All right, well, I guess let's let's start but take us back to the beginning one side. Can you just straighten out your undershirt?
See he's taking the place of your wife. Oh, yeah
Well you guys you work cut out for you then
Take it take us back to how how did walleyes for tomorrow start? What was the genesis?
Well back in about
1985 to 89
Wisconsin had a drought going on and
When the bago survived when make a wall I population survives on spawning marsh
reproduction up on the Fox and the Wolf River and there wasn't any in those five years four or five years and
Some of the guys like myself that fish went to make a lot on got the idea that well
We need to do something if we can
to be able to ensure that walleyes have a place to spawn so we got together
12 of us and
Decided we could have a banquet and raise the money and we did that and then we went to the DNR and Oshkosh and
asked
What we could do to help?
Both to the walleye population and they had all kinds of ideas all of which cost money
So
We did the Eureka Dam
Project which was to fill in the boil hole below the Eureka Dam
Gordy Prigill who had been a biologist at Oshkosh in the six late 60s in the early 70s
They documented it every fry of every fish species that went over that damn died in the boil hole below it
So a hundred fifty four thousand dollars later
We filled in that boil. It's now these are reka rapids and
We proceeded from there to do habitat work on the rivers
marshes are normally dry they're dry marshes 90% of the year but in the springtime when the river gets up flood stage
Females go in and spawn but you have to have adequate water flow and consistent water flow for the eggs
They have time to incubate and then the little larvae get washed out. So we proceeded to
Write the wrongs of many generations of people they built roads across the marshes
So we take out a small 12 inch culvert and put in three 36 inch culverts to facilitate more water flow
so we did a lot a lot of projects like that and
both on the fox and a wolf and it's
I think it's worked well. I mean I go on the DNR trawler every year and
last year
Now the trawler has been running since 1986 and last year
They caught the most adult walleyes. It's not designed to catch adult walleyes and the most yearling walleyes
They've caught since 1986. So the fish population on the bagel is doing pretty well
And we like to take credit for
Right or wrong
but we
We've had some
Fantastic people be part of this organization that do great work that that really care about their resource and that's been a big deal
How do you convince a bunch of people that they should donate money or you know support an organization so they can fill in a hole in the river?
I mean, how do you just teach like how do you explain to them?
Like that's where you're literally throwing your money in a hole in the river
Yeah, I never thought about it that way, but
People understand the value
Like I call them river rats and the river guys up on the way up on the fox or and the wolf
they understand the value of these marshes and and
We have been really blessed on this system with some of the best DNR biologists. You'll ever want to meet
going way back
and bolts and and burn hacker that's back in seven I
Came here permanently in 72 and I met burn hacker who was a the rough fish removal coordinator and
Those guys have just been fantastic and supporting what we do and and and telling the public what the public needs to know and
You he that's what it that's what it takes is the
Educate the public so that they understand and know
what is
appropriate and necessary and
We've been really blessed with those kinds of people
So you're doing a lot of infrastructure type projects. Mm-hmm. How did you grow beyond that in terms of the scope of what you're doing?
We can't we I can't say we ran out of places to work because there still are more we have not done many projects
I think only two on state-owned land almost all of our projects have been on private property with a handshake
and
nice thing about it like at new London
Todd close was our project manager. He's Todd lives on the river and he knows a lot of people and
We pretty much ran out of places to do a lot of work
so we now we're paying for a lot of tagging studies and and research and
Because as global warming affects the environment and it is affecting the environment because the water is warming up
We need to know
What's the necessary to do if we can do something and that's really important?
So have you shifted more into you talk about funding research?
Mm-hmm because you have to answer the questions before you can figure out what to do, right? Right. Yeah, and that
Yeah, because right now we don't know what's coming
That's the big problem
We don't have a clue what
There's anecdotal evidence right now that you know
Walleyes are cool water species trout are cold water and in the warm water species are bass bluegill droppies
The warm water species and a lot of walleye lakes are starting to supplant the walleye population and what can you do?
We don't know, but there are research projects going on to look at options. I guess it's the best way to put it and
And
We fund we we've given the UW Stevens Point Foundation
$300,000 and that's invested in their fund and the proceeds from that goes to a graduate level research project every year to support
I call them kids the young people that are doing these types of studies and
They're under the supervision of dr. Dan Iseman at Stevens Point
Or Greg sass dr. Greg sass at the rest of us can have a research station, and they're doing some really interesting
Studies
We'll see how it all pans out
But when you get that when you get those presentations back these they come and speak to your group, right?
Yes, so what is the reception in the what's the move feel like when people hear that, you know
I'm paying so I can learn more. I'm what are they interested or that like show me a big fish?
No
We're by and large a bunch of old guys. We've seen a lot of fish
So that's not a big deal
the big thing is
they like to know that that there's results coming from the money that's being raised and
That's that's a really big thing because we've
Given money to some projects and we never hear the results. We've never given it being given the results
Partially because we don't ask for them, which we probably should but we haven't but
Studies that are panning out
Positively, it's a great thing
We haven't really had any negative results yet. I guess which is even better thing
So there's still hope
so
at what point
Along the journey of this group you shifted from some of the infrastructure to doing our research
Did the research go hand-in-hand with this understanding that the lakes are changing and that the habitat is changing?
The habitat is definitely changing mainly because of us
Lake habitat is changed dramatically and it's called carbon the carbon content of many lakes all across northern
With northern Wisconsin and the whole northern part of the United States
There's a carbon deficit in a lot of lakes and you have to have enough carbon
present in the lake to support the vegetative growth that's in the lake and
People yank trees out of the water as soon as they fall in the water those kinds of issues
They develop the shorelines are developed. They use pesticides herbicides
Which may and salt salt is a huge issue
So the imploride is
Changes the water chemistry to a point that's really not even well understood yet. I've seen a couple presentations. They're getting there and
Pretty soon. I don't know if you could do anything about it because people don't want a snowy roads
so but
The evidence is those kinds of issues are a real problem and it's like I said with the with the culverts
you know a hundred years ago when a person wanted to go across the marsh to access the farm field or
One bunch culverts we replaced they put them in there to facilitate muskratz
Back when there was a good market for furs. They wanted to hold water, but
so humans
Are not always the best
Stewards of the ecology let's put it that way
And if you're part of knowing what to do is learning, you know, what's happened and how can we change it to be what we want
Yeah, and but quite frankly we're kind of slow and in
Accepting the effects of human decisions, and I'll go with fishing regulations
While I use their broadcast spawners
They they just spawn along the shoreline where as bass blue gill crappies in those fish their nests spawners
so a
Little walleye hatches they're on their own, but when a little day had passed for instance when they hatch
The males sit there and protect them until they're ready to the motor away from the spawning area and we
We DNR and people in Wisconsin are accepting regulations that protect those fish
Until they have a chance to spawn several times which may change the population
It has changed the population dynamics in some lakes
Slowly but surely there are some lakes up in northern, Wisconsin now where the bag limit is is five a day for large
mouth bass and and
No size limit they're trying to reduce the number of bass and some of those are study lakes, so
You know it takes time to
Well how much of that does come down to the attitude of groups like yours and educating the people that do a lot of the fishing of like
Hey, you may it may be great and exciting for you to have these bigger bag limits or you know
They think that the slot limits the way to go or no limit size limit on parts of one of that
You know, but this is what the science says. Yeah. Well, there's other organizations that promote
Catch and release of those kinds of species. Don't eat them turn everyone loose that you catch
Whereas we promote we promoted a catch kill and eat tournament for bass for large mouth bass
They taste fine if you if you prepare the flesh or it properly, but
Yeah, it's a it's a cultural thing and an economic thing too
I mean some organizations have a lot of money vested like us. We have a lot of money invested in walleyes
in
Panfish species
so I
Wouldn't say it's a competition, but it's it's a definite
I don't know cultural thing
Well, what has that meant? I mean obviously the large mouth competition with walleye and some northern lakes has been in favor of large
Especially with the warming climate and there are a lot of bass fishermen that just want to go along the shoreline and cast and catch bass all day
They don't care
I
grew up down south thumb
I lived down south my entire life until I got I came to Wisconsin in
1972 and I caught a lot of bass and a lot of crappies down south and
I don't have anything against bass and crappies, but
There is a like I said the regulations have been formulated that in our opinion
favors those species over walleyes and
Walleyes are slow maturing fish
We paid for a study on Lake Winnebago Ryan Canig's looked at 3000 dead female walleyes
And there's two big tournaments every year on Winnebago the Merck National and Otter Street
And
What he found was that 80% of the five-year-old females had not spawned once
80% of the six-year-old females has spawned at least one time
so
What female walleyes don't you know in this system? That's not the case in every system because every system is different you cannot
rubber stamp
walleye habitat and walleye
species or walleye population
Responses to their habitats. Dr. Ron Brooke who used to be our biologist here
He and his friends have caught 200 walleyes on the flambo river
and in the in a walleye
Head there's a what's called a otolith bone and you can slice it and you can stain it and you can actually count growth rate
You can tell exit he found 14 inch walleyes on the flambo river that were seven years old
Out
Out here a walleye reaches 14 inches in two and a half years
It's all got to do with forage and so you can't that's the problem with it with walleyes anyway is
Habitat really dictates how walleyes
Exists and how they how they they're their success and everything they do
So when did your group start getting into creating the hatcheries?
25 years while we we started in 91
And then we built the first hatchery probably in 93 or 94
Gordy pregal
Who was our who was the biologist at Oshkosh? He went from here to Fitchburg and he built a hatchery in a Volkswagen bus
He was good just a few hatching jars
incubation cylinders whatever you want to call them and
He was going to take it around for showing tells at school and we figured well if he can do that we can do that
The big deal was getting a buy-on from the DNR
You have to have what's called a collection and reintroduction permit to catch the fish
Strip the eggs fertilize the eggs and put them in your hatchery and turn them loose
Which is fine, but
Again, we were lucky the guys at Oshkosh
Was the ones that needed to give us those permits and we ran our first hatchery on little green lake over in green lake county
Was a disaster
Anyway, it hatched fish
But what we did we were ignorant
We ran the little fish that we're hatching right off the end of the pier
And if you walk at the end of the pier it was a whole school of bluebials sitting there getting on
So it's been an evolution the hatchers we have now are all alike as far as
Structure and function
that's been like I said an evolution
and
But they work we know they work now we on green lake two years ago
The only way to definitively tell
What comes out of our hatchery is to do a genetic fin clip
We fin clip the female that we use for the eggs and we flip fin clip the male that we use for the for the sperm
and
That pairing we use a vial of alcohol and put each fin clip in a vial
And that goes to steven's point. We get a hundred vials in a packet
and
they run these through a
very neat machine about the size of a big microwave and
The next morning they can they they genetically pair those two fish
So then in the fall of the year
When the department goes out and they do what's called a fall fingering survey and shock looking for
Fall fingerlings generally speaking they're five to seven inch long little walleyes. They do a fin clip
And they send it at a point and we can tell if it comes out of our hatchery
Um that the green lake study 74 percent of the fish that they clipped came out of our hatchery over there
So that is the definitive way
Um on piwaki lake when we started there, I think 11 years ago 10 or 11 years ago now
The department had determined that there was one adult walleye and adult walleye and from their perspective
There's any walleye over 15 inches
Um the population was 0.17 per acre
Which you know, that's that's one fish every five acres maybe six one adult
We've been there 10 years and the walleye population now is determined at four per acre
And the only thing that changed was when we went in and
And put more predators in the water
We flipped the fish
Population there when we first started working there you could
We used bike nets there a tubular net that you just used to catch fish
Um the first day that we were there we probably took 500 to a thousand
Small yellow perch from three to five inches long out of that net and they were sexually mature
That's another issue perch little perch they they're sexually mature at three years old
and um
Now they're gone because we put enough predators in there to
Reduce that population and other fish species have responded whatever those little perch were eating
competed with pumpkin seed pumpkin seed or a pan fish
They now have 10 inch pan pumpkin seed and peewalki lake they had never seen that kind of it
But the predator prey relationship
Shifted so that there was more for the pumpkin seed to eat
So these are the side issues, but there's a good issues that we
They're called anecdotal evidence, but you know we see it and it's happened
Well walk me through a little bit of what we're going to see tonight when you release the fish and how you know
When to do it where to do it to ensure to give them the best chance sure
um
What we do now is the incubation jars are in the in the hatchery
And based upon what I just learned from shano
um, can vandy plus up there
His average water temperature was 50 degrees over the course of 21 days and his his fish hatched
Started hatching 21 days after he put them in with an average temperature of 50 degrees
That's book perfect. That's exactly where it says in the book
on the culture walleye book culture walleye saga book
And so what we do is we keep the eggs in the hatchery and as they hatch
We have a collection trough in the hatchery and it goes outside and we have six tanks out there that has a has a
Fried distribution manifold we can bow ball sections of this manifold
like what we did
Earlier this week we we just put the little guys in tank one because there weren't very many hatches
And then we put the next one to tank two because there still wasn't very many hatching
Yesterday they started to really hatch because of warming water
And we're putting them in
The third and fourth tank and today I shut those off and I put them in I started putting them in the fifth and the sixth tank
We have to hold them. We don't have to um, but it's more beneficial to hold them
When a little walleye excess the egg is actually considered a larvae
They don't have any scales. They don't have any fins. They don't have a mouth. It's open. They don't have a swim bladder
I tell everybody they've got a brain two eyes and a beating heart
That's about all there is to them
And uh, but over the course of two two days when we keep them 48 hours in our holding tanks
Um
That gives them a chance to absorb their yolk sac
And they go from what's called swim up fry and you'll see them today
They kind of swim up and then they think and they swim up and and they're just
Absorbing their yolk sac as they develop parts of their body so they can actually swim
And then they become what's called horizontal swimmers and when they become horizontal swimmers after about four days and their mouth opens
They need something to eat
So we turn them loose after 48 hours because they're horizontal swimmers and they can motor around them and find
So that's what you'll see today. Well
We have those that we're that we caught two days ago
They're in one tank and we'll we drain the tank down
using a siphon
in a filter so we don't siphon them onto the ground and
consolidate them then we put them in coolers and we take them right out in the middle of the lake
and
We know from past experience. We buy zooplankton toes
It's a net that you tow behind the boat and you can judge where the zooplankton zooplankton or microscopic or
macroscopic
Aquatic organisms that these little fish eat
And so we take them out in the middle of the lake and turn them loose
And they're on their own
But we try to give them a good place for their first meal. Anyway, and there aren't
the predators out there that it's wanting to eat a little walleye that's less than a quarter of an inch long
so
Nothing we could do about it
Yeah, we tell people
We don't we don't try to
Give people too big of an expectation expectation. We tell people
If we get one half of one percent of what we produce makes it to 15 inches, we're probably doing pretty good
Yeah, we break some of those numbers down for me because you're you're talking how many egg
fertilized eggs are you actually putting in your jars at millions
Sean Sean old this year had 11 million green lake right now has got 7 million we had
We had almost 5 million at pewalk are at big cedar pewalk
He had 6 million and we use 4 million 4 million used to be our our goal
Everybody likes bigger goals
So
But we always used to tell people if we can put 4 million little fish in a lake
What I didn't say is we can't move these little fish around
where we take the
the eggs from the little fish have to go back in that body of water a lot of reasons
but
We used to tell people if we put 4 million and what half of 1 percent is 4 million is 20,000
It's just a numbers game
If we can put enough in the offset natural mortality and predation
Hopefully we'll get some kind of a net
and we do
in most cases
So why why walleye?
That's another question
I never caught a walleye until I was 22 years old so never even saw one but
They're the preferred fish
Everybody says panfish or the preferred fish, but really
I was
Down on the little cedar today and that there was a guy at the boat landing and I said you catch anything
He says nope haven't got a walleye yet
So there you go. I mean there's
Whatever there is in a little cedar that he might catch but the first thing he said was haven't caught a walleye yet
When did that take place where walleye became like the definitive ideal fish in Wisconsin?
tournaments
Yeah, the first walleye weekend tournament was in Oshkosh
in about
1980 and
Now it's well
They just went they just had their 50th here in fondle act so it must have been
in 82
and
tournament fishing really
And you know the boat manufacturers and the motor manufacturers they they push
Selling their products and a good way to do it is have people come to tournaments and and have people come in and
It's an event. I'm 70,000 people will go to walleye weekend here on a weekend
And it's not only walleye said anymore. I mean when we when they first started
The festival part not it's called blind like festivals
The festival part wasn't near where it is now, but um tournament fishing. Yeah, that really made a difference in walleye fishing
But the history of walleye
There was the Friday night perch fish fry when you're commercially caught and make mission
But the walleye was still for a lot of people that was the definitive like Friday night fish
Yeah, there's yeah
They taste good. That's one thing
Um fish taste is totally dependent upon fat fish fat
Has an objectionable flavor to most people that a lot of people call it the mud line on the side of a fish
That's brown fat. It's not a mud line and it has a fish taste and sometimes very strong fish taste
Um
Perch and walleye have a very very low inter muscular fat content, so they taste good
Most people probably don't even think of it that way
Nope
Yeah, so
Well, you know people shoot. I mean people are left
Chicago
back in the 20s to drive to
Bolder junction take them three days to get there
To go walleye fishing in Wisconsin. So it's always been a lure, you know
And people like to fish
And there I mean there would be a significant loss if you there weren't walleye
Available to be called
Well walleye and all other other other species we walleye's for tomorrow
Gosh, I'm
I'm being old must be almost close to 20 years ago. We funded us
He cannot fishing economic value study on lake one of the bagel
Matt
Matt can't think of matt's last name. He's an economist at uw whitewater and dr
John stole at uw green bay
They looked at the value of fishing just fishing alone on one of the bagel to the four counties around the lake
and
Like I said, that's probably close to 20 years ago
It was 143 million dollars and it supported 4,500 people's employment
Um fishing is big business in wisconsin. It's it's well over a billion dollar a year industry
and so
We like to be part of it, I guess
not for that reason but
It would put a mean that is part. I mean there's there's the bait store
People that make the rod, they make the boat owners, they make the boats
The restaurants, the hotels, the resorts, the campgrounds and
Every aspect. Oh, yeah
Well tourism in wisconsin is a huge industry and hunting and hunting and fishing
Are are huge parts of that. I mean people like to go camping people like to boat
but
And as you we were talking about earlier, you guys were at a tournament yesterday. The value of fishing equipment
Has has exponentially increased
when we when we fished
the second walleye weekend here in when the bagel
um
People were fishing with wooden boats and canoes and bass boats and
Every kind of craft you can imagine and now
when they leave the harbor
If there's a boat valued at less than
55 or 60 thousand dollars, he's on the low end of the totem pole
I mean there's boats out there that are over 100,000 easy
and
Fishing is big business
How do people I mean, I'm sure there's been some of your members own those boats. Oh, yeah
They're in those things. Do you ever ask them? It's like do
is that just purely enjoyment and is that how they justified or
because that's
That's more than a vehicle and some people have probably what they bought their homes for back in the day. That's a ton of money
Yeah, and I always used to say it's expendable in
Income
But that's not true. I mean, I know some young people that really go deep in debt to buy a nice big boat
It's a status symbol
with a group they hang out with a big boats what counts and
I run a 20 foot
Warrior this 20 years old
Still floats and I can still catch you out of it
You know, well just yeah, we were in a boat and they were flipping through tackle boxes. Oh, they said each lure is $11
Now they are and just it's nuts hundreds of them. Yeah
Yeah, the cost of fishing equipment has gone up exponentially as well
People will pay it
But there's still access for people who don't have that kind of money. Sure. I mean, it's not just for
Wealthy upper middle class leech in a night crawler on the end of a hook was a slip bobber. We'll catch walleyes
Yeah
Sure
I mean you don't have to drive around too much if people hanging out of bridges and shorelines and sure
Go right out here. One of the things that I we haven't taught
We when we started walleyes for tomorrow. We were talking to it
I
Come on, it's my wife
When
I told her I wouldn't be home till 6 30. I don't know what she wants now, but anyway
When we started walleyes for tomorrow
We were talking to a professor at UW Stephen's point
And we talked about all the things we wanted to do on the Winnebago system
And he said, you know, if you guys are really good at what you do, you may be foraged for tomorrow
Because if you produce all these walleyes
They need something to eat
So one of the things that we did besides the
spawning habitat is on Winnebago, we started putting rocks in the water building rock piles
Not for spawning walleyes don't spawn. I don't say no
I don't we don't think they spawn out that deeper water on those rock piles
But everything else lives on them snails and crayfish and aquatic insects and other fish
Which walleyes need for forage
And we have 150 rock piles around the shoreline of Winnebago from
By wince all the way around to Stockbridge
and that's one of the things that we
that we
And that was an event
Um, we
At that time we were hauling the rocks out on the ice and we had the the
e-shore crew and the final act crew and the west shore crew
Each doing their own thing cutting holes in the ice so the trucks could come and drop the ice rocks through the ice and
and
Brian noble. I don't know if you remember he was a
Packers sure
Well when he retired he became an outdoor
Person for one of the tv stations in green bay. He was he came down and and videoed a stumping rock. I mean
What's so exciting about dumping rocks with the ice but
But uh, it was that's and that's part of the reason why we are what we are
We did things and unlike
I mean like if you're part of du
You never do anything for du
You go to a du banquet and and assume they spend money. We don't do that
Every one of our we have nine hatcheries running this year and every one of our hatcheries is run by a dedicated bunch of people
At each of the sites where the hatcheries are located and that's huge
Uh, you get the local people
That can come they can come and look at what's going on in the hatchery, but they can also be part of it
and local support is huge when it comes to
to local activities
Well
Just a big cedar one, but you saw the kid
What does it mean to you when you see a couple of young girls just as excited as the guys to be netting those fish
I'm prejudiced. I have wife and two daughters and a granddaughter
So yeah, uh, I love having young girls coming and help
Um
You know, everybody thinks fishing is a guy's sport, but then my my granddaughter
She was a wicked purchase fisherman. So she decided to pay attention to other things
But anyway, um
Yeah, I I've always thought that was the best part of what we do
We used to be at big cedar one year and pike lake the next year
We did that back and forth for six years and on pike lake, especially
I mean, they'd be 20 kids there watching us do our thing
and
From me you all across the table. I'd be stripping the eggs and the kids would be right there
and can't get any better and
Um at piwaki. I know two of the kids that had been that were real active at piwaki went to point and and studied
I'm not sure exactly what they studied one became a biologist. I think the other became
So I had something to do with water. But anyway, direct relationship to having worked with our hatchery and
It
It's a good thing from the standpoint that you can get
It doesn't there's no challenge to it and there's no
necessity for them to do anything other than come watch
And they can they can actually see these little fish swimming around
Better story. I have to tell about that as a pike lake. I was
Stripping eggs one day and there was a lady and I'm old now, but this is a lot of years ago
I was probably 40 at that time. She had to have been 80
She stood across the table and watched me for at least a half an hour never said a word
And then once we started putting the eggs in the hatchery she went into the hatchery
She watched the eggs roll for about half an hour and never said a word
Walked the way she never came back
But I told some of the guys that were here. I said, you know, that's what we're all about
That lady is 80 years old and she never had the opportunity to see something like it ever before
It's right in her backyard. She walked home
I can't get any better
Will you think of the title?
Well, I swear tomorrow. Who's that tomorrow? Yeah, who represents the tomorrow in your title?
Yeah, all the kids
All the young people that come
I call you a kid now
All the young people that come
To help us and we do we are lucky we get a lot of and and you know
Kids listen
And they they do what you tell them to do sometimes adults
They just don't listen
And no matter how you how many times you tell them but most kids you only have to tell them once and they
They get it and and they'll do what you asked them to do
and
Yeah, I love having kids come
Well, it's I mean the name itself is interesting because you know
Tomorrow is tomorrow, but you're talking years before someone might catch one of these fish
Well, we stole the name kind of
There's a group here called sturgeon for tomorrow and they're really for tomorrow
You know because the sturgeon doesn't get sexually mature till they're 20 or they're males till they're 20 years old
So they're out of they're out of brother town
And when we started thinking about a name we kind of stole their name
We can have walleye sort of tomorrow too, you know, but uh, no and that's
You can talk all you want
But when you do something that people can actually see and and understand that you're doing something positive
That's what counts
I mean politicians
Sit wherever and talk and talk and talk and talk but it's only the politicians that really get involved and do
Have activities that really that really affect the public in a positive way that count
And that's what we're all about. We're trying to do something that counts and and we'll be there for
A walleye may live 20 years
Um, the oldest walleye they've ever caught on when the bagel was 20 years old
Um, and they know that
But um, there's a population of walleye and Quebec that they don't get sexually mature until they're 15
And
Different living conditions, you know, so yeah, it's for tomorrow
You're talking about politicians and obviously this doesn't
Super political but at the same time like governor Walker had his walleye
You have to do that. Did that do anything or was he going to capitalize on the goodwill that people had towards walleye?
They have not released the results of the walleye initiative because it's been a disastrous failure
Pond raised walleyes don't contribute
To any substantial degree
To the better run of the wall populations. We've we've seen a lot of things with what we do with walleyes and and now
Now
Just this year, uh, can Vandy pause up at shano had three hatching jars that
Didn't do well
And
As an afterthought, he he said, you know, he said I think a lot of those
Females that we used during that period of time were some fin clip females and the fin clip females are ones that's a dnr stock
and
So next year he's going to segregate and try to keep trying to keep track, but um
I've I've been to two presentations now where
Early results for the stocking initiative is they only get five to 15% survival
And if you're stocking a fish that costs you two dollars to raise and turn loose
um
When you start running the running the numbers from pure economic standpoint, it makes no sense whatsoever
the these these fish are
There
People don't understand how
Absolutely
Complicated
Of a fish is we don't have a clue. We don't live underwater. We don't live in their environment
I even had a guy
Most we were talking he said, what do you think fish think?
And I said, I don't have a clue
Because they don't think like us
They live in a totally different environment, but fish are fish are a really really complicated
I mean what the little bit we do
A little bit we have done
Um
We've learned so much about what you shouldn't shouldn't do to fish otherwise you kill them
But just water pH
When we're when we're stocking the little guys people use well water
pH 7 is neutral
Point two is not just two tenths
More acid or basic
It's 2000 times more acid or basic. It's it's an exponential figure and
You can you can kill a little fish just by not using the right water
Uh that you dump them into that's why we we use ambient conditions. We don't heat the water
We don't do anything to the water. It comes in goes through our entry and goes right back out
People have tried heating water
People have tried to using wells and they get too much iron in their water from the from the wells
on had disastrous results, so
Fisher
They're tougher nails, but they're really
Pretty sensitive in a lot of ways
so if you
Would you even if you had the money in the option to try and raise these eggs to fingerlings and a pond and then do some
You'd still probably do it the way you do it now
Sure, it's more fun
No, no
We did raise some fish in a pond over at green lake
The hatchery is on our very very very old fish hatchery that was a dnr hatchery
It's got a two tenth of an acre pond. So one year and we're gonna raise some fish
so we
It's it's processed you have to drain the pond you plant rye in the
Pond you let the rye get up and you flood the pond so it kills the rye
So the bacteria starts working on on the decaying vegetation and you throw
Corn or peanut meal or cotton seed meal in to help the zooplankton grow even more
And then you put the little guys in there and they zooplankton
The first you go to the sewage treatment plant and you get a bucket of their
Mix that that takes care of the nutrients and sewage you put that in there and that's what these little walleyes eat
and
But then I tell people they like to go from the salad bar to the meat menu
And you have to feed them
We were feeding them a 96 quart cooler full of penhead minnows. They're only a half inch long every three days
And luckily we got them for free if you had to buy them the cost would be horrific
So we raised them to in that pond until I think they took them out in june late june
Got many thousand little one inch one and a half inch walleyes
And then didn't get them all out. So then we threw 20 pounds of fathead minnows in the pond
And took them out. I think in september and got like 2,500 five inch walleyes
But let me tell you it's work. It's a job
And
What we do now is work
That's Ken bandi plus last year
guesstimated he had 840 man hours
Tight up and running his hatchery
And that was with a 19 jar hatchery this year. He's got a 32 jar hatchery
He's nuts. I don't know why he does it
How many hours do you spend?
Do you do you even get to go fishing in the spring? No, this is seven days a week
Yeah, this time of year. I'm
I used to say it was my advocation now as my vocation
I
I just do it
I love working with fish. I mean fish are really interesting creatures
And I were
What I love more is when people come up and I can tell them what we're doing
And show them what we're producing this morning. I had a guy down a big cedar
I don't know who he was just a guy he drove up in a truck
And wanting to see what we were doing and I went through my whole spiel
Got it memorized kind of
And but people really appreciate what you do and
Like I said before
You'll never be remembered what you say, but you'll be remembered what you do
I guess that's my basic philosophy
Yep, I'll be back down in the morning
So is there enough time?
Once they're all out in the lake, do you get a break? Oh, yeah, I'm going trout fishing
Nope, nope, I love to trout fish and and I've been trout fishing the same
trout stream by what by reg granite for 40 years
and
That's my
Solitude time just wading the trout streams
You're already a TU
And a good friend of mine is really in the TU
I mean, that's what he does is TU and many other things, but anyway
No, when you know my mother-in-law never fished ever
And back when I was working I would fish
Thursday afternoon Friday Saturday sun angle back to work on Monday
and
She's why do you do that?
And I said because
When I'm fishing the only thing that's important to me is whether that bobber is on top of the water or other than water
Otherwise, I don't have it here in the world
That's why people although that's why a lot of people do it. I mean the tournament guys that's the whole
I did that it's work
I enjoyed it, but I enjoyed this bill this more
So when it comes to relationships and walleye fishing
I mean, how many of these guys are married to the to the married to the lake?
a bunch
Yeah
Yeah, well you met one of them Tom Walters. I mean, not only to the lake. He's he's married to that boat
Tom
held a nice guy and and he
He fishes a lot and and he's not unique. I mean, there's guys that are fish five days a week if they can get out there
whether whether it's about the only thing it really
put the crimp in their
activities
I mean, have you known people that got divorced over the amount of fishing they've done? Yeah, I don't think so
Not they know
Yeah, I'm I'm really lucky my
the person I married she is
Totally supportive of what I do even though
My to-do list gets longer and longer and longer
She never grumbles
I call her today and I plan to go to big theater this morning early
Do what I need to do come home. I call her and said hey, I got to
Do an interview with Wisconsin public radio and I got to go back to big theater and be there at five o'clock
I've only home till six thirty
Okay
She's used to it
Which is fine. I mean, we get all great. She's a very nice person
I'm sure others don't have a quite as quite as lucky. Nope. That's a fact and I
Tongue and keep cheek. I tell everybody when I got my
Got my marriage license. I got my fishing license to go along with it because down south I didn't hunt that much
Um, it's a different culture down south as far as hunting goes
People think what they can think about Wisconsin. I live in Wisconsin because it's Wisconsin
My dad was in the Air Force. I lived in seven different states before I was 20 years old
I lived in Maine. I lived in Puerto Rico. I lived Oklahoma lives a lot's places
But when I came to Wisconsin in 1967
Wisconsin's a good place to be
That's why I'm here
my mom
I was born in North Carolina and when my dad
Retired from the Air Force. They went back to North Carolina and my mom always says when you come back to God's country and I said mom
I'm not leaving
I can go 40 miles and fix Lake Michigan. I can go 40 miles in trout fish. I can go
Five miles and walleye fish
Wisconsin's a good state
No matter how you cut it
So when when people
Think about walleye fish they're probably thinking very narrow in terms of where they get to fish and their next opportunity
but
Do you think people realize all the ways that walleye?
It could go through every little aspect of the state every corner of the state whether it's through
real estate and homes up north or a river property or you know the commercial or the bait shops or the guys who get the bait
the gift of the bait shops and
You know the amount of tourism money and this research that all funnels back into it and the volunteer hours and just
It seems like the more you look at it the more it just spreads everywhere. Yeah
Unfortunately politicians sure don't see it that way because they haven't chosen to
Support fishing in the state of Wisconsin like it should have been supported for many years
It's a huge industry
I mean like I said fishing in alone is a billion and a half an hour industry in Wisconsin
Yeah
I'm gonna turn the damn thing off
This is my life I get I get I get a whole bunch phone calls every day
Um
But yeah, no it
Fishy is a is a I don't know politically
We were told okay the guy that I said is part of heavy duty in the tara limited
He was trying to talk to a legislator once about the necessity for a license fee increase
And that legislature took legislators says there's more of them than there is you
That's why we don't worry about you
He was talking about the people that we're lobbying for
for
Better funding for the resource and it's really unfortunate
There are states that have been much more progressive state of minnesota and monsurrier two big ones
the
minnesota has a one-eighth of one percent
Of their sales tax goes to support conservation efforts in the state of wisconsin state of minnesota and it's it's
Well, minnesota is a fantastic place to fish
and
Missouri is the same way there are in wisconsin the legislature considers
They have whore taxes
And I can go into that for a long way
But um, it's ridiculous. I mean people will pay I was just a big cedar 10 bucks to launch your boat there
But they don't consider that a tax that's a fee
It's the same money just how what you what you consider it and it's ridiculous
Of course they have their priorities
We have ours
What would be the most beneficial thing that politicians could do
if they actually started
listen
They don't listen
They they do listen, but they listen to the wrong people they listen to lobbyists
who
sell
One
One opinion or one type of opinion based upon who wants to pay them the most money
They need to listen to the public
um, and they don't
even
Like I said that one guy told bob
There's more of them than there is you. I don't have to listen to you because all they want to do is get reelected
And that's the big issue
um
We were lucky
Um
Our chapter chairman in burl and personally knows the state senator
She was a state representative and now she's a state senator jon bowing
um
We needed to redo the prince and dam that didn't have a fishway around it
and needed
That's the last dam on the on the river on the fox river that didn't have a fishway to get around it
For fish to get around the dam and she was on the joint finance committee. So
So
George and I went to a joint finance committee meeting in brilliant
and
Gave him our spiel and he cost 1.2 million dollars to renew the dam there
and we then we went down to talk to jon in madison and
He got funded
Let's just put it that way, which is a good thing. Um, and
It seems that you have to
You
Handpick your supporters, which is unfortunate because everybody and what not everybody
They sell 1.2 million fishing licenses every year in the state of wisconsin
There's only 5 million people in the state
and half of them
not half but a proportion of them aren't old enough to buy licenses to begin with
and
So fishing is a big deal
and
they
Choose to have other
I don't know
Other topics that they rather discuss rather than that
If the legislature was more active and supportive would groups like yours still exist
or are you fulfilling
a vacuum created by
Sure
Yeah
And we're lucky
Because the public supports us the port you know you have the turkey federation
White tails you have du you've got walleyes you've got sturge for tomorrow. You got wings over wisconsin
You got you got wwa wisconsin waterfowl association
the people understand
That it takes money
To support what they enjoy doing
I don't understand why the legislature doesn't understand that
because
But they can abscond from doing anything
And it just keeps right on sliding by and
Not well
Because we're we're hurting right now a big time for a lot of reasons
but
The problem with legislators they're not us
They're they're not outdoor people some of them maybe I can't speak for all of them, but they're really not us
You don't hear of any legislators that are ardent fishermen or ardent hunters
And I don't get that because
outdoor people vote
And
a good way to
uh
like sportsman for walker
what
I could never figure it out. Scott Walker was not a sportsman
and I don't
Understand why he why that even popped up other than it was a good spiel
I mean he didn't he didn't do us any favors
So
Why vote for a politician that doesn't do you any favors
Of course everybody's got their own favors
you know
I don't want to get too off the wall in politics, but I could
So I think we've covered quite a bit of ground here. Is there anything else that we should know
I
Basically
Yeah, if something isn't done for funding
In the state of wisconsin to support the natural resources in the state of wisconsin by virtue of money it takes money to manage the resource
I won't say we're going to turn into a third rate
place for people to come to but
We always talk about
The tourist industry
Doesn't want
Our license being increased because they feel it's going to
You know affect tourism in the state of wisconsin, but you know
If you don't have fish people aren't going to come people don't go up north
Just to see the trees
They go up north to fish to a to a to a good degree
I mean you go up i39 on a weekend and there's boats going north all the time and a lot of them are from illinois
I don't understand why it should be a divisive issue
It just doesn't seem right
Got that right
No, I tell you saw it
I tell everybody the guy that hooked up hooked his $70,000 truck up to his $100,000 boat
And you fish with one of them and goes to iri for a week
They have no bitch for a $10 licensee
That a $100,000 boat fishing winnebago for a weekend
Just spent just burned $200 was a gas easy
So what's 10 bucks
That's right
That's another issue
We we get screwed
Gas the boating gas tax is based on a boat that
It's based upon the number of boats. There's a rebate, you know, because it's not it's not highway tax
It's used on the water
So there's a rebate to the to the natural resources account
from gas tax money
But it's based upon
a boat using 50 gallons of gas a year some of those boats burned 50 gallons in a day
So we're getting screwed when it comes to taxes the the tax rebate big time
Yeah, there's some of them fill up at a tank in town and someone fill up at a harbor or
Wherever place on the lake and yeah, wherever. I mean most people go to fleet
Fleet farm for Flint's off on a gallon and usually they're the cheapest place in town
Not most of the time, but anyway
And all those big boats all burn premium now you can
You don't want to burn regular gas. So you're paying $3.89 a gallon
And I don't know how much tax is on one of those but nevertheless
um
Every my boat's got a 35 gallon gas tank in it. So I'm blowing that 50 gallons a year
Issue away every two trips I make
Where it should be changed big time
Yeah, right
Oh, I I could go fishing if I wanted to but I got I have things to do
Croppies aren't spawning yet. Yeah, you gotta get pipes for your next yeah, croppies aren't spawning yet
All right. I think we're good here. Thank you for giving us time. We appreciate it. Sure
Sure, so we're just gonna listen to the sound of the room for a half minute or so
It's an old editing trick. So we'll just sit here awkwardly in silence
See if your phone goes off
so
All right perfect