The 11 different strains in
Wisconsin, and that like the
stocking, they really wanted it to
be the same strain.
At first to me it was like, seems
like genetic diversity would be
good, but then yeah, it makes
perfect sense that this phenotype
of walleye can do it in
this lake, so you don't want to
mix the pot up really.
It'd be one of those that would be
different if you could take out the
ones that weren't successful, but
once they're right, you're
blind.
Yeah and then
then you're just yeah you're
at those uh those
studies that like Lake Owen has done
we talked about that and it's like
it seems like not very
successful or something but um
yeah in here it's interesting
because it's kind of this lake will
do uh every
other year DNR and then there's
a local group called Walleye's Fish
Attack and they they're
very good at fundraising they
fit the community really well and
they they're always they
always have a surplus of of money
but then it's uh I know
their last round they couldn't even
get they the specific
strain they couldn't get the
Chippewa strain of walleye in
here so it might be something
we we work with them on.
But yeah, this lake is pretty,
pretty solid for those
numbers.
Actually, when you think about like
what the fish costs to
put in, it ends up being
more like that 15 to 17
dollar for the one that you hook
rather than 600
to 1600 dollar one.
So this is a very it's a productive
body of water.
And I've got.
We usually pull in a
slot walleye or two every year
without fishing really that much.
So it is really a
healthy population, I would say,
comparably to other lakes.
But yeah,
it is an interesting thing of like,
what could be done to get it all
better, the populations in general?
And I think the biggest thing, I was
just,
the DNR had in
their magazine, They're
specials on wild
rice. In the state and trying to
make it come back and it's like
there's all it seems like the fish
like there's, all these reasons of
like habitat loss,
over harvesting, all the same things
you hear but they're like we don't
really know what the one the
main cause is.
I think it's just like these
these light winters are
really having an effect on things
like reproductive systems like
from to animals whereas because
like walleye when NADF is trying
to do their
reproduction it's
yeah there's some photo period and
some they'll sometimes add hormones
or whatever but the biggest thing is
that temperature the decrease
and then it's a sustained winter
period and then that increase so
like without without
it there's just no you can't
substitute for it.
And unfortunately, there's no quick
fix for that.
Nope.
It's probably not going back, is it?
Right, right.
Yeah, we're just gonna keep having
mild winters, which is
a little bit easier
on the plant side of things just
because, you know, it's a little
easier on heating a indoor grow
facility or a greenhouse for that.
But yeah, you just hope we
doesn't have too big of impact
on all of our populations from
wild rice to walleye.
I think any time you change the
system and how much there's going to
be winners and losers.
Right.
How you determine that will be
whether you want more of what you're
getting or if the things you
wanted are disappearing.
True. Like if all of it
changed and killed off mosquitoes,
we'd be like, fuck!
Right, right, we've been trying to
do that for hundreds of years.
Instead it's going to wave on the
walleye and it's like, shit, what
did he do to me?
Yeah, right.
Decrease the amount of canopy heat
so
Oh, I know.
In town, that's like,
when I was from an aim rate, there's
just a stupid amount of geese and
they wouldn't migrate
either because we have shoreline.
There's a ton of houses here.
There's ton of shoreline, too, but
there's very little that kind of
stays protected.
And the Satec chain is kind of like,
it's kind of a party chain sort of
thing. So there was last
summer or two summers ago,
right on this little island, there
was a boat that was
out partying came back
here and uh reefed
oh got the
sheriff called got everything and he
was he was stuck out there for a
couple days so it's kind of a meme
on the uh shuteck chain facebook
page this this
pontoon just launched on that little
island right there
Alright, we'll buzz up here.
So is this connected to Rice Lake
at all?
No, it's not.
It's a...
I don't know if any of the creeks
technically you could find the
same water and get there.
But no, there's
something like 10 creeks
that flow into here.
Meadows Creek, Prairie Creek,
but yeah I don't think it has the
same waters though.
The dogs for as he got them
they were being trained for that
purpose.
You can see the amount of work that
goes in when he gets back.
He really enjoys his time.
It is, it is a whole thing.
I have some family friends that go
out to North Dakota and they have
like this
humongous tens of thousands of
dollars trailer just for duck
hunting. It's like, man, that's
commitment.
We got out on a.
Uh, no, not that one.
So you kind of just...
The top one,
just kind of thread it through twice
on the crawler and then leave like
half of it dangling off.
Does that look okay?
And then when you have it
back there, you just want to be able
to feel that the spinner is
spinning.
If we can get it to about...
Trying to get it to like two and a
half miles per hour might
be kind of tough with a big motor
today.
That explains a little bit of a lack
of fishing.
Yeah, definitely.
Everything's going well?
Yeah, yup.
He's a bit in that
sleep regression phase, so
waking up quite a bit due to
teething and those things.
But yeah,
fatherhood's amazing.
No, I can't replace it.
And it fixes a lot of stuff
that you're always worried about
or spending time on this.
And whatever you need to do now as
a dad, It's like.
It's so easy, it's just like, now I
gotta do it. I gotta show the kid
how it's done
and yeah, everything just clears up
a little bit.
Down to about five feet here.
That's three.
Do you have a favorite approach
at walleye when you're targeting
them?
Um...
I grew up just jigging a leech.
Yeah.
We never really did much of the
cast in our cold.
Fuck, it's advancing, we got slip
riders.
Hahaha
Yeah, I found that when
you're on a...
Jigging spot,
the biggest cheat code is a
spot lock with your trolling
motor.
That just makes a world of
difference. We go up occasionally
to Canada
with my uncle and
me and my cousin Michael will get
the camp boat with the little 40
horsepower behind us, no trolling
power motor.
So it's just like trying to stay on
the spot. He's over there with his
spot lock, just camped out,
chilling like, what do you guys, you
guys gotta get on the spots.
It's like, trying.
Known for good good walleye
fisherman fishing but
it's also uh
probably a little bit more so big
bluegill and big pike
it's probably the most commonly
targeted thing.
Yeah, if we don't catch anything,
it's because of the rain and the
cold. And if we catch stuff, it is
because of rain and cold.
There's always a good excuse.
Well, yeah, I had to
cut off work a little bit early,
got everyone what they needed to
do. They're like, what are you doing?
Got to meet with PBS Wisconsin.
Yeah, right.
And yeah, they wanted to
go fishing.
Hope you've been out to your
property yet this
fall.
I was just there this weekend,
yeah. Nice.
Pretty muted colors,
it's not much of a showy fall.
Gotcha.
Were you working on trails
or setting up cameras or anything?
It's so dry, we don't have much
rain there. Okay.
A couple nice bucks and some dough
coming through on my new stand in
Backmarsh and
they're all dried up like a week
ago, so I
don't know if it's just because it's
been so dry and so hot they haven't
moved at all.
We have a crick that runs
through the back of our property
that will buy probably
game and up
up just north of me as
soon as it freezes over it changes
from up they'll cross the creek and
once it freezers over it goes down
about a half mile and then right
there there's just deer all
the time once it once that happens
My uncle has the adjoining
80 and his more
woods and some marsh and some crib,
but his is a little
more consistent than ours, but ours
is entirely dependent on how high
the water is.
Gotcha
beaver and screw it something up
then all of a sudden changes
everything right so we really have
to pay i criticize
hunters who don't
see any deer anymore so when's the
last time you look and check
Yeah, right.
We don't want the scam to be here.
Because we know we
have stands in every different
direction because of the water.
And those marshes that
can kind of go in between being very
flooded and
being pretty dry, that really
changes it too, because if
it dries up and it's truly like
you can walk on it, that's a great
deer bedding area and they love it,
whereas if it
comes back up for
whatever reason, beavers or anything
else, they can't sleep
in there. It's going to be a lot
different.
Yeah, that's what we have.
That shift will come right
now. We get rains for a week.
Where they're running out will
change completely by the time I go
on.
Yeah, right.
I don't get too excited at what I
see or don't see this time of year.
Yeah.
Because if I'm not out for one
thing, it doesn't matter if it's
different or not.
Yeah, it changes and...
Corn come off of it.
What neighbor shot the 10-point buck
I was after.
That was us last year, there's like
150
public land right across
from my brother-in-law's property
and the two nice bucks we were
watching, we saw them on Facebook,
like within two weeks of the season.
I bet it's a tough, it was a
tough early season for bear.
Just because the acorn, like as soon
as it was season, acorns like
that.
And I rebated two
scams, and my dad had
a work strength.
His daughter tried to shoot a bear.
So his daughter got one.
Nice.
Yeah, drop in on Wednesday or
Thursday, Wednesday, Friday.
OK.
They have been hitting it every few
days.
Gotcha
And then my dad hunted
the other school, and
now I'm on half of the bear got
shot, nothing.
They tipped over once and saw
something.
I don't like blood, I mean they were
about a hundred fifty yards apart,
but I figured it was the same track
of bears.
Really?
At both spots or just the one?
Both.
They knew something happened?
Yeah, you know, we've noticed that
every time we shoot a bear on
the site, like that season,
it's done, it won't come
out good.
That's why we usually try to keep
the sites a little farther apart,
but it's hard.
It's like the first place.
Right.
Right, and if
you've got the effort
to get all your bait out there too,
and another whole walk to get to a
spot.
That's great, that's great.
Now the trail usually it'll
support one route out and in, you
go twice you're going to sink.
Gotcha.
It's that like, boggy
kind of.
Yep, there's just enough muck in
there that if we want to, we need to
get back there we can, but we
can't run back and forth all day.
Gotcha. So we were going to run the
mule or four wheeler out there for
beating.
Gotcha
How is the, just
all the
info collecting and everything for
the walleye series going?
Good. You've been doing pretty good.
Yeah? Yeah.
This is our last week for...
Crazy move to bail out Argentinian
soy beans to me.
Crazy.
It depends on how deeply you want to
read into the context of who
actually benefited the most.
It was something to do with
like geo-political and like
Argentina has some claim on oil
somewhere, something like that.
So the Argentinian president
that just got elected came
in on a very similar to Trump
populist reform, reduced
Like, they're trying to make our,
uh...
Allies just whoever has
similar policies to us and
like form of government at this
given time, which is
wild
Historically, it's not really what
this works on.
I think, yeah, if we want to
roll it in here, we'll
go back that way and just go out
a little bit farther to get it just
slightly deeper.
You know, because with that rain,
cool down, drop in barometric
pressure, they're going to be
10 to 11 feet, maybe.
Are you much of an ice fisherman?
I used to do a lot more of it
years ago.
It's that one's a little more
difficult. Yeah
But like you find that right combo
when you can actually get out on the
ice
Good yeah
Right how old are your kids again 13
and 11
And the thing about them, they're
very curious still.
There's a lot of questions.
Yeah, maybe that can be a good and a
bad thing, I guess.
Is that like a
spinning in the water?
Yeah, I can feel it. I think so.
I feel just that little vibration.
This should be a little bit
better. Going against the wind, we
get more like 2.4
miles an hour, which would be a bit
better
There's still a few small cabins out
here.
Yep.
Yeah, and there's a lot of some
of these resorts too where you
see like they have that thing going
on. They're kind of parsing those
off now because you know you can
you can sell something like that for
a buck fifty now so it kind of
can pay.
That's why we don't have family
resources.
Yep, yep.
One generation decides to take all
the money out of it, and then
there's nothing left of it.
Nothing
And then they're all bogged up by an
LLC.
You guys been to the Ashland?
Ashland Co-op?
Yep.
It's kind of like the grocery
store in town in
Ashland. It's really, really nice.
We do business with them.
Yeah, just got a nice deli and
stuff. Kind of surprised you
wouldn't necessarily expect it, but
yeah, it's a really nice little
grocery store.
The other thing I've been meaning to
do in Ashlands is they have that
little on
the, so when you're coming in, you
go past the, just
coming into town.
You pass the big spit, the beach,
everything. Right on the beach front
there's a little well house
with an artesian well there.
I keep meaning it's like I think we
got to move the operation up there.
That sounds like good water.
Well, if you, uh...
While the best water in the state,
according to the mayor of La Pond,
is La Ponde.
Oh, okay, gotcha.
Double osmosis, reverse
osmosi system.
Oh
He's very proud of it, and he's very
angry at the state because they
built a new water treatment facility
for the prison instead of
buying water from the town.
He wanted that to be something
with some payback, huh?
Well, he's like, well, we got the
best water we had to find the
system.
Yeah.
Apparently years ago they had water
issues, so they had to sink money
into the system.
Gotcha.
Rated as like the best drinking
water in Wisconsin.
Little movie magic, right?
Grrrr
Yeah, pretty much the only structure
on this whole chain, because if
you notice, there's like no weeds,
basically.
It's all kind of fallen
logs.
This might actually be a
crib right there.
There's quite a bit of effort done
to get structure
here, but.
I'm sure Ed the diver could
have a good day down there.
I ran into him in Marinette.
Did you? Yeah.
For a half second, I was thinking
about trying to put him in the
story.
So I was talking to him about, well.
Maybe I'll just do one
thing at a time.
So do you use a leader for northern
out here?
Yeah, if I was targeting them, for
sure.
Yeah,
those crawler harnesses are kind of
notorious for being bitten off.
You guys are going to listen to the
Brewer game on the way back?
Yeah, although I'm
always conflicted as a fan
during the playoffs because if I
don't follow them enough during the
regular season, I feel like such a
bandwagon jump.
So I always, I always feel bad.
But yeah, we should listen to it.
Well, if it's that or that CD you
brought. Hey, you like this.
Hehehe
Hey, you picked Pearl Jam for the
first CD. I like that CD too.
Wow, this is a van, why do you guys
got CDs?
That's the problem man, of itself.
There's no USB,
there's no phone connection.
Especially when you're driving to
Ashland, you're just going in
between one to two bars the whole
time.
That looks like a fish on the
bottom.
Little arc.
Show Ethan again.
Okay.
No, that's-
Ask Collin if you know who's the
artist.
Uh, you're from Race Lake?
Well, how far is Minam?
Not that far.
Yeah, usually Zach and I just sit in
silence.
You know, we'll talk, but we
never listen to music on the radio,
right? Not that much.
Do you guys do that like when you're
driving alone?
Will you do ghost silent?
Yeah I think it's good sometimes it
is good you know see where your
thoughts are at where your heads at
Might have had a tick there,
might have.
No, I agree, sometimes when
it's the,
you need to think through something,
yeah, just shut everything off.
Because you only get so many
opportunities like that's what
we're hoping they're stacked
up in.
So I see you've got the rod holder,
you just don't use it.
I just like to feel it.
I'll find myself going in
between too many things if I have to
watch this.
So just having it a
feel thing helps me a little bit.
Yeah, I just was up at NADF
last week to pick up some,
we order fish food together,
save on some shipping.
And yeah, it was always good to get
up there, but one of their managers
owns a kind
of apple orchard farm with a
tap house, they do ciders and stuff,
the Housers Farm, and
that's just north of NADL,
or kind of.
More into the peninsula a little
bit, but you get up there and have a
great view of Lake Superior.
That was a nice time.
Well, she's out on maternity though,
right?
Yep, yeah, I just had a hazel
Oh really?
Yeah, yeah, so it sounded like,
just talked to her a little bit,
Emma, and it sounded like
everything's going good, so,
it's funny though, you have a kid
and it's like, feels like
everybody's having a kid all of a
sudden, which is awesome,
you love the...
Misery loves company is the wrong
way to say it, but
Well, that's what usually happens,
especially for your first team, if
you find a baby group and it's
all first time parents, I
don't know if your fiance's
found one of those or anything.
Not not super we do
have like within our friend group
there is like another pregnancy
and Another
my other partner just has
an eight month old daughter.
So we're kind of have a few people
right around
usually it's like if you take like
the birthing class you meet people
there yeah and then like
if you in madison there's like
all sorts of different like birthing
stores that have stuff just
for those moms gotcha i
asked for them and so they go in
they meet all the other expected
moms they're all first time yeah
so then like
actually for my my daughter she
was at a cross-country meet last
week and we ran into
one of the other kids that like
i haven't since he was a baby
Gotcha!
And that was 13 years ago.
It's got to be just the
developmental stages and
where's yours at?
Are they taking solid food yet?
All those little things.
Is there any sort of, uh...
Worry about you know,
just funding everything the ship
being able to run and
No, I mean, will exist.
We're better off than in some
places.
The question is what's left and
what can we do and does that create
the death spiral that
you saw already seen in newspapers
and local tv?
You know, people go down,
quality goes down, then who wants
to listen?
PBS Passport, which is
the little...
Yeah, we'll just kind of putz
through here and then we'll...
We have this too.
We'll get over to that other troll.
You'll get hit by a
bluegill and half of it's gone or
something.
We're at 14, so we're a little
deeper.
Yeah,
yeah, probably, probably a good time
to...
And then we'll buzz over to the
other one.
I also had a...
Gosh, I forget her name.
She's also with PBS Wisconsin,
I'm pretty sure.
The Hope in the Water series.
You know, that is
that.