sure and then you just hold that straight in front of your face just like this yep
and then that's good and then you can flip it around for me
perfect thank you what is that telling you it's a color checker so when i get in the
post i just make sure with the program editing with like the blacks or what the black level
should be at and all the colors on the on the chart okay so you're basically like picking
up everything you should be with the lighting and stuff exactly okay we can make sure that
because when you shoot so many different files you want to make sure white in this
is white in that okay because otherwise so it's a basic standardization you see doing okay
think of like when you go out in winter and the snow can look blue or purple or white or yellow
yeah depending on the lighting uh-huh same thing happens to our cameras okay we have to tell the
camera this is white okay otherwise it'll go i think this is white and then all of a sudden
everything just gets okay yeah if you back in the day if you'd watch like local news you
sometimes see some video that came across it was all this blue or purple or yellow yeah and that
was because the videographer didn't white balance properly when they got to wherever
that were shooting and then in the days of tape you couldn't really correct it gotcha okay and
especially if i was one of those young kids back in the day where you don't know what you're doing
you're just like this is what i have it's five minutes to air it's going on it's like crap we're
gonna go with it that's wasa news is that could you just push that top drawing foot i'll get it it's
you got the mic just oh i'm sorry that's all right thank you i was that one sticks
we're old it's all probably uh world war two era desks i am ready when you guys are
good all right so you're going to talk to me yep um i guess let's start by giving us an
overview of the the various projects you have because obviously we had the zoom call and
i filled up two pages of notes while you were talking along i think but kind of give me the
thousand foot view and then at some point we'll kind of maybe focus in on a few of those studies
okay um it's specifically related to walleyes we have a number of different projects going on
right now within the agency and in our fisheries research group here the one that you were part of
yesterday on an escanaba is a production over harvest experiment and we've got some evidence
that walleye might be being harvested at a rate that's higher than their production or that
they can keep up with and so we're experimentally testing that out here on escanaba lake and that's
where you took that footage yesterday so that's certainly a big one that we're working on right
now um we've got a graduate student that's helping us here in the agency uh completing his master's
degree at the university of Wisconsin's Stevens Point well max is looking at that project is how
fish community productivity is distributed um in lakes where walleye natural recruitment is
declined over time versus those where it's been sustained in the longer term and so
we really want to try to understand if walleye go down what might be filling that void and if
whatever is filling that void is then kind of continuing a negative feedback loop to keep suppressing
walleye and so we have some evidence that things like species like black crappie and large mouth
bass can be suppressing walleye in some ways and in max's project right now at least
preliminarily that's we're kind of seeing um in that one we've also got um a project related to
adding trees to a lake as far as habitat enhancement and that structural um habitat that can be
beneficial to fish for refuge for creating foraging opportunities uh some fish like yellow
perch layer their egg skeins or ribbons on that wood and that's important for their reproduction
uh but that's also a walleye project too to see how walleye might respond to something like that
but the overall goal of that project which does include walleye is by adding this
woody habitat to lakes where it's putting in an additional source of carbon to the system
does that increase the entire carrying capacity or fish carrying capacity or productive capacity
of lakes and on that project um six years after adding 140 trees to this hundred acre lake we've
doubled the fish community productivity of that system and so right now that's showing some
very positive responses of uh basically adding woody habitat for a number of reasons for fish
but also it's not just attracting fish it's producing fish and increasing the carrying capacity of
the system we've had some other desktop exercises i'll call them with walleye we have a lot of data
in this state not only in the fisheries research program with our bureau fisheries management
so we're also looking at things like how our anger effort dynamics for walleyes
are they changing over time in response to some of the challenges of walleye are facing
right now so we've observed some relatively longer term declines in natural recruitment
of walleye within the northern part of the state here and what we found in those studies right now
is that it seems like walleye angler effort is kind of responding to that stuff it's declining
correspondingly which is not necessarily a bad thing because it gives walleye a bit of a break
without as much pressure there on those and we're examining that for all the different sport
fishes up here and what if walleye angling effort is going down what's happening for the other
species and we're seeing anglers respond i guess like we think we would and we're seeing
more bass angling and we're seeing more pan fish angling because those species are doing a little
bit better right now so in a nutshell those are some of the projects that we have going on
there's certainly some other ones too we do a lot of climate change and climate adaptation work with
walleye through our participation in the wisconsin initiative on climate change impacts so a lot of
work there we worked with a lot of our federal partners also in the climate adaptation science
centers on different things with walleye decision support tools using framework call
resist except erect to try to make decisions about walleye's going forward and so
given the current state of walleye's where they're doing okay in some places and in some places
they're being challenged we're really throwing a lot at walleye right now research wise to try
to understand everything we can about them number one to conserve the species and number two to
continue to allow harvest opportunities for our tribal members in this area northern
wisconsin but then also our recreational anglers and some of the studies also climate change
includes like ice in ice out water temp how that impacts spawning recruitment and whether there's
food for them yeah make all those kind of go together right right that's right i feel to mention a
really big project that we've been working on for a while and that's related to climate adaptation and
how walleye are in a cold water cooler fishes are responding some of these changes due to climate
change and so you're absolutely right and right here at the northern holland fishery research area
we have 80 years of ice records and for all the five lakes we're in charge of here and so what
we've seen more recently over the last 10 or 20 years we see these very wild swings of much shorter
ice durations in the winter time so ice on is later ice off is earlier but what we think is really
most influential for some of the changes that we're seeing is the major swings in ice out that's
occurring and so i think it was maybe 2012 and 13 or so somewhere in there in the early 2010s
where we had like a march 22nd ice out on escanaba lake in the following year it was like mid-May
and so almost 60-day swing in between seasons which could be really challenging for fish that are
used to the the norm so the average ice off for escanaba lake here is april 19th over the last
80 years but like i said we've swung from basically mid-March to mid-May during that period and what
we've learned in some of those studies is that walleye recruitment at least in escanaba lake
it's always seems to be best when it's around the average and we've studied some of those
dynamics and it seems that walleye are they're spawning is more linked to photoperiod than it is
to water temperatures which is a little bit of a newer finding than we would have thought in the
past but as you mentioned those major swings in the phenology of ice out have some major
implications for fish that we're also working on because as soon as the ice goes out that starts
the succession of everything that might lead to a good recruitment year for walleye so it starts
with the ice going out then we get a phytoplankton bloom or that algae that's in the lake then we
get a zooplankton bloom that kind of consumes that algae and at that time walleye spawning is going
on those eggs are hatching and then those young walleye need to have that food resource when it's
at its highest abundance to continue to hit all those critical steps just to even get to the first
fall of survival and if we don't have that then we get really poor year classes or or no year
class at all and so I think it's that variability and not necessarily the directional climate change
that might be most important is the variability that we're seeing in it so you mentioned this that
walleye's really being focused on what what what is it about that species that draws so much
attention it's a great question and it's just it's a popular harvest oriented species and so
for those of us in Wisconsin especially we enjoy our fish fries or friday night fish fries and
oftentimes more than just friday night you know subsistence fishing in Wisconsin is still a big
thing it's a lot of it and so you know I think from the angler side of things it's been a popular
species for a long time because of it's really good to eat you know they're fun to catch
they can reach some large sizes and it's you know there's so some trophy potential there in some
cases and so I think it's that harvest oriented nature and the taste of walleye that really makes
them popular with the anglers the other part of it is that I mentioned you know we're the northern
third of Wisconsin right now which constitutes the ceded territories in Wisconsin we're Ojibba
tribal members ceded these lands to the federal government at the time which will later become
Wisconsin in the trees of 1837 and 1842 and so you know part of the Ojibwe culture is that walleye
are very culturally important species very strong subsistence species I believe one of the species
or organisms or beings that led them to settle in this part of the area and so there's also a very
popular fishery for subsistence purposes that are affirmed in the treaty rights that the Ojibwe
have in the northern part of the state it's fascinating once you start digging into walleye
how how many different areas of our economy and our culture and just like the mindset of Wisconsin
that walleye people care about walleye everywhere yeah I mean when you interact with a lot of anglers
I mean that's who's going to come through here and pull out a creel survey is whether there
I'm sure there's there's bass fishermen there's trout fishermen and then there's there's fishermen
and like fishermen it's almost like walleye is inserted and there's automatic whether they're
going for it or not they would love to catch a walleye sure and is that just the way it is or
that's the way it's always been yeah I think so I mean I would say maybe a little bit more so
in the past like walleye were always one of those species I think and this might lead to just more
of the subsistence thing or you know really good fish to eat right so if I think back to being a
kid or or going fishing with my father or even my grandfather walleye was always the king that
was the thing that you were after that's why they were taking a trip from Milwaukee up to Eagle
River or up to northern Minnesota it was to catch walleye it wasn't to catch smallmouth bass it
wasn't to catch musky it was they wanted walleye because walleye were good to eat
and like I said it was a big part of livelihood at that point and so I think there's some generational
stuff that passes on there and it really continues I think now what we have is a little bit more
specialization in some anglers we certainly have anglers that are very happy to go out and just
enjoy a good day on the water they don't really care if they catch anything or not but it's very
therapeutic and relaxing to cast a line and oh I got a I got a nice bass today and it was the greatest
day of my life but we also see a lot more specialization anglers now where it might be I
am a walleye angler and so every bit of my boat gear technology baits is all geared towards walleye
and if the fishing isn't good for walleye here I'm going to drive some distances to get where I
need to and it goes from there especially trout anglers specialized bass anglers specialized
musky anglers and so they're certainly generalist but we still have you know plenty of specialized
walleye anglers and especially like you said you know it's a very harvest oriented fish there's
not many that are legally caught if you're still under your bag limit they're probably not going
to go home and get flayed and eaten so you you grew up in Wisconsin I grew up in Stephen's point
okay so for you the walleye fishing was part of childhood right it was yeah do you remember
your first walleye is there a picture of it somewhere oh boy
I remember some really early ones not trying for them so you know Wisconsin river was basically
my my playground as a child and very good walleye fishery still is in the Stephen's
Point area still is throughout the entire river I remember pre-fishing for a bass turn
my dad was a bass tournament fisherman in the 1980s and we were on the I guess you know the
Winnebago we were in Poigen we were kind of in that chain there was a wolf river tournament and
we were fishing on Poigen and I caught a really big walleye and a spinner bait fishing for a bass I
remember that one very vividly but I also think remember mostly as a kid when the walleyes were
running during the spawn we'd all be just down in the banks with our Y sticks and have a minnow
you know plunked out there in the river and there were some nights that we'd run out of bait we'd
catch so many walleyes but at that time they were all about 14 and a half 14 and three quarter
inches because the harvest pressure was pretty high we've changed the regulations now but I would
say those are some of the earliest memories also coming up to northern Wisconsin so even though I'm
here now and living and working and you know raising children in the area right now we came up here
in the summer we came up here in the spring and in the fall and oftentimes we were specifically
targeting walleyes up here so there's a lot of people that that associate walleye with northern
Wisconsin and with lakes even though walleye are river fish right yeah I mean so explain to me when
when did that when did walleye move from rivers to lakes was that man-made or is just because
rivers came into flowages or how did how did that happen where it became this northern Wisconsin
delicacy so another really great question and I people have asked that question before and
I often think about it this way so if we think about back to the future if I had a time machine
I'd love to go back and sample the lakes right after the glacier receded here and just see what
the landscape looked like and see what the fish communities looked like my inclination is like
during the glaciation the refuge for walleye would have been you know the Chippewa River
Wisconsin River Mississippi River probably Lake Superior now that glacier recedes and then we
don't know exactly how that waters moving across the landscape my guess is that walleyes were native
to some of our drainage lakes here some that were connected to rivers where they had access to them
although we don't know again how that water moved across the landscape we have proposed and
we haven't received funding yet there's ways to check on this through like environmental DNA
where you could take the core of a lake bed and look for scales or other DNA and there to find out
let's go back 500 years before you know humans really started distributing walleye around the
landscape where their walleye here was their evidence for walleye here at that point but to
your point like you know I would say mostly I would say probably the rivers for sure where
they exist today the drainage lakes where they might have had a connection to some river and
then we're able to persist but the other to the other point with your question there or your
comment is is that man has distributed walleyes in a lot of places and so walleyes have been stocked
for a really long time escanaba lake outside our window here that was stocked in the 50s and
eventually became a natural reproducing population and one of the better ones we have up here
but if we think about that walleye removed all over the landscape in some places they stuck
and were able to naturally reproduce and sustain themselves in other places they need to be
maintained by stocking if we're going to have them there so it's one of the things that we
think about often with the challenges and walleye recruitment declines is you know if walleye
weren't supposed to be there in the first place his mother nature kind of kicking back now from
a habitat perspective or other things it says yeah maybe they pulled off a couple natural
recruiting your classes and now that habitat is giving you that lake is giving you what it
should be giving you maybe bass and blue gills and crappies and to your other point and it's one
that you know we really try to communicate out to anglers and members of public and stuff like
that there's a lot of our you know stakeholders and the people we interact with they they think
that walleye are a lake fish walleye are are naturally a river fish they're adapted to rivers and so
if we look at some of the absolute best walleye populations they're always associated with rivers
Canadian Shield Lakes they all have inflows outflows where the walleye spawn they run up the river
sconce river they'll usually run up to the next dam but they've adapted to lakes in some cases
where there's similar riverine habitat but where there's not often that's where they need to be
maintained almost solely by stocking or we have some challenges you know for them persisting
you you you hit on this but i want to kind of elaborate on that this idea that
maybe some of the decline in walleye populations in some of these places is what they're supposed
to be at like they were and i i draw the comparison to like deer population in the 90s when they were
at the all-time peak high and everyone just assumed well that's just as many deer as i have a right
to see every week and then population goes down maybe back to a norm and then people like well
where did all the deer go yeah is there a similar mindset of walleye of like well
what i remember catching three walleye in a night as a kid should be my that's i should be able to
do that every time i there definitely is and so when we talk to members of the public or just being
in town here it's a small town it might be a church and someone's like i used to be able to catch
walleyes you get my limit of walleyes every single day and this lake's no good anymore
and things like that so there's definitely legacy effects of that um it's similar like what your
analogy with deer right there i would say you know when bill clinton was president walleye was
we're doing really good in wisconsin and then we've started to kind of taper down for various
reasons right now um so the legacy effects are challenging because you know everybody generally
wants things to be the way they used to be or better right just like your deer example and right
now there's been some some challenges with that um over time so um i'm sorry i lost my train
i mean is it possible to put percentages or perhaps that you're trying to find of like
when you look at the the cause of decline of walleye populations in some of these lakes that
historically used to be good how much of it is natural how much of it is climate oriented how
much of it is harvest pressure yeah so what we know or at least we have evidence for right now is
it's a combination of a number of things and then you know when you have those sorts of additive
effects it creates greater challenges so there could be certainly situations where while i were
stocked into a lake conditions were more favorable at that time they reproduced a little bit
and then they went away over time but that went away over time could also you know be related to
things like habitat loss within the system and so we've lost some critical spawning habitat or
the lake shore residential development got really really high and intensive on the lake and it took
away some of the things that walleye need because that's where i always like to start you know we
can't expect fish or any organism to sustain itself if it doesn't have appropriate habitat
and so i think we certainly have some challenges and there's been some challenges on walleye's there
too our climate change would certainly come into a play on some of that habitat because
habitat just isn't rocks in a lake or a tree in a lake it's also it's everything a fish needs to
complete its life cycle basically so that can include water temperatures that can include the
prey fish it needs the resources at the right time a year so you know habitat definitely
a factor in in walleye population declines um abundances and alternative species like i
mentioned largemouth bass and crappie we have some pretty strong evidence that when there
abundances those species abundances are high we generally always see poor natural recruitment
bullheads over a hundred abundant bullheads could also be in that category
um we also have things just like different we were talking about specialized anglers
we have different angler dynamics and there's some species that are very harvest oriented
like walleye and there's other species that over time have become almost exclusive catch and release
so if we're catching release all of our bass and we're catching release all of our muskies
there's a delicate balance in all these lakes that if we don't take that ecosystem or food web
context with it we can also run into some challenges there and we've certainly seen that
for walleye as well and so some of those are some of the factors that have kind of popped out over
time as you know negatively influencing walleye populations or potentially suppressing them
um because you know previously when you're talking about like let's say the golden years the really
good times before we hit some of these challenges right now is that you know walleye were in lakes
and they were cultivating conditions to benefit themselves now through some of these changes
those cultivating conditions to benefit themselves and all fitness have kind of gone away and that's
what's suppressing them and also suppressing them from recovery even through some of our management
efforts i mean i'm sure you remember coming up here as a kid there weren't nearly as many houses
on all the lakes they weren't nearly as developed they weren't mowing down to the waterline like
they weren't clearing all the trees and they weren't cutting all the weeds in the water they weren't
using the big power boats that were like ripping up the the bottom of the lake i mean how much
do all those factors that people well that's how i enjoy my my vacation that's how i enjoy my time
up north impact the other element of that which is the fish that live in the lake
yeah i mean i i remember it very well um you know coming up here as a kid it would might have
be more of a two-bedroom cabin so to speak it might still had an outhouse um you know it was it was
just the footprint was a lot less than what we're seeing on the landscape now on the shore
and even within the lakes themselves with all the docks and shore stations and and things like that
so um you know what i'd definitely say and we have a little bit of evidence for this that could
be challenging while in recruitment in some ways through a project that's ended now but it was a
comparative volume recruitment project on 60 lakes in northern Wisconsin that there is a signal
in late for the residential development and i think what's just happened it's just intensified
in that footprint has gotten so much bigger over time um and that's had you know potentially
some challenges to within lake habitat um in that regard and so again you know with that what we're
trying to do is you know do outreach conduct the experiments to try to find a balance right um
how much riparian buffer how much we leave natural in a hundred feet of frontage or 200 feet of
frontage to kind of give fish and wildlife um that clean water that good habitat the things that
they need um in order to persist and sustain themselves so having that balance right everybody
enjoys water in a different way um but working together to try to get a balance so it's best for
for everything for clean water for fish for wildlife so a i remember as a kid that it used to be you
would look we would come up north when we get the little guides that showed all the homes for sale
and they'd be like fishing lake fishing lake great walleye lake i went around town yesterday
and tried to find first they don't print them because of the internet yeah but even when they
you do find something like there's they i had an agent check for me there's zero listings
in vialis and onida counties right now that say walleye in them there's not a there's walleye circle
town but otherwise there are there's zero listings for anything advertising itself is a good
walleye yeah so i think there's been some changes there too right of you know if we think about when
northern wisconsin was kind of opened up by the railways and it's a now it's a resort based
economy uh just like my grandparents and my father they were coming up here a couple times of summer
that was their big vacation of the year and it was to go to a resort and it was primarily to go fishing
now there's a lot more diverse experiences um in northern wisconsin and they may not all be
related to fishing we have very few resorts left compared to what used to be on many of the lakes
up here that was a big industry or um that was a big economic boost to this area for those folks
at all resorts and so it's not a resort based economy anymore it's still a tourist based economy
and fishing is certainly a part of that but it's also been very diversified and so we have hundreds
or however many miles of paved bike trails up here now um we have you know excellent camping
and state forest camping in this area um we have all kinds of other amenities the silent sports
right uh so canoeing kayaking paddleboarding um lots of different things to do up here and
fishing is just a component of that but i don't think it's the biggest component of it anymore
like it used to be and so that's one thing that's certainly changed over time and so that makes
it less likely that fishing or walleye can drive the efforts of like what should the area focus on
like you're not gonna convince the area to say well we're not going to develop that lake let's leave
that lot empty it very well could be because like so there's so many diverse uses of lakes
anymore it's not just we're going up for a week to to go to a cabin and go fishing all day long
um and so that certainly could be reasons why it's not being publicized i mean it still is in some
cases we're in boulder junction we're in the musky capital of the world that's still a big part
of the community and draws anglers uh for that species from all over the world really um because
it you know it is a trophy species and it's an area well known for it and so maybe it's not
advertised as fishing lakes or anything like that but you know the fishing is still outstanding here
it's just that there's been a diversification of experiences and people all enjoy all kinds of
different things so when we look at the the state's involvement in walleye and obviously
governor walkerhead is walleye initiative ten million dollars and you know there've been
obviously the dnr's funding studies in this area what's what's driving that what is the
impetus behind that the focus that did a take place and is taking place on walleye
i think it's it's all the things we've really talked about right so it's a incredibly popular
recreational fishery and i believe still number one in wisconsin that's the most popular um
fish that's that's sought for um like i said you also have um the travel subsistence fishery
up here and so really there's so much focus on that because of the popularity recreationally
the economic impact of walleye which still is significant in northern wisconsin and then
ensuring that harvest opportunities are available for our jibway travel members
that have affirmed those rights and so i think that really sets the stage there for
um a tremendous amount of research dedicated funding the stocking in the Wisconsin walleye
initiative to try to conserve the species and continue to provide those harvest opportunities
you know from a agency perspective or for my research team perspective with dnr you know our
number one job is to conduct research to conserve walleye so as is resource professionals that's
our number one job two if we can do that then we can provide harvest opportunities and so
as an agency we've been focused in a lot of ways research stocking we've changed some
regulations around to decrease exploitation rates and to decrease effort out there
yet still allow for harvest opportunity and i think we're continuing to try to find ways to
basically dial it back on walleye's where we need to and be responsive of those natural recruitment
declines and those production declines because just like the experiment that's going on in this
window if we keep collectively harvesting walleye's more than they're capable of replacing themselves
they're going to go down there's no there's no there's no other way to figure it out and
we've been in situations i think recently and in some cases and in some lakes where
we continue to harvest the same slice of pie out of an ever shrinking pie and that's basically
what's happening in some places and so we have to dial it back and in many ways
need to be thinking about additional ways to reduce exploitation rates or harvest rates on walleye
because of the challenging climate conditions because of the other stressors that they're facing
because that's one variable that we can control among a bunch that we can't in the short term
we can dial back harvest and exploitation in hopes that we can find other ways to manage
there's other things that we can do to sustain walleye into the future
so obviously you have the research element and a lot of what you're focusing on is the lakes
themselves and finding ways to you know help natural recruitment then there's the stocking
programs that exist and there's the walleye's for tomorrow and their efforts and then there's
the tribal efforts and you know other other programs out there designed to you know reintroduce walleye
do you view that as complementary or is it not that it's one or the other but
can you stock enough if you're not doing the conservation elements that are necessary to make
sure that the habitat is quality yeah you know from my perspective and the things that we've done
research really habitat is number one as i mentioned earlier if we can't conserve or sustain or enhance
habitat that a fish species like walleye needs you know they're not going to be able to
sustain themselves in the longer term they have to have that all that critical habitat in order
to do that so some of the things we've written about and talked about is that you know stocking
gets a lot of press it's very popular there's a lot of anglers and people think that that's
where fish come from the stocking truck pulls up and now i have fish in the lake that's not
how it works ideally we want natural recruiting populations that are self-sustaining and we
put some regulations we managed to keep that going and so some of the things that we talked
about is that you know if you're considering stocking we should be at least equally considering
habitat considerations or even more because if we consider habitat that's the longer term
solution stocking might be the shorter term solution and stocking doesn't always work
and you know it doesn't work in a lot of cases actually we did a whole experiment with the
Wisconsin walleye initiative to look at a gradient of lake productivities and lake sizes different
stocking densities so what's like the optimal stocking rate right in general you know they
weren't very good overall so we have an optimal stocking rate and this and for this type of lake
but we're still seeing you know 90% or better mortality between when those fish are stocked out
to the following year and so that's not very high and it's really difficult we can never
really engineer at this point what mother nature can do a natural recruitment so we can stock all
we want but in general we're going to have a walleye fishery at best that's going to be
one and a half to two adult walleye per acre whereas a natural recruiting population in good
situations is going to be above three and sometimes well above three adults per acre and where what
number would it be a good baseline to use for what people would consider a good walleye lake
so basically in our walleye management plan we're trying to maintain walleye populations at
three adults per acre or more that's where kind of the benchmark is particularly in the seated
territory of Wisconsin when we work with our Ojibwe tribal members in the Great Lakes Indian
Fish and Wildlife Commission that's one of the things that we're evaluating are we sustaining
walleye populations above this level because you know looking at the data that's what provides
what we'll call fishable population for anglers where catch rates and harvest rates might be
satisfactory but also provides harvest opportunity for our tribal members and gives us a little
buffer of resilience there too where we're not down at like one per acre or half of adult per acre
because now we might start challenging recruitment in that way too so the other portion of that
three adults per acre above is to see multiple year classes which suggests that there's natural
recruitment going on so those are the sorts of metrics that we look at and the goals and
benchmarks we try to maintain particularly for our natural reproducing walleye populations
tie the stocking argument and the lack of you know how the mortality rates in stocking back to
your conversation about how habitat restoration is not just for walleye it's for all the things that
are part of the walleye ecosystem right because if you don't have all of that
understory and habitat for everything they need to eat or hide you know all those chains then
they won't exist right so tie that back yeah if you could stocking link how if you don't do the
habitat to create all the things they need to eat from the time they're a fry right to the time
they're an adult it doesn't matter whether you dump the how many dump eggs in you take out and
dump back as fry or as fingerlings they're they're not going to make it to adult size
right and so you know we're stocking what we've kind of done with walleyes over time is let's
raise them longer let's raise them into the first fall let's get them to six eight nine inches and
so we've got them past all those bottlenecks that might occur naturally but there's also
challenges there that occur in the hatchery we're wearing them at high densities they you know are
being fed kind of add libidum with food and they haven't had to hide from predators or
go out and and chase down food so to speak in a natural environment and so the stocking is
kind of circumvented that but when we go to the habitat part of things and try to get everything
right again it's looking at situations of creating those cultivating conditions for walleye so where
does it start it starts with you know what was our spawning habitat for walleye look like do we have
maybe a good wind swept shoreline that gets you know washed of detritus and silt so we've got
some good gravel cobble and some rock that's where you know that's a place to start now we've got
let's say we got a good enough adult population we've got good spawning habitat they lay those
eggs there those eggs hatch now moving to the other parts of habitat if we've got a lot of
fertilizer going into the lake and we get like really utrophic conditions and we start to see
algal blooms and stuff like that that may not be good habitat for walleye for that next stage
likewise you know with the zooplankton and carrying on from there the zooplankton of the
conditions good so that those younger walleye once they feed off their the remaining portion
of their yolk sac and they need to go eat that zooplankton is it available is it abundant so
they can grow to hit that next level and change over to eating fish part of habitat what's our
perch population what's our forage fish population perch yellow perch are a big prey item for walleye
and so when those walleye are this big and they start to switch to eating fish prey often perch
and walleye are peanut butter and jelly species they go together but we have to be doing things
for perch habitat too if that's one of the big things or making sure there's plenty of minnows
or other forage because you know like i said it takes you know i don't know how many steps but
there's a lot there's so many steps throughout the course of that first summer
that a little young walleye has to get past that hurdle get big enough get enough energy
just to make it to that first fall so that they have enough energy to make it through the next
rough winter as a small fish out there likewise not to get eaten that might be structural habitat
that might be taking care of and making sure we've got native aquatic plant beds for young walleye
to hide in and then he goes even farther with like thermal and optical habitat with walleye so
you know i hope you know that's a lot but in a nutshell it's very very complex and all these
things have to come together in order for any fish species to have fitness and propagate itself
so you were here for the walleye initiative yeah what remember the headlines what did it actually
do what what where did that money go and what was it supposed to do so the Wisconsin walleye
initiative was basically governor walker's effort to kind of go not necessarily go all in on
stocking with a different sort of product so in the past Wisconsin would have raised basically
fry small fingerlings and then a few would call extended growth or large fingerlings and so our
fry stockings would occur not pretty soon actually you know probably late may early june so those
female brood stock they're stripped the eggs are fertilized with milk they're in the hatchery
batteries and then they're pretty tiny we're stocking out millions and millions and millions of fry
into systems so that was one of the things that we did a lot of in the past the other one we did a
lot was like the small fingerlings that would be stocked up like mid-summer now we're talking
walleye that are probably an inch or two long so we've taken them past a couple of other critical
bottlenecks in the hatchery and we're going to put them in the system we won't stock as many of them
as the small fry but we're still stocking a lot of them you know with the Wisconsin
walleye initiative that funding was specifically to bump up hatchery infrastructure not only within
dnr to create more ponds but then it also helped our tribal partners with their hatcheries and
also some private hatcheries too to raise walleyes to meet the demand of what we thought we needed
in Wisconsin and at that time it was thought that by raising walleyes into their first fall and
getting them to like I said six eight nine inches in the hatchery before stocking them out
that we had a past any potential bottleneck that would occur in the lake naturally and that
they'd have higher survival and there's a pretty good amount of literature out there uh scientific
literature now that suggests that that's not always a case um so there's still challenges I
mentioned um previously with those young year walleye even though they're much larger there's
things like more transport stress there's things like adapting to a new wild environment versus the
hatchery um and we've also seen some other challenges too with like sex ratios through that
rearing process where we seem to be producing more female walleye than male walleye throughout
that longer rearing process which is not necessarily obviously good for natural recruitment or restoring
natural recruitment because you need males and females to do that not just females so is that
program basically done or the the impacts of that still being felt in any way no the program
is certainly still going on um and our our two main walleye hatcheries in the state uh governor
Thompson over in Spooner and our amp key uh over in this area in Woodruff we're still producing
extended growth fingerling walleyes same thing with our tribal partners and some private entities
so we're still though that's the primary product that's being stocked out there I think what we've
learned or what should be changed over the past ten years is that the initiative itself was designed
as a deliberate experiment to learn from from it optimal stocking rates what lakes are best
where do we see the greatest survivorship of the stocked product and so now that we have
you know ten years of data and we've analyzed all that we started to pull some lakes off the list
because they're not good candidates for this limited and actually expensive product to create
and what's the reaction from the locals when you say well your your lake's just not worth doing
this thing it's challenging and so it's always challenging to to have those conversations
especially when there's a lot of legacy effects about how this has always been a walleye lake and
DNR has always stocked it um but like I said um propagation isn't getting any cheaper the cost
of feed is expensive the infrastructure is expensive and so we only have a limited number of walleyes
that we can produce and the goal uh for Wisconsin DNR and the agency is that our number one goal is
to be stocking to rehabilitate natural recruitment or the natural recruitment of a previously
naturally recruiting population um our goal is to not you know we're not necessarily we're not
interested in stocking that limited product in a lake that is not going to support walleye
or shows no evidence that stocking is going to contribute to um rehabilitating natural recruitment
so they're difficult conversations but the uh you know the public and lake associations and
stakeholder groups they have options where they can apply for permits they can go through private
growers um and get fish or walleye to stock their lakes they just need to be of the right genetic
strain because there's unique genetic strains that are basically are roughly corresponding to the
watershed boundaries within the Wisconsin so right now we're in the upper Wisconsin River
watershed so if I was a lake trail resident or on a lake association I wanted to stock my lake and
the DNR was not going to stock it for various reasons I would have to ensure that it was a
Wisconsin upper Wisconsin River genetic strain coming from a private grower and there's the
Winnebago there's Green Bay there's Chippewa and then what else is there so we've got like
your upper Wisconsin your upper Chippewa those are the two big northern Wisconsin drainages
uh you've got Lake Michigan drainage which uh would include Fox River I'm coming to things like
that and then you got things like the Rock River um down in southern Wisconsin okay yeah so when
it comes to the the politics surrounding all this of like how much money goes into studies
and which studies get advanced and you know we even going back to the walleye initiative
is it bipartisan I mean is it everyone wants to see this happen or is it the how do all the
politics play into this I'm not asking you to get into the partisan politics but just the idea that
you know it's not just science and you know anglers and you know that that stuff on the water
there's there's a whole background of where the money comes from and where the priority sure
I think politically obviously walleye are very important you know for a number of reasons I think
it's um economically most certainly because it's still a very economically valuable fishery for
the recreational angers it's still Wisconsin's most popular fish to fish for we have you know a
responsibility to our jibway tribal members and partners in the northern third of the state to
make sure or try to ensure that harvest opportunities are still there as far as funding and from a
research perspective and a research team you know my group and I and our collaborators were objective
scientists we don't we don't get into the politics of the situation you know we're fortunate to have
funding to work on some of these things to try to figure out ways to conserve walleyes to manage
them to continue to provide those harvest opportunities we hope and we conduct science that could be
used to inform science based decision-making and it is in a lot of cases but when the political
stuff happens that's really outside the arena of science and so you know in the leading you know
being fortunate to lead my group of researchers the office applied science with DNR that's something
that we talk about all the time is that we shouldn't feel bad if our science isn't used our job is
to provide the objective science to make it available and if it informs decisions that's great
if something happens politically or otherwise that disallows that that's no skin off our back
we're going to continue to do our jobs as professionals and objective scientists to provide that
information if it's needed so there is a line between the research and the science versus the
advocacy absolutely and again something that we stress greatly within my team and talk about
often is that there's no place for advocacy for us as scientists and professionals we conduct
objective unbiased science that's not hoping for something it's not wishing for something there's
not an agenda behind it or something that we like personally desire or value that's going to come
out in that research you know it's terse it's concise we're scientists that's the way we're
trained and that's what keeps us away from that advocacy i kind of crack a joke to myself advocacy
for a scientist can happen when they're retired or they're no longer doing science but when we're
doing science and in the way that we're trained in the profession it is absolutely critical to
remain objective otherwise there is no credibility to science that's got to be frustrating at some
point like you you've done all these research studies you know the impacts and you go to a local
zoning committee meeting and you know like what they're proposing to do is like going to destroy
what they say they value and you know they do they do you get called into those are you
asked ever offer your professional scientific opinion of like hey we're going to cite this
five thousand head you know the pig operation that was going to come up here the dairy cafe or
something or we're going to you know flatten out this area and fill in this wetland and we're
going to build some condos on this lake because they're really valuable yeah we get called these
situations all the time i have been in a number of cases whether it's um with lake habitat it could
be you know position statements on some sort of negotiation that's going on that's related to
fish or some sort of policy decision and again the only thing that we can that i feel comfortable
providing is the science this is the science behind it and this would be my recommendation
whether that's used or not at the end of the day um is not up to me and so you know i think
for my team of scientists biologists and technicians we never get upset if those sorts of things happen
i think you know it's it's nice i guess or it's rewarding when you see that the science that we're
doing is used to inform policy and then you know that policy is making a difference or
improving something or conserving something but you know in those position sorts of of of
meetings or if you're called into the sorts of things we do our best to present the science if
it's complex science we make sure that that's understandable or in an easily understandable
ways to everybody that's there in the audience we take the time to have individual conversations
and talk to folks about what we've learned maybe what our recommendations might be
the other thing that i'll add here too is that often in those sorts of cases i'll call what's
i'll call this like i'll call it demonstration science we'll actually do some science to demonstrate
directly that's very relevant to publics or lake associations or stakeholder group why this is not
a good thing um and i'll go to a couple examples here in one that we're going to see this afternoon
so for my phd we're afraid that lake shore residential development was pulling all the
course woody habitat on the lake so we had strong relationships there so for my phd work i basically
did a demonstration experiment i think anglers knew that wood is a good place to fish around
it's providing these sorts of benefits um but unless somebody shows me what actually happens
then we're not going to worry about its lake shore residents we pulled 75 of the wood out of a lake
well what happened we lost the perch population vast growth rates went down and there were other
ecosystem changes so we did the experiment to show this is how important this habitat is so
let's conserve it on the landscape and potentially add in more um likewise the experiment um the
tree drop experiment we're doing right now to see if it increases fish production
the lakes in northern wisconsin for the most part all the energy in them is coming off the
landscape it's leaves that fall in the water in the fall um it's dissolved organic carbon that's
leaching from a wetland plants naturally that go into the system it's trees that fall into lakes
and slowly degrade so if you start pulling all those things away or changing the watershed or
the riparian zone of the lake you're decreasing that lake's ability to support fish and other
organisms and so that's this is another demonstration experiment where we put it back in or we can
serve that process we maintain fish production or actually increase it so that's another thing
we've tried to use with groups like that when we get in those situations of what's your best
professional judgment what is a science say behind this sometimes we'll do experiments to show
we'll go on manipulate it here's here's a simulation when we manipulate what's we think is going on
it might not be a best thing what happens it's got to make you feel good though if like you can
actually show like here's what this science shows and then people's eyes like you could see
their eyes open up and light up as I go oh wow I never knew that they do it's it's really interesting
like you can talk and talk and talk but all of a sudden like you have that experiment or
you have that one key thing that really triggers somebody's like oh now I get it um and what we've
been doing maybe is not the best for clean water or maybe not the best for these fish populations
and so we're going to turn that around um and it can oftentimes you know once was demonstration
experiments or you know you have those conversations then it can become it can become contagious
really quick within lake associations and with the public too and that's you know really some of
the only ways you can sort of break those social norms of particular activities and try to get
that balance of you know what everybody enjoys the diverse amount of things that people enjoy
associated with water and lakes and then the balance for like I said water quality for fish
wildlife populations so one other thing that I want you've referenced the sea to territory and
the treaty rights how how often do you have to try and break through those myths about
walleye population it's all the tribes it's all the indians are spear and all the fish out of these
I remember that as a kid coming up north you know we obviously saw the walleye wars and all that
yeah I mean is that still persistent in some pockets up here it's still persistent in some
pockets up here I think there's been a tremendous amount of progress made on that front uh throughout
reach efforts I think I still think there's more that could be done um you know being here at us
canal but lake is part of the northern on fisher research area we interact with three to five
thousand anglers per year we talked to a lot of folks you know we're right here within the
sea to territory we also hear a lot of things um also being embedded in small communities people
know what we do and who we are who we work for and see here things sometimes that way too and so
we've really tried to do you know as an agency and I still think we can potentially do even more
is to make sure that we're you know having those conversations with people when those sorts of
things come up you know we'll still hear things like you know the tribal members spear all the big
walleye's not true 85% of tribal harvest is male and there's also regulations on the number of
larger walleye that can be taken by tribal members and those are primarily the females there's not a
lot of male walleyes that reach past 20 inches in the sea to territory so we hear you know about
those sorts of things I might hear that I can't catch a wall anymore because the tribal members
have speared out my lake so hard you know the anglers are harvesting fish too and there's more
equity between the anglers and the tribal members there's some changes that have been made now
but we just have to have those conversations and get the facts out there so we certainly do that
here as an agency we try to do that out in our interactions with the public and try not to be shy
about again letting people know really how the system operates why did I have to get
Creole surveyed as an angler today the tribal members don't have to go through that yes they
absolutely do every single walleye that's harvested in the tribal spring fishery
is comes through a compulsory Creole and monitored and so again we just we need to keep
having this outreach having this discourse with people and making sure that the facts are
getting out there because at the end of the day it's a well-managed system it's a heavily managed
system for both fisheries it's closely monitored and you know for lack of a better term a harvested
walleye is a harvested walleye and it doesn't really matter what method it's harvested by whether
it's hook and line or whether it's by a spear that's how the management system works it's a joint
fishery it's going to be a joint fishery forever hopefully as long as we continue to provide these
harvest opportunities and so we just need to get past it and accept that these are
Ojibwe rights that were seated in those those treaties it's a joint fishery everyone's got
an opportunity which is fantastic because it could be the other way around too there might not be
there could be a case where we don't have any opportunity at all and so we work together
get the facts out there and continue to try to educate people on the situation and from what I
understand I know the red cliff harvest eggs and they've stocked I believe mole lake does do
most of the tribes stock or is it just a few of them do so red cliff does for sure I think
bad river has the capabilities but I'm not sure if they've been raising fish recently mole lake
does for sure lack the flamble and then I'm not sure if sankroi is raising many fish right now
but that's yeah so the people said about some good like the fact that they actually put fish
back in yeah they do so several of the tribes or maybe the majority of them um they see the
territory of of Wisconsin here are raising fish yeah um does anyone else here there are a couple
guys that pulled up I don't know if you need to go take that I take a break yeah I won't