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