Okay, whenever you're ready. Yeah, sorry, I'm gonna wreck your stuff.
Well, I'm looking through this little tiny square, right?
So often we'll get schools of them kind of at the pond apron here. So I was hoping that would
be the case so you could get some footage, but because it's sunny out they might be
further out towards the edges. So these are walleye ponds. This is kind of a
traditional way of raising walleye for stalking purposes, certainly in Wisconsin and the rest
of midwest. So the vast majority of walleye rays in aquaculture are done in ponds just like this.
Um, raising walleye in ponds like this is kind of challenging because you're subject to the
weather conditions and a lot of predators outdoors that you can't really control for.
So we kind of stalk our fish in there shortly after hatch and more or less hope for the best
well-following best practices. Um, we fertilize our ponds so that we get a good algae growth
and zoopointan hatch for this fish to consume and then eventually we'll be trucking in minnows
to feed them as they get to the size where they can start consuming larger fish.
And then by October they should be roughly nine inches and ready to stock out into the lakes.
So when did they start feeding on other fish? Um, very shortly. So they as soon as they can fit
another fish in their mouth ultimately is when they'll start feeding on other fish.
We order different sizes of minnows so we start with what's called the toughy size fat head minnow.
Um, and then they'll be on that for a couple of weeks and then they can get full-sized fat head
minnows and we're ultimately feeding them fat head minnows all the way up until um,
October when they're ready to be stocked out. So, yeah. Well, how many...
We started with 50,000 fish in these ponds. So these are the fish. We were up here, we saw some
of the fish, saw some eggs come out. Yep. So those hatch and then they were split.
Yeah. So these, the same fish that are inside, um, are the brothers and sisters of the fish out
here. So they all hatch from the same group and we just split them out into these different ponds
and into the systems inside. So we'll have what are ultimately the same fish that we're stocking
both from outdoor ponds and our indoor systems and we'll see which ones ultimately do the best
once they're stocked out into the lake and when which ones we get the better return strong.
So this is definitely more expensive. At the moment, yes, because minnow costs have gotten
really expensive, this way of raising them is now quite a bit more expensive than raising them
indoors. But that can change as minnow costs change. The other thing is you don't know the
survival that you're going to get out of these fish outdoors because they're exposed to predation
and weather conditions. So we have a bit more control over that inside and we can ensure that
we're going to have a better survival which makes that a little bit of a cheaper option.
Would these fish be tougher though? That's what we're going to hopefully figure out.
They might be better at catching prey. They might be better suited to lake conditions because they've
been raised in a pond. It's hard to say. So the sampling that we do in the next couple of years
will really tell us the story on if our indoor fish perform just as well as these pond fish.
And we'll hopefully see it this fall, but how do you tell the difference?
Yeah, so we're going to be clipping different fins for indoor fish and our outdoor fish.
That way when we do our surveys and we pull those fish out, we can tell if it came from indoors,
from outdoors, or if it's a wild fish that hasn't been clipped. So we'll look at the relative returns
of those different fin clips in our population when we're sampling. And that'll be through
bike nets, lecture shocking. Yeah, there's going to be a variety of sampling.
Electroshocking, we have Creole surveys where anglers will tell us which fins they catch if
they're aware of it, and also our population assessments that Glyphlic's going to run next year.
Do you ever have any idea? You said you sometimes you can see them, but yeah, sometimes you'll be
able to see them, but you really don't have any idea what your survival is at any given time.
What we do do, though, is we monitor water quality really closely. We're looking at
dissolved oxygen constantly. We're looking at the phytoplankton population. We're looking at the
relative phosphorus and nitrogen concentrations, and we're trying to keep them in the most optimal
parameters for these fish to do well. And if we do all that right and we get lucky with the weather
and get lucky with pressures, then we'll get a good amount of fish out of here. If any of those
things go wrong, it can change that equation quite a bit, and we might not get very many fish out,
and that happens sometimes. So it's just a bit more of a gamble with these outdoor systems.
Keeps it fun, of course, but it's a bit more challenging for sure. What are the most common
predators out here? Yeah, there's... You have a fence, you have some... Yep, so you'll notice we
have our fence, and we have that flashing that goes all the way around, and that hopefully
prevents any frogs and turtles and anything else from getting in. In practice, stuff still
gets in, certainly. So those can be predators. Birds are far and away the biggest predators that
we have to worry about. We'll get morgansers flying in here. We get kingfisher every now and then.
There'll be herons that like to hang out in the shallows and probably do a big number on the
population in these ponds. So part of it is trying to be out here enough to try to scare those birds
away as well, but you can't be here all the time, so they're gonna find a way. So we'll actually
occasionally get otter, raccoons, all kinds of all kinds of fun stuff that can come in here and
take out your fish. So we have four ponds here, and we're currently running three of them.
We started with 50,000 fly right after hatch in each of these ponds. So it's really interesting,
though, even though these are 150,000 in total, and roughly 80,000 inside. So a little bit of a
different number, but it'll be interesting even though these ponds are right next to each other,
and we're doing more or less the same thing to each of these. Without fail, we'll get quite a
bit of different survival among these ponds. So that's why it's good to have replication
when we're doing studies, right? So, but yeah, 150 fish in total in these ponds, at least up to
start. Roughly 80,000 total indoors, and hopefully we'll get the numbers that the Lake Association
and Redcliffe are looking for for stocking, and enough numbers to get those returns for our study.
So Redcliffe has ponds as well, right? Yep, Redcliffe has three ponds. They look a little bit
different because they're lined with a HDPE liner, and that's one of the studies that we're,
I'm hoping to get funding to look at, is in the state of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin TNR is noticed
that a lot of the walleye raised in ponds will have really skewed sex ratios towards female
female sex ratios in those ponds. We're not really sure why it could be due to temperature
differences. Those lined ponds are darker, so the water temperatures may be warmer at critical
periods, but it also could be due to something leaching from those HDPE pond liners that could
have endocrine disrupting potential. So I've put in a grant to look at that, take water samples,
and look at if there's any endocrine disruptors that are at biologically relevant concentrations
that could be causing those skewed sex ratios. Essentially, killing the males, not changing
the males as the e-mails. No, certainly not killing the males, but leaching compounds that mimic
estrogen and combines to the estrogen receptor, and can therefore cause maturation and development
to go a little bit differently for the males. Increase the telogenin expression, which is a
egg yolk protein that males aren't supposed to express, and you'll see males, otherwise male
fish, producing ovaries and having testes that have ovarian cysts inside of them and stuff.
So it's really interesting when that happens. So we'll be able to look at these fish and kind
of see if that is happening with those plastic lined ponds. Because interestingly, we don't
see the same skewed sex ratios in our clay lined ponds. We don't have that plastic liner.
So are they technically from that predictor, or how do we describe that with that?
Yeah, so fish are really interesting in sex determination and maturation. So we're still
figuring out a lot about the processes involved in sex determination for walleye. It's looking
like they're not XY sex determining, but a lot more research has to be done to figure out the
exact mechanism for sex determination. There's a lot of organisms that have temperature-dependent
maturation and sex determination, and it's possible that walleye fall into that category.
So that's why we're also looking at the temperature aspect with those lined ponds that
might be a little bit warmer. That could be the mechanism and not endocrine disruptors for those
skewed sex ratios. So can you sex the fish when you're stocking them when they're that size?
It's difficult. It's probably about as early as you can sex those fish, but we'll take some samples
and look at the histology and be able to tell if they have testes or ovaries at that point.
You wouldn't be able to take one and visually look at it.
Like when you guys are in the spring when you're harvesting eggs, you have to express
that they're trying to figure out male and female. And when they're nine inches, it's almost impossible.
There is a sexual dimorphism where males will be quite a bit smaller than females on average,
but that's not a reliable enough metric that you can take a cohort and just measure them and say
this smaller population is likely all male. So yeah. So yeah, but otherwise, how does it look?
So our ponds we had a really overcast week last week, and that can be a challenge because even if
we have optimal nitrogen and phosphorus ratios in the ponds, if we don't have sun,
we're not getting that algal bloom that we want, and we don't have as good of a zooplankton bloom.
So these are much clearer than we would like. We want them to be more turbid. The walleye like
that and the things that the walleye eat like that. So they're clearer than we would like. You
don't want to be able to see the bottom generally. So yeah, but we have a nice sunny day. So hopefully
that'll kick things off. And we'll see some some algal blooms and really good zooplankton hatch.
So all this stuff over here, that's good. Yeah, yeah, ultimately. Granted, we want the smaller algae,
like the small little green algae. So not the large kind of filamentous algae on the top. So
yeah, I think we're just going to get some b-roll out here. Yeah, and we'll join you back.
There's the thing that we're looking at.
Is that dark schedule at all?
As long as we start to hang tight. Yeah.
Like do got out there.
Okay.
I just dropped one down the grave, why isn't it going to be done tomorrow?
It's going to be done.
It's going to be done.