It's pretty eight jars full over there, and it's a bigger hatchery, so it'll be better for viewing.
We like to see the difference because we're part of what we're talking about.
You're doing this in more than one place.
Nine locations this year.
Those are the eggs we got yesterday.
We talk about ounces of eggs.
There's 4,000 walleye eggs per liquid ounce, and we have about 54 ounces in there.
There's over 200,000 eggs in that one jar, and we try to put 80 ounces.
That's our optimum.
In each jar, in a 12 jar hatchery, then it'll give us a little over 4 million eggs.
And if one half of 1% of 4 million make it to 15 inches long, that's 20,000 fish.
It's all about numbers, and all this cost the state of Wisconsin nothing.
We're a self-funded nonprofit, so that's what we do.
Great.
We need to go get on the boat.
Yep.
And this is another whole end of the situation when the fries start to happen.
I don't want to tip over it away.
I don't want to take some.
Right.
It's wild, Tom.
You're taking your picture.
Ha-ha-ha!
I'm making it to the boat.
I'm in a two minute tie-off.
I sure got a lot of knots.
We want to make sure they get away.
Yeah.
Safety first.
Yeah.
So.
Safety first.
That's right.
Go on to the boat.
Go.
Okay.
So.
Yeah.
Move the station.
That's why I have a time when you sit on the ice here.
Well, yeah, but it's better to keep.
Oh, it's good to see the seat.
That's what it makes you run the CMR.
Oh, they're going to be going to go through one.
The videographer.
Okay.
Here.
That's the area of the CMR.
It's pretty much.
Yeah.
So.
Big cedar is over there.
And the creek runs the big cedar into here.
And this is all the way to big cedar.
A little bit of a fish, right?
That would be the place we need to sit.
Oh, look.
Oh, muck and muzz in.
We didn't catch any fish.
I love it even.
It's at 2 minutes here.
This is our third year.
Oh yeah, the nice part is the first year we set nets here we didn't have that many eggs
but this winter the guys that were cropy fishing here were catching all kinds of ten inch fish
ten inch walleyes and they haven't fought that forever so it's kind of justification of what we do
if you want to work off the anchor then
oh you've got two nets over here I haven't been coming out I've been stuck on shore I'm going to pee on you know
the way the wind's blowing the buoy will be this side of the net
I don't know where it's flying this far off to come by
let's go ahead Tom
oh wait a minute yeah I see that
we've got two big ones
two big ones
we catch everything that's in the lake
we got two suckers we got three suckers these are all suckers
it's not clear a blue gill of the perch
that's it if you hit a while I think this way yesterday
R
I got no way I get my foot out of this thing for it
I think this is working with the folks like that.
We're not going to stretch it.
Yes? No?
Tom, stop pulling! Let me pull with a rope. I gotta get that anchor out of the
lock.
So did you guys see any fish up under the landing? Yeah, they weren't spawning after they were.
You're right over the top of the rope.
Which way are you going to go? You got the anchor out?
Don't go back. Go ahead.
You're staying on top of that.
Back. We have no fish. There's none in the set at all, Tom.
Nope, back up. No, back up.
Enough fish to have enough eggs to do any good.
Back up.
All eyes are really not official, small lakes, paper. So I'll report one time the optimum lake in the state of Wisconsin would be a 5,000 acre lake.
Like Geneva or Toronto or Green Lake and 80 to 100 feet deep. That would be the optimum.
They can survive, but the reproduction is the problem.
You'll see more on Bing Cedar. I promise you.
This is the true walleye experience you go out and catch nothing. Not with him, he's a pro.
He's won more money in fishing tournaments than many people.
All right.
It's not a tight shot.
No fish. This has to. Wait a minute, Tom.
This net is not set up right.
Yeah, it should be because they're just important.
I guess they don't get the fish.
Come on.
I'll call a bowl or not, but I'm not used to this kind of bowl.
All right. You can back up now.
Hang on.
See, that net was laid down. There was no reason no wonder it wasn't catching the fish.
Where did it?
We've done two saugare projects on Lake Winnebago. One lasted ten years and one lasted four years.
In order to catch saugare in the lake, they spawn out in the lake.
We tie two nets in the end. Those are 35-pound acres. We have to have a 35-pound anchor on either side.
When the wind really blows, it can roll in nets. I made those a lot of years ago, 15-18 years ago.
But I didn't expect to see one here.
They had two clips, and they had the ropes going this way so it never pulled the bag in clothes.
I mean, I've owned boats forever, and she's been in one of my boats twice, and that's it. She's not a water person.
And that was only because I dropped my anchor over, and I said, I'm going to go diving and get my anchor back.
It was stuck on a rock pile in Winnebago. I got it back. I said, I have to have somebody in the boat legally for reading. Go in.
The rope was right underneath us, Tom. Back her up. I'll get the rope.
Go that way. Oh, did you put the anchor down? Oh, all right.
I'm going to take the rope up on this side.
I had to leave it.
Oh, we got fish in this net, I don't know how many, but we got fish.
Let me get the buoy rope out of the way.
We have to pull the buoy up and get it out of the water.
Let me go ahead.
Come on.
Come on, come on.
Look at that.
Rookies.
We got quite the assortment.
Well, hang on.
Yeah, at least a couple of hours.
Hey, just look down in there.
I'm not going to sort the turtles, I'm just going to throw them in the tank.
I hope not.
Snapping turtles are a pain.
I'll bring them up slow.
Oh, no, one nice female, anyway.
You can tell a female.
That's a nice female wall.
Nice pump belly.
Actually, get your legs through.
Like I said, we get a little bit of everything.
That's an order of pipe.
Come on.
They call them slimers for a reason.
They're real slow.
He's got a fish hook in his mouth.
Almost the right minute, we'll take that hook out later, starting loose.
Yeah, they just come out of hibernation, so they're swimming along the shoreline.
Another nice female.
We got one more male.
Oh, two more.
That one might be a female.
Hang on.
Back her up.
Who's this going to get?
Those are the little blue gills, right?
Yeah, but this one is partially digested.
You can see it turned white already.
So one of them spit it up when I throw them in the water.
That's a little blue gill.
This one would probably be a mature blue gill next year.
They're mature in about three years of age.
You have to watch painted turtles and carry salmon on them.
Yeah, I don't see them.
We'll take you.
And I'm not sticking my fingers in the mouth.
Yeah, he swallowed it.
I can't bite the light of that.
I'll put him back in the tank for now.
I'll get out my knife when I get back.
Are you doing any good?
Yeah, at least two ripe females.
Maybe a third one, I'm not sure.
No fishing.
That's a female.
Come on, get out of there.
This is a female to treat her nice.
I don't know, they haven't said.
So you got all of that stuff?
Yeah, none of those.
I had to re-tie two of them.
They were laid down.
These are all males, I think.
Yeah, they're really good.
This is a nice fat female.
Yeah, a storyman in the tank will get rid of him later.
We got two slimers.
Yeah, we did all four, we only got fishing one yet.
We'll go over by the island.
I think they're...
I don't know, I didn't count.
I love my pay grade.
There's no math, there's going to be a 12.
Bring up three buckets of water,
three five gallon buckets of water.
Do you want to eat one yet?
Nah.
Am I still on?
Yep.
Okay, they'll bring me a female.
I strip the eggs into a bowl.
At first I layer on here,
and I layer on a damp towel with rollers to get the excess water off.
And then strip the eggs into the bowl,
and then switch bowls to bring two males,
we have enough males, do that one at a time,
put the milk in here, and then...
You add a water?
Yeah, the water's over here.
A lot of needs to be over here.
I add one pitcher of water to the milk,
and what that does is it releases the sperm, it's seminal for it.
It releases the sperm,
and we pour that onto here, and we stir them for 90 seconds.
After 90 seconds, hypothetically, they're all fertilized,
because in the lake, after 90 seconds, the egg dies,
because there's an open port in every egg, only one spot on the side of the egg,
and out there, fungus and bacteria and virus will also enter that,
so this did, for whatever reason, 90 seconds is the time
to move over both of them.
What's that?
Nothing.
Sherry, move that bowl out of the way.
So how many nuts did you get to the other?
Just one, just one.
The soft one?
Oh, she's ready.
Over the 25 years that we've been doing this,
we average 85,000 eggs for every female that we use for eggs.
We don't drip eggs out of any female over 24 inches long.
We don't know how old they are,
but, oh, where's the measuring board?
I don't know.
Hey, you guys!
Hey, we don't need six people down there.
Hey, where's the medicine?
We don't have to do that.
We're not fin-clipping.
Oh, you don't do that no more?
We only had to do that the one year.
So then we measure her,
and she's 17 and a half inches long.
Give me that and turn her loose.
And then we slip.
Net!
And she's 50.
And we need another male.
Now, these eggs are inert.
As long as they're not in water, they're good to sit for a while.
Same way with a milk.
The sperm receives it.
What?
Does this consider the book?
Yeah, bring it out.
Here's another male one.
It might not look like a lot of milk, but there could be three million sperm in that little bit of milk.
This guy is 16 and a half.
Both of the males were 16 and a half.
Okay.
Let's move to places.
So he's got timey.
Do it slowly, Jerry.
Yeah.
Go ahead and watch.
Count.
One to 90.
I couldn't.
Slow.
Start a timer on my spoon.
All right.
Turn it.
How long?
90 minutes.
90 seconds.
You couldn't store it.
I didn't answer it.
Slow.
All we need to do with this process, if you let the eggs lay in a mass, the sperm would only be able to fertilize the top layer.
So all we need to do is keep them up in the water column so it was a sperm to find the egg.
That's the purpose of this.
Didn't think you were going to be on TV today, did you?
No.
You guys are out of Madison?
Yeah.
What channel will it be on here?
This is a whole documentary.
It's not going to be on an individual.
I don't know how you're going to do it.
It'll end up on PBS Wisconsin.
Channel.
In what?
PBS Wisconsin.
PBS.
Yep.
Wherever you watch PBS.
On like it's channel 36.
Probably not the next year.
Probably channel 36.
You'll be long now by the time you see it.
And the reason we do it for 90 seconds is as soon as the egg is fertilized, the outer membrane becomes very adhesive.
If we don't add the bentonite clay, they start sticking together in the bowl.
And then that's another, we can get them apart, but it's another whole process apart.
Now 90 more seconds.
No, two minutes.
Two minutes.
You're good.
That's 120.
And I'm going to move you to get you out of the way.
Do you want another fish?
Yep.
Here you go.
Another female.
Female.
There's aquaculture and demonstration.
Sure.
And you showed me in the microscope how fast the milk dies.
When the water's added.
Yep.
It's just gone.
Yep.
Pretty crazy.
Yep.
Give me a bowl.
Oh, yeah.
Three, two, up here.
They don't cooperate.
And the bigger they are, the less they want to cooperate.
Ooh, you chalk it too up the point.
It was Tyler Fercus.
Don't know him.
Yeah, it was the first batch, right?
Yes.
Two minutes.
He's got a wing that went back.
Yeah, one he's done with it.
Are we recording something here on the log?
Just a link.
Okay, this is a female and she's 19 inches.
Turn it over.
Yeah, the sperm don't have any nutrient reserves at all.
They're absorbing all their nutrients from the milk.
And they can swim about a half inch in their entire life.
And we tell everybody, that's like I'm swimming in a marathon.
I mean, when you're microscopic, half inches is a long way to swim.
Two minutes, Mike.
All right, if you're done with that, pour that in one of those containers.
Did I miss recording some fish here?
Yeah, I'll get them for you in a minute.
This one is 17 and a half.
I'm recording here, if you'll think.
Yes.
You don't want to suffer from things first.
Take it like this and just cut through my stitch.
Okay.
No, I gotta drain this bowl.
Okay, this one is the very last day.
The guys were going to pull the nets.
So they went out to pull the nets and they had four fish in their nets.
All right, we'll take them back and we'll take the eggs out of them.
Yep.
Well, no, I got a clean bowl.
Yeah, go ahead and bring one.
Female.
So they brought them back and they stripped the female into the bowl.
They had them in a tank like that.
They stripped a female into the bowl.
Okay, give me a male.
So they went looking, they had one male.
They had three females and one male.
So now what do they do?
So they took, this is a, what's called a, this is a green female.
She's not ready to spawn.
I can't get eggs out of her, so we don't force them home.
I'll measure her.
16 and a half turns.
So anyway, they've got these three females.
So they stripped all three females into one bowl, went and got the male.
And this is the end of this morning season.
They got one single drop of milk in this, in the other bowl.
Pour the water in, pour it on the eggs.
They had 90% fertilization.
And that was probably, huh?
That was a female.
This is a male.
Yeah, pour it in.
That's enough.
But we had about from one single drop and they were probably making the assumption we get
85,000 eggs, quarter of a million eggs, and all of them got fertilized from one single
drop.
That's how many sperm are in the milk.
People don't realize.
It's not a very efficient way of doing things.
But it works.
Those clay eggs in a separate container, they go through a process called water hardening.
Over the next four or five hours, however long you want to leave men.
No.
We'll probably only leave them in there maybe an hour.
And they absorb between the rocks.
They got to be fairly substantial.
How am I doing?
It's sore arm.
No.
But I want to overdo it.
You can't overdo that.
But so.
So that's essentially what we do.
And we'll have more fish and more help that exceed her than we.
I think we'll have more help.
We've got a young girl.
She's in ninth, eighth grade.
She is about as gung ho as you can get.
She wants to skip class and cool to help us do our thing.
And of course her dad won't let her do it.
They're sticking to the bowl.
Give me some water.
This is not our invention.
There was a biologist named Gordy Pregal.
He was the biologist in Oshkosh back in the 70s.
And he transferred to Fitchburg to be the supervisor down at the Fitchburg office.
And he built a portable hatchery in a Volkswagen bus.
He was going to take it around for show and tell at schools.
Well we saw it and we could do that.
So I worked for a line to energy.
And the Columbia generation station over in Portage when they built it they had to have.
They had to have air quality monitoring trailers set up.
And it was their 20th anniversary so they could get rid of the trailer.
So I asked them if they'd donate them to us.
That was our first two hatchery that we built them in those trailers.
These trailers on the other hand this has a double axle.
This is the frame off of a modular mobile home frame.
We buy them from mobile home dealers.
Cut them in thirds and build three hatcheries off of each frame.
This is one of the, this is a small one.
The bigger ones that we're building now, actually we can get bigger frames.
Have a back door and a side door so people can walk through.
This still takes show and tell.
But it worked.
So how many did you call?
So could you walk?
This is just our, we keep this record.
Not required by the DNR to do it.
But when we get over to the big cedar I'll show you every day.
We'll have a lot more fish.
We have 60, 70 fish.
And it gives you a, it's called a leak frequency chart.
It shows, you know, start up a very first year male will maybe be.
Well I'm gonna take it right over by big cedar and see how many fish they got.
We like to keep track when we first, when we started working on the lake because over time that will shift.
Yeah, I'm going deep.
Especially the females will shift.
Not so much the males.
Am I going to big cedar?
Yeah.
Big cedar we're averaging five males per year.
You want to plant it on it?
That's about what we have here.
The 15th today?
Yes.
I just want to see how many fish they got in the net.
Compare that.
Water pump is out on the pier and it's pumping water.
And it comes up that inch and a half pipe and it goes up.
And we've got a filter on each side.
We filter the incoming water to get rid of all the debris that pump sucks up.
And we've got an overflow so the tank is generally three quarters full.
And then it comes out the bottom and it's manifold fed, gravity fed through all the jars.
And we control the flow.
A hatching jar incubation cylinder, where do you want it called?
It has a central delivery tube.
The water comes down the delivery tube and it sits off the bottom on these fins.
So the water comes down, goes up and it lifts the eggs.
We keep consticle of water 24-7 because they breathe.
And you can see they're moving on the bottom and we keep a filter up here.
Somebody had the water turned up too fast so some of them floated.
But that keeps them so they incubate.
Depending upon water temperature, they will be in here 20 days.
And what we do is we record the temperature in the morning and I'll use easy numbers.
Say it was 42 degrees in the morning and 42 degrees in the afternoon.
Average daily temperature is 42 degrees.
Subtract 32 from that and you get 10 for a remainder.
So that day these jars accumulated 10 temperature units.
It takes about 290 accumulated units for them to start to hatch.
It's nothing we can do about it.
We don't modify water temperature.
Everything is ambient, everything.
So we don't want to modify ambient temperature because when the little guys hatch and we catch them out here,
there's gilt plankton that's out in the lake.
It's also multiplying in concert with these guys.
If we if we forced them by having warmer water and we turn them loose, there may be nothing there for you.
So that's what we do.
We also, we have what's called a plankton toe.
The plankton toe is the net that we pull behind the boat.
And like out, we never found many zooplankton here at all.
It was kind of weird.
This is the shallow end. It's 20 feet deep.
The other side of the lake is 50, 4, 56 feet deep.
And we put the net out in the water and we pull it and there's a canister on the bottom end.
And zooplankton, their exoskeleton is kite just like on a crayfish or your fingernails.
So they're brown.
So we pull the toe, we pick it up and look at the jar.
It's pretty clear, not many zooplankton here.
We keep moving around the lake and where we find the most, the day we release the fry, that's where we take them.
And we, I'll show you how we do that.
We don't have a big hole in release holes here.
But yeah, we try to give them, put them where their first meal is available.
And after that they're on the boat.
There's nothing to do with that.
But yeah, I can lift, I can lift these a little more.
But that's the basis of it.
We only have six yards here because we don't ever get many fish.
In the senior we have 12 hatching jars.
Lake Geneva has 19.
Shawna Lake has 32.
Their hatchery is different.
They have the countertops down the middle.
And we've got a manifold system on either side.
So we've got 16 yards on either side.
Green Lake has 36.
And we've had the Green Lake hatchery there for 25 years.
It's been there a long time.
Is that one already done through this evening?
They have a sister net check.
Oh really?
When is that happening?
It's coming weekend.
Yeah, he called me today wanting a boat because the sites here want to come out and watch.
We had a boat fail.
One of our motors crashed on us.
It's only 25 years old.
It's an old mariner.
But it won't shift years.
So we're short of boats this year.
That's why we're hauling this boat back and forth.
And that other one was supposed to be here.
And up here we typically record how many ounces of eggs we put in the jar.
There's another thing that we have to do.
Thought about.
Props of it.
Fungus wants to form in this jar on dead eggs.
Because not every egg is fertilized.
And not ever fertilization works.
Some die.
So what we do, we have an applicator here.
We need to drain it.
Yeah.
What we do with this, we use hybrid peroxide.
And it's a 7% solution.
What you buy in the store is 3%.
And it's not an arithmetic scale.
It's an exponential scale.
So this stuff at 7%.
If you put your fingers in, they'll come back white.
It's such a moisture out of your fingers right now.
So we must wear gloves.
We buy it at 34%.
And this was a 5 gallon bucket of 34%.
And I dilute it in what's really weird.
You can't dilute it by volume.
You have to dilute it by weight.
34% hydrogen peroxide is much more dense than water.
So I weigh weed.
I weigh four gallons of water.
I find out how many ounces of pounds they are.
Water runs about 8.4 pounds per gallon.
And then I divide that by 4 because we do 4 to 1.
That bring the 34% down to 7.
What we have here is we've got each inch hole drilled in the bottom.
This is a chip water.
We're watering baby chicks.
But you just stick that down in there.
Put it up here and let it run.
And it slowly drains down here.
It goes to the bottom.
It welds up through there.
And it sanitizes the dead eggs.
And we spill a lot of water.
Our floors are this way on purpose because we spill a lot of water.
Those trailers that the lion gave us had solid plywood floors, they didn't last.
They delaminated.
We ended up tearing the cradle right off the frame and building a frame like this.
So I think that's brought to the street.
Yeah, it's pretty bad stuff from a hazard standpoint.
And we do these every day for the first 5 days during the hydro.
After that, as needed.
Some places, the fungus is really bad.
And some places, the fungus isn't so bad.
Three lake doesn't have fungus problems because they use our tissue in low water.
Their hatchery is not on the lake.
So they don't have near the fungal problem that other lakes have.
Big cedar is a lake.
It's very clear and deep that's on the problem.
That's the way.
We have to go with the floor.
There's nothing we can do about it.
And you learn doing this.
Don't get excited about anything.
There's not a lot we can do about a lot of things.
It is what it is.
We do the best we can to sanitize, to clean them, to make sure we get the maximum amount of
permeation that we get.
And then the little guys, when we turn them loose, they start to...
These eggs, well, these are new eggs.
They'll turn really, really dark.
The reason for that is that it is an embryo inside of each egg.
And they have two little black eyes.
So you'll have a whole jar of little black-eyed eggs in here.
And once they start the hatch, we take the filter off the top.
And as they hatch, they're lifted out by the water.
And they go outside and we catch them in the tank.
And we monitor them with a real scientific piece of equipment, a white mold.
Initially, they have a quite a large yolk stack on their abdomen.
And they're really negative blowing.
So they lay on the bottom of the tank.
But as it absorbs, they try to swim.
They don't have any fins.
They don't have any scales.
They don't have any gills.
They don't have a fully-formed mouth.
There's just a little fish about that long.
They have a few muscles.
And that's about all the rest of them.
They're not a fully-formed fingerling for 15 days.
Things about that long for all of them.
But they start to feed.
Their mouth opens and they start to feed after about 48.
So we have them in the water by that time.
Otherwise, we could try to hold them, but we found that if we miss, they start to do that really quick.
So we're better off if you put them out a little early than not.
But we use a bone like this.
They'll be initially when you scoop.
You can see them, obviously.
But we scoop it all the way on the bottom of the bowl.
And then, 14 hours later, there's a few of them swimming.
24 hours later, most of them are swimming.
And most of them are swimming.
The reason we do that, a little fish like this.
Another thing we have to do is match water temperature.
That's why we use ambient temperature, ambient water, ambient temperature.
If we took them from here to a colder body of water, they can only withstand a drop in 3 degrees water temperature.
Or they get cold shot.
And if they get cold shot, they become inert.
And down they go.
And in Green Lake, we turn loose in 290 feet of water.
They can swim, but not if they're cold shot.
So at Green Lake, the water comes out of the Artesian well at 54 degrees, 24-70.
So we load them into the coolers and take them to the lake.
And what we do now, because the lake is always cooler than 54 degrees, we take a gallon jug of ice.
We put it in each cooler.
So as we drive to the lake and get out of the water, it's right slowly bringing the water temperature down.
One degree every 15 minutes is what's recommended for water temperature.
So we get out on the lake, and if it's still too cold, we'll sit there with extra water, slowly pouring them in the lake.
And we have digital thermometers to get it within 3 degrees of lake temperature before we turn loose.
It takes knowing what you're doing to be able to do it right.
Most of what we've learned has been trial and error.
We were the exception of when we did our sovereign project.
We had an extraordinary fish technician named Bob Olinik that worked with ice guys.
He was detail driven to the end degree, which was good.
He taught us the right way of doing things.
And Bob went into the literature and looked to find what he could find, and it's not much.
Nobody knows what we do here.
They have big hatcheries, but they don't do this kind of work.
So with Bob, over the course of 10 years, we learned a lot.
And we also have a book called The Law and Sarger Culture and Management Manual.
We received the phone call from an individual, and I don't remember his name, asking if we would give them seed money for a grant to publish a book.
And it was to the American Fisheries Society.
And they took the book, they took the process, and they looked at all the historical pieces, papers, and research papers, and they combined them into 14 chapters in this book.
And that's my bible.
I don't really care how many bones are being finished.
Or what their name is. So there's three chapters in the front that I don't really care about.
But when you start getting into morphology and physiology, and the fish, and reproduction, and that sort of thing, there's eight chapters I've read.
Probably four times every chapter. Just one thing.
And we learn things out here. Every year we learn something.
Mike, you want to go get some B-roll to surround?
I'm going to wreck your video here. I'm going to steal a container.
Can you put the seed seed in the same bottle?
What?
Can you put the seed seed in the same bottle?
No, we're not going to.
We don't use a real fancy thermometer to check temperature, but temperature today is loose.
48 degrees.
And like I said, we spill a lot of water.
Kids love it come in here once we dump water in the floor.
All right.
Okay, these are the eggs that we put the clay on.
And they've gone through what's called the water hardening process.
They've doubled in size and taken in water.
And the other membrane has become very resilient.
So what we do then is we take them and we pour them on the filter.
I'm going to get through to my water.
And then we lift it up and down.
And what we're doing is we're removing the clay from the eggs.
And that's what they look like after they've been water hardened.
These eggs are maybe an hour.
We had these eggs for maybe an hour.
And we put them back in here.
Don't get in front of the camera.
But you're back in.
Tom.
With time.
No, I want to measure the eggs.
You want to do what?
Measure the eggs over here.
Don't get in front of the camera.
You guys in your water?
Yeah, wait a minute.
I'll pour off water first.
Yeah, they're dead.
If they're floaters, they're dead.
No, that's good for them.
How many ounces?
Four minutes.
I'll pour them in.
Don't stand in front of the camera.
I'm not going to determine.
I never liked my picture taken in.
Yeah, they're dead.
Okay, that's fine.
Did I get any underpants?
Yes, it was.
Don't shake.
Hold it so you can see.
It is five.
I'm going to get water here.
29.
29 ounces.
Okay, so we had 30 ounces.
How many thousands is at it?
Come on, you look like a man too.
How many?
120,000.
How many have we got in here now?
24.
No.
29 ounces, Mike.
29.
29 ounces.
Give you more.
Go ahead.
And if we had 80 ounces in here,
they would be up to about here.
And then we turn the water on,
and you'll see them at the other
hatchery.
They'll be lifted up to about here for 80 ounces.
And that's 320,000.
That's what we try to get for Jar.
We'll get that many we can combine later.
This one is on for sure.
We'll try it at the other hatchery.
Interilled.
Almost a thousand days a day.
Wow.
12.
Wow.
yeah
I think we'll have 11 by today and we'll fill that one tomorrow.
I don't know because of how many I see it.
I'm going to have a look at this one right now.
Make sure the rope isn't tangled.
Tie us off.
No, find it hard to believe.
We're slipping on it.
I'm going to have to keep it in gear. We're slipping on that anchor.
I'm going to have a look at this one right now.
I haven't seen a big fat female yet.
There's been one or two little ones, but nothing really strong in your class.
They're all the same. They need 17-18.
I'm going to have a look at this one right now.
Right here, we're 900 acres and about two fish per acre, so two adult fish per acre.
That means you only have about 1,800 adult fish in this whole lake.
That's only 200 and something. I doubt there's one fish per acre.
I'm going to have to rip the engine up here.
Your hook rope is around his other scooter.
You can probably do that ever trip.
Come up to it. How shallow does it get along that? Do I have to worry about it?
They're fine.
Yeah, I'm fine. I'm getting wet.
We'll get wet over there.
We're going to block all the spray on fire. We'll be the bodyguards.
You know, your 18-inch size limit on this start getting 18 inches.
The very few that do are getting propped off.
We'll have to talk to somebody.
That's the advantage of us keeping track of all these fish numbers.
It's a visual verification of what we say.
When I go home, I like 15 to 18.
I'll tell them to check into these.
They're tearing down over there, right?
Oh, no. It's just a new build.
It's not going to open a hole.
It's going to open a hole.
Look at that horse right there.
A nice over here.
Way to go.
What's that?
My grandpa's here.
Your dad bring him?
Oh.
Do you have a lot of them?
Two, three.
I didn't see many big fat females in here.
There may be some smaller females.
16, 17-inch males.
I mean, she might be a female.
That's kind of a bit.
Perfect.
Cool.
There.
We've got some big males.
A lot of males.
I think there's a...
No, we've got probably 40 fish.
Look.
One.
We could probably...
I think if we got one or two females, we're going to be lucky.
I didn't see any big, compact females.
Five to go.
One, yeah.
Yup.
Good day.
You're right, there is a lot of fish.
I told you.
Look at a lot of fish in your weight.
I must have had them.
All right.
Male.
Male, 18.
Who's releasing?
Who's got the net?
Male, 16 and a half.
Do you want to go?
I don't want to go out there at all.
Next trip, the next trip to Paris.
What?
You want to go?
You want another guy, I'll tell him, but it's not going to worry.
Go.
You've been out there.
Here, take this life jacket.
Yeah, there's more net.
There's one right here.
Oh, this is...
Oh, okay.
I was looking.
17 inch male.
Do you want to school more?
We'll see if there's more net in the trailer.
I think it's behind the door.
There's one.
18 inch male.
Oh, yeah.
Get one.
I'm yakking.
You got to talk loud.
Yeah, that's a male.
19 and a half inch male.
Right.
16 and a half inch male.
17.
Male.
17.
We'll probably just get done and I'll be back with it.
17.
Hey.
You made it, huh?
No.
17.
It's such a shock.
Somebody got to do it.
There's nowhere else to go, there's nowhere else to go.
I mean, we could hold something if you wanted to, if you could put it all in there, yeah.
Hand told?
Yeah, I have to do this all day like you.
How are you today?
Where did you get that hat?
I've had it for like four years, maybe.
It doesn't really cover my ears, do you?
Yeah, this hatchery is a big cedar lake before we were at Little Cedar Lake.
As you can see, we have more eggs. There's more fish in big cedar, but each one of these yard,
like this yard here, we keep a log of how many eggs.
We put 70 ounces of eggs in this one, and 80 in this one, and 72 in this one.
And when we turn the water on, we try to pick them up so that they're good water
flow through the eggs. You can see there's a little bit of difference in color.
These are getting a little bit darker. That's the embryo starting to form inside of the egg.
These are the ones that got, these three jars are the ones that got yesterday, and they're lighter colored.
As the embryo develops, they will develop eyes, and the eyes are black.
So by the time they get ready to hatch, all those jars will be very, very dark in color.
All the eggs will be dark in color, but set up the same way.
We bring the water in from the tank, pump water into the tank, it spreads through the manifold.
There's a separate valve for each one. We regulate the amount of water that's flowing
to keep the eggs up and oxygen in.
We have nine of these hatcheries now, two of them.
The one at Green Lake and the one at Shano Lake, they're bigger physically,
but the countertop comes right down the middle, and there's one of these manifolds going in either direction.
So the Green Lake hatchery has 32 of these hatching jars, hatching cylinders,
and the one at Shano has 32, and right now the one at Shano
has 10,800,000 eggs in it. It's full.
So that's what we do, and it's all a matter of survival once we get them in the water.
We tell people, if we have one half of one percent of the little fish that we turn loose
to make it to 15 inches on a 12-yard hatchery, that's about four million eggs.
One half of one percent of four million is 20,000 fish.
We're all volunteers, so it costs the state of Wisconsin
essentially nothing to have us do this stocking work,
and we're now working on nine different lakes, totally volunteer organizations.
Great people, the best people I meet in state of Wisconsin work for our hatcheries.
They're dedicated to get out here with cold lands and cold weather and cold water in your face
and do what we can do every year. We've been doing this now.
We've had hatcheries now for 25 years, so it works.
We know it works by virtue of a number of things.
When we started on Peewalki Lake, the DNR estimated there was 0.17 walleyes per acre.
That's equivalent of one adult walleye for every five acres of the lake.
Right now, we're at about four adult walleyes per acre,
and the only thing that changed is we've been running one of our hatcheries there now for 12 years.
Don't you think what happened if you guys weren't doing this?
Many lakes in the state of Wisconsin have an issue now with walleye populations going down.
By classification, they're considered sustaining natural reproductive lakes
and declining natural reproductive lakes, and many of the lakes in Wisconsin right now
are declining natural reproduction lakes.
Global warming is a problem. Lakes are warming up.
Fish population dynamics change, spawning habitat changes.
We're nothing really.
Bylus County has 2,500 lakes in Bylus County alone.
We're only working on nine statewide, so really what we do is a drop in the bucket,
but people love doing it, so we're going to keep doing it.
So, do you, I'm guessing you do this from what, April to November?
No, it was just this time of year.
Yeah, now, the special B in this hatchery, the eggs will be in this hatchery for 20 to 25 days for around numbers.
And then we shut the hatchery down and then it wraps up until next spring.
We have hatched northern pike eggs in these.
On Lake Puckaway, many years ago, I'm talking 20 years ago,
the DNR guys, when they were gathering northern eggs,
and if they'd only get one northern, they'd bring the eggs and we'd put it in our hatchery,
and they hatched just like the walleyes do.
A little bit different.
When these guys hatch, they have a yolk sack attached to their abdomen,
so they can't really swim, but the up falling of the water lifts them out
of the hatching jars.
And there's a trough, a distribution trough.
Can you hold on a minute?
Yeah.
Alright.
Yeah.
So, but when they hatch, the upwelling water washes them out of the hatching jars,
and there's a PVC pipe that goes out next to that into the hatchery,
and we have a series of boot tanks outside where we catch the,
they're actually larvae.
They don't have any fins, they don't have any scales, they don't have gills,
they don't have a swim bladder.
They absorb oxygen to breathe through their skin,
and it takes them about four days for their yolks,
for their yolks to develop so they can breathe in three to four days,
their mouth actually opens up so they can start feeding on other creatures.
And at about 12 days of all of these, they're considered a fully formed
fingerling walleyes.
And after that, well, we don't see them until the fall.
The DNR does what's called a fall fingerling survey,
and they're, they're called Young of the Year, Y-O-Y walleyes.
Every lake is different part.
Growth rate goes Lakewood, Nevada, well I'm real familiar with that.
The DNR runs a trawler there every year.
And for the last 20 years, I've been riding on the trawler once or twice a year.
And the Young of the Year on Winnebago in the fall,
can only run, you know, five to seven inches long.
This is in October.
They're only five months old and they're five inches long.
Amazing growth, an inch a month.
And that's making the assumption they have enough to eat.
And Winnebago is fortunate to have a lot of appropriate size
forage for a little fish to eat.
Lake like this has a different ecosystem, not quite as fertile as Winnebago.
So these fish, the guys plot in the net the other day,
they had a walleye that was, it couldn't have been hatched this year
because everything is just wanting, it was only three inches long,
which is very slow growth for the walleyes.
So, yeah, that's what we do.
So the last question I got is how many people, how many volunteers
are in this organization and are they, you said you have nine of them
over on the stage of guessing they're, you have all of your locations
and staff right here in the middle of this.
Yeah, well, yeah, well, like the Shano hatchery,
Ken Bandipos is their chapter chairman up there.
That's the big hatchery that has 10.8 million eggs right now.
He probably has 15 to 16 people working when they're putting the hatchery together
or putting the eggs in the hatchery.
He estimated last year from the time they set the nets in the lake
until they were all done releasing the fry, he had 840 man hours
of work, donated work running that hatchery.
And there's only 2,000 man hours in a given year,
a person working 40 hours a week for a whole year.
So it is a lot of work.
And we're self-funded, we're a nonprofit, we have fundraising activities
to raise the money that pays for all of this.
This hatchery, this hatchery, we just built it.
And that hatchery cost us about $10,000.
Looks like the boat's coming back.
We have one real quick thing of why do you do this?
What do you get out of volunteer?
Why do I volunteer?
Sometimes I want to.
What else would I be doing this time of year?
It's cold, I don't turkey hunt, I love fish, fish are my thing.
It's my personally, it's my way of giving back.
People can talk and do a lot of talking,
but really it's what you do in life that produces a product
or produces something that's for the benefit of everybody else.
It really counts.
And I guess that's what I'm all about.
So we catch the fry in these tanks.
Well, that valve will be shut off.
The first day, this valve will be opened and we have a manifold
that goes down, goes over and goes up the water wells up
and creates a dead zone on the bottom of the tank because
it's a little larvae.
They're running actually fully formed fish.
When they have that yolk sac, they're couch potatoes
and they lay on the bottom.
And then we have filter assemblies that cut two filters
that come off to keep them in the tank.
And then the water moves out.
But we'll catch day one's hatch in here, and day two
or 24 hours.
Say we shut it off right now.
And then the next day, at five o'clock,
we'll shut them and open these two and everyone's those.
Unbelievable.
I think Ben and I want to hop on.
We're going to go back.
There's one quick.
All right.
Take off.
I think there was one.
We've got to get lucky.
Yep.
All right.
hmm that's a nice mail to mail
you can get rid of the mail 15 and a half
18 million
mail 17 and a quarter
mail 14 and 3 quarter
Male 17, male 16 3 quarter, male 18 in the quarter.
That's what I mean.
She's a problem.
She decides that females go faster than males.
We're not seeing females.
Your females are being knocked off.
We could.
Male 16 and a half.
There's about six of you.
Male 15 and 3 quarter.
Big one in here wasn't it?
Up right there.
Yep, here.
Put her out there.
We look, we'll strip the one female and do the male.
Should I bring it up, Mike?
Yeah, wait a minute.
You got milk all over you.
You like that?
I feel like the post.
Like you said, washing machine's good.
Alright, want to bring that female?
And we'll need a net over here too.
As soon as we do her, she gets turned loose.
We'll need a net right away because we'll turn her loose as soon as he's done with her.
You're not really a right, is she?
She is 20 inches.
Turn her loose.
We need a couple of males.
She is 20 inches.
Turn her loose.
We need a couple of males.
We'll only do one male because there's almost no eggs.
Only one male, we don't need another one.
Oh, there's another female, that's good.
Okay.
This male is 16 inches.
I think we got one more female in there.
Somebody wants your eggs.
Slow hand.
Don't squeeze your eggs coming out like crazy.
She's ready.
Come on.
Are you doing a minute and a half yet?
Just about one second though.
Oh, shit.
Two minutes.
16 inches.
18 inch female.
Just right here because if they're not fertilized right, you might want to kiss the rest of the process goodbye.
You can put all the eggs in the hat you want, but if you don't have good fertilization percentage,
bring another male.
All he's got.
17 and a half.
That.
40.
That's good.
Are we still going over there?
Yeah, we'll call it.
Make the assumption they don't have another female, right? There's not another female?
Okay.
You guys want to go measure fish? I'll just keep doing this.
Do you need a timer or do you go there?
I'm just asking.
It was Mark, Mark, and Mark.
Okay.
Well, when the egg is fertilized, it seals itself off and the outer coating gets immediately sticky
because out there in nature, the first thing it touches, it sticks and stays put while it's
water hardens before it's 20 days before they hatch.
So we don't want them to stick together because when they're in our hatchery, if they stick
together and you get clumps, the ones in the middle suffocate.
They breathe like we do and they die.
90 seconds.
In nature, that opening in the egg is susceptible to having viruses and bacteria and fungus get
into them.
Then we measure the eggs to see how many we have.
There's 4,000 in a shot in the last.
One ounce of eggs is 4,000 eggs.
So we measure them to keep track of how many eggs we have in these sorts of hashtags.
We've got to add those two and a half.
I don't know exactly how to keep track of how many.
We don't have any jars this year that we put more than 80 eggs.
880s or 640,640 ounces.
That's 24.
That's 2,560 eggs.
We've got over over 2 million.
25, 2 and a half million.
There he is.
It's all 10, 10, what your structure is.
You buy it?
Set the net.
The guys on one of the bagel will argue no sizing.
They are adamant.
They will never have a size on one of them.
You limit exploitation by a bagel in there.
2 is only a meal for two people, maybe.
That's all right.
There's nothing in your heart.
Sure.
You can probably put some in here so there's more over here.
If that's a meal, that's a hell of a meal.
I think that one.
That one's going to get these big girls.
We've got a little more color than the middle of those.
Me too.
Is there another female in there?
She'll bring them.
If they don't come and do a survey after the fact,
we're wasting our time, effort and money.
We only do clip one.
You guys go ahead.
Yeah, true.
He was in Congress for you?
No, I felt bad for him.
A lot of guys coming after him.
And it's not him.
That's the thing is, I almost wanted to raise my hand and be like,
guys, he's not the one making me.
He's just here to read the questions.
He's been around a while.
Of course, he's never done this before.
This is his first year.
But he's been around a while.
20 and a half.
Mails.
Mails, right?
Mails, mails, mails, mails.
How'd you get off so early?
Oh.
Why would me?
You don't commit to me.
That's funny for the one.
19 and a half.
Mails.
We'll do this one.
We can just bring a mail up and you can practice for it.
Thank you.
That's a mail?
19 and a half again.
Poor old thing in here.
You're out, bud.
Let's go.
Kind of where are these?
No, I think you've got to wear the little green one.
Those are the orange guys.
That's fine.
That's not empty.
Wait.
We've got to measure them for each other.
You mean those ladies?
You mean those young ladies in Madison?
Did you know practice?
90 seconds here.
That's all you get for the mail?
Yeah.
That's it.
17 and a half.
One more and I'll be good.
Is that fine?
One more?
Fine.
And then the females, it's the same exact process.
Except you get to press harder or you just...
They're so long or stroke because the females are bigger.
You have to kind of roll your fingers because their body is bigger.
Remember now, the ovaries are down both sides.
Right, so you've got to get both.
Yeah, so I use three fingers and roll with three fingers.
Okay.
Bring it as a mail.
The mail's...
You got to get closer to the back.
That's what I was...
I was like pushing up his stomach and nothing was going.
Yeah, you got to go down for this.
Okay.
Females you can go.
You start up.
No, no.
Gotcha.
Is there another female in here?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Fill us up.
Okay.
Here.
Oh, what the heck?
That's poop.
Poop.
Oh, what the heck?
That's poop.
Poop.
Oh.
contamination.
It's called natural.
Okay.
Well...
Okay.
Well...
Maybe all you have...
Measure it.
Yeah.
Sorry, buddy.
Easier.
That's...
17 and a quarter.
No, 16 and a quarter.
Oh, sorry.
You're a nice tool.
I am nice.
All right.
Okay.
I'm out.
That's my...
Is that through any of the...
There's more...
Maybe all right.
I'm out.
Here you go.
That's my...
I didn't know there were more females.
I didn't either.
You ready?
I'm going to be in a few days.
She's green.
Thank you.
She'll be in, she'll be in days.
19.
Green Timor.
That's going to be the phone.
I'll show you back when we got to this.
Bring us some mail.
Bring a mail.
Do you have another female?
Okay, bring another female.
Well, it's okay. We have eggs.
Well, we'll just bring them back.
You better watch it.
You're going to want to put a stamp right before you.
That's what I told you more.
Bring in a hat.
Yeah.
We just set the milk to five.
And we have to see now see what I'm doing.
Nice.
Gotcha.
Oh, thank you.
up
It's always nice to see you here.
Oh, definitely cool.
Ha ha!
You need to have a nice one.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Take the board.
You want me to disuse it, man, man.
Pulling up the stuff, man.
I mean, I'm in the politics, but I'm not certain.
I don't like the TV doing it.
Yeah.
Alright.
They're bringing one more net in.
Time to quit.
I'm getting hungry.
I can get home at 7.30 in the other night.
This is starting at 5 o'clock.
It sucks.
Of course, starting at 2.30 is a lot better
than starting at 6 o'clock.
I'm not doing that anymore.
H.I.T. have a 5.30 every morning.
I get a kick out of these legislators that you want to talk about when you told me to sell them for them.
I worked for a line today just for 24 years.
I supervise millions of associates in those days.
They need to stop talking to them.
Obviously, millions of people need to come up.
How are you?
We might not fill a jar tonight.
Oops.
I can't hear a phone yet.
Yeah, this is a good way to go.
I don't know how you catch them in here.
This is like a famous name called the Dead Sea.
I like to keep it there.
Well, that's like one of the big old.
If you don't know how to fish one of them.
I learned a long time ago as a fisherman.
We're more than fishing.
I like fishing, but I really like catching a lot better.
See, I'm in that middle stage.
When you first start out, you want to catch fish.
I'm at the stage where I'd rather catch two fish all day after the great fish.
But I mean, give me 10 fish, and then I'll be back.
You have more?
Me?
I can sit there and catch bluegills all day long.
Not even.