be a little bit easier if you
have like a wire cutter or something
honestly.
This is a job that I have cut myself
a couple times doing,
so caution is
suggested.
So how old were you when you first
started fileting your own fish?
Oh
Probably.
Probably 15 or 16.
I have so many memories of
my dad doing it and I honestly,
almost every time I'm fileting fish,
I feel like my dad standing here.
So it's definitely a cool connection
piece and a cool kind of
like family tie-in.
And a good thing to know,
man.
A lot of fish end up being real
similar with how
you filet them.
So knowing how to do a walleye, you
can do so many other fish.
And then this,
there's a lot of goodness left
over in this fish, even when you
take out all the meat possible.
You can use this for fish emulsion,
turn it into plant nutrients.
You could take these
skins that are still on the filets,
turn into fish leather.
We could take the head, freeze
dry it, turn in into a sort of pet
treat. All things we are considering
as we kind of scale up on the
walleye side of things.
But, uh...
Don't have a use for it just now so
it'll go into our compost pile and
then we'll at least get some
nutrients for plants out of it that
way.
Go on.
And hold on one second.
The worst is when I have to grab my
dad's and like the best.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's not that's
more of it.
I am a quarterbacks coach.
So that's always kind of a running
joke when you get new quarterbacks.
Oh, you got your left handed
football today.
No, it only become it becomes a
right or left handed play knife
right after the person's using it
enough.
Yeah, definitely.
So there it is actually.
About the best version of a walleye
cheek.
That I'm going to get, you know,
there's a little bit more meat in
there, but that's mostly what you
get, that little chunk.
This one's just slightly bigger,
maybe quarter pound.
And one of the main
things that made
us interested in
this, we just went past some pigs on
the property, which we give some
extra produce to.
But one of main things of walleye
that we're really enticed by
is that feed conversion.
So fish in general are
as close to a one-to-one feed
conversion where you feed one pound.
One pound of feed into this
animal, and you get close to one
pound of food for
humans coming out of it.
Whereas a cow is
more like nine to one,
pig is more five to
one. Chicken, more like four to
one so
that just like taking advantage of
your resources that you're putting
into these and
making sure you're getting food for
people out of.
It was the thing that we...
Really like the idea of and
these, so this fish you know
pound and a half over
the course of its life at
max three pounds but
probably it only ate probably about
two pounds of
feed throughout its life to get to
this size all
while we're we know exactly what
type of feed it's in it's a healthy
fish based high protein
diet so
we just know we're going to get
really good filets out of it.
And it's a healthy fish that
has been stressed out a minimal
amount throughout its life.
But yeah, you can definitely see
probably half
your time or better with
an electric filet knife here.
And there again, that's a really
nice piece
of meat.
It's not as interesting to go
through these ones whenever I catch
a walleye and I'm flaying it, I like
to go through the stomach
contents, see what it's eating,
you know, if it's crayfish
or more like leeches and
you can kind of match the hatch when
you're fishing.
This, you're not going to find
anything in its stomach so a little
less interesting but these
will, although these are feed
trained and they've been eating feed
their whole life, these will
go back, if they were stocked
into a pond or in someone's fish
tank or stocked into a lake,
these will back to
preying on minnows, leeches,
invertebrates.
I like that the Chippewa strain of
walleye really has a nice black
top to the color and a nice gold
bottom.
One thing that I don't know if you
guys have came across much in your
studies of Wisconsin walleye
and everybody involved,
but have you ever heard of a
blonde walleye?
Yeah, it's really bright color.
Right.
Right, but it's like, you know, one
in a thousand or something like that
when people see it out of damn they
make a big deal.
We found that it's been about like
one in one in a thousand of our
walleye are that blonde walleye.
It looks a little lighter,
no different.
But they just look different.
They eat the same, they act pretty
similar.
That piece there
You guys are getting enough bad
shots where if this wasn't like a
nice puff piece.
Look at how gross flaying fish
is.
I don't know if we can tell you, but
we're actually for PETA.
You're right.
I told you a little bit about that
the last time, that that is a
concern of fish farmers.
But you know,
there's studies coming out all the
time that plants feel pain.
Plants cry when they get chopped
down, so.
Not that I want them to, but I'm
just saying everybody's got to eat
and we can just provide
food in the most ecological way
possible. That's kind of what we're
about.
The walleye, of course, are named
after their eyes,
that's how they hunt.
They like to hunt
in low light.
We have grown green bay
strain. That's the only other
walleye we've seen and I
believe UW-Stevens Point
NADF facility is working on
some strain comparisons.
There's definitely some differences
of the green bay to the
Chippewa strain.
Green bay strain is lighter.
It seemed to just put on weight
slightly differently but
you know there's been no
scientific
comparisons of one strain
of walleye compared to another
being raised in
an
aquaculture system like this,
so we'll be really
interested to see what the
study finds and if one
is better than the other, you've got
to think like how long has
livestock, cattle or
pigs been selectively bred to
get to where we are today.
You can imagine,
we could do a lot.
Lot of work on the
wall and making it more efficient.
So after all that time,
buff us some nutrients for the
compost, four filets,
a couple walleye wings, and four
cheeks.
When you see that, those are
beautiful filets.
That's like when people talk about
the best-eaten filets, the best one
to catch, they love catching the big
ones, but when people know what
they're talking about for eating,
that's the size they want to serve.
Definitely.
Yep. And that's kind of, it works
out with our, with
our growth rates, it kind of makes
the most sense to harvest them about
that one to two pound range.
Speaking of plates, you know, it
fits on a fish fry plate
or a walleye sandwich or something.
That size makes a lot of sense kind
of through and through.
So what's your favorite way to
prepare this?
Oh, we actually,
just to pan fry
it, we do have our own
tartar sauce and fish breading
too, which Chef
Ray prepares. This is his kitchen
and so that is actually
my favorite way.
New, it was just developed,
but yeah, pan frying with our
breading and tartar for sure.
The walleye wings are a little
different here, but you
can basically
bread this whole thing.
Some people will get the
fins, they're not super
keen on that, but actually if you
deep fry those and just have a bite
of them, there's a little breading
on them. It's like a potato chip
basically.
So how would
you suggest it?
I've never seen the wings.
These, yeah, I would just clean them
up just a little bit and then you
can just throw breading on them
and then fry them up
the same way, deep fry them, and
then it's baked like you can...
It's another seafood like it where
you just kind of scoop it off.
The breastplate.
Oysters
It's like an oish.
Yeah, right, it's kind of like that.
And it is more like a,
kind of more similar to shrimp
rather than
freshwater white filets,
so.
But, um.
Any other questions or anything else
you guys want to see with the
filets at all?
So do you take the skin off
or do you freeze them just like
this?
Yeah, we will,
for customers, we'll
take these off and it'll be boneless
skinless filets.
I know some places that will scale
them first and then leave the skin
on.
Mm-hmm
I think perches especially, they
roll up then, you make that
effect in a perch
fry.
Gotcha takes quite a bit of
time in the process in the
processing time.
So doing it up boneless skinless
just makes it a little bit more
ready to eat for consumers too.
But it is nice, you know, with that
nice color.
I like having the
the skin on there too, because
it's kind of more representative of
what it is. But we hope to get
to a point where all the ones we
are. Harvesting that we're using
most of the skins, actually.
We've only slightly experimented
with turning leather from
the fish skins, but we're
really excited about maybe doing
some walleye wallets or walleye
belts, things like that, just to
take advantage of the resource.
So are you going to take the skin
off these or what's your plan for
these in particular?
Um, I could.
I could, I was just gonna take these
home probably like this,
but I could I could do that if you
guys want to see that
If you could do a couple of these,
just to get some video of that.
These are going into the fried pan
tonight.
Yeah, I think so.
And I have a
pregnant fiance at home, no worries
about mercury
or plastics
in these, there's
no monthly limit that you can
eat of these, all land-based,
exactly what's going into them,
perfectly clean,
safe.
Tell me about wildlife leather,
how does that work?
Yeah, so you can feel,
you know, this is, I
couldn't rip this, you know.
So this is a really just nice piece
of something you can make something
with it.
The in the Pacific Northwest
tribes for arguably
1000s of years have been turning
salmon skins into boots
or other things to use strings.
So we just love the
idea of making use
out of this.
It would have to be scaled before
that, scaled and then tanned.
But me and the partners here,
our first entrepreneurial venture
was actually trapping.
So mostly like raccoon,
muskrat, mink, turning the furs
and selling those.
So we do have some actual
experience
in tanning skins and furs,
and things like that.
Still in the early stages of this,
but all of that was part of the 100%
use of fish pledge that
we joined. The Great Lakes Coalition
is partnering with other
fisheries and fish farms in
the area where you're trying to
use 100% of the fish, not just
the filets and stuff you can eat,
but the rest of the carcass as well.
Um
Yeah, any other questions on that
stuff?
I think we're good on that.
I'll probably get a shot of you just
packaging that up.
Gotta wash my hands quick.
I was looking for some ice but chef
didn't have
any on hand for us.
I guess not.
No ice no water either.
But this yeah this kitchen worked
out so nice.
This is chef's kitchen but we
got it licensed
through the county So then we can do
all of our pastos,
dressings, stuff like that in here.
Alright.
And whenever, a little bit
more, whenever you're ready.
Good. Good.
You just want to walk me to sort
of that way.
Sure.
Close it with it?
With the place in your hand.
If close it, we do that hand.
Sure. So, do you want me to like...
You don't have to. Don't miss that.
Okay. Then grab two and maybe swap
them.
Just give me an idea.
Yep, I'll be ready.
Awesome.
One more time.
You can start right there.
Clear it up a little bit.