...
I don't know why I'm here to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my
hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my shoulder to take my hand to take my hand to take my shoulder to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand in take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand and to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to take my hand to
I don't know what's going on, I'm back here.
I just want to see what you guys are going to be doing.
So, that caliber fell less than good.
I don't know what's going on, I'd like to show you that.
I don't even know where I'll see if I can figure it out.
I don't know where I'll see if I can figure it out.
I don't even know where I'll see if I can figure it out.
I'm wondering where I'll be?
Oh.
Yes?
Is it OK if younet here?
He want to get this car locked
But he has it
And he needs grace
I don't know what to do, but I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to
do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do,
I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know, what to do, I don't know what to do, I don't know what
There we go.
Do they go through?
No.
Yeah, we'll measure that.
We'll measure that.
Hi.
We've got this. We do throw in there. We'll measure that.
When you rock this, let you throw over.
Make sure to tell me.
Like if you want to rock it.
I got it.
Okay.
Let's go.
I'm going to light this.
Okay.
One, six, eight, four.
One adult trout perch.
One, seven, you do trout perch. One adult trout perch.
And nine young in a year drum.
A crop perch, deep adult trout.
One, two, three, seven,
and one.
And one, three, seven,
and one, three, eight.
So you're going to take the long line back.
Okay.
So you're going to take the long line back.
All right.
The more of these that we catch in the fall survey,
basically the better the indication
that the fish had a successful spawn
on the previous spring.
Pull the fat out of the water.
That's really good.
There.
He's just a hair over.
And there's one more in there.
Nope.
No.
Thank you.
All right.
Good.
Thank you.
All right.
Where are you at?
Who's coming in?
Muppeko.
We're going to have to go back to the next one.
We're going to stay with the line.
Oh, there you go.
10-2, channel kit, 22-9, walleye, 11-2,
7-9.
Surge, 6-0, walleye, 10-4, 9-7!
Perch, 5'9".
1.30 trout perch, 6 light pass, 1 yellow perch,
against the 22-12.
86 Trosperch, one mature trout perch.
What if I'm going to have it for the first one?
What if I'm going to have it for the second one?
Okay.
What if I'm going to have it for the second one?
We've got energy like now to know.
We'll see.
We'll see what the dial looks like when that's when they come up, but when they come out I'm
going to check the way the throttle work here.
I'm going to check the way the throttle works.
35.
30 drop.
34.
44.
34.
13.
15.
33.
Sogger.
15.1.
Walleye. 12.1.
97.
Walleye.
11.3.
Hurts.
98.
8.1.
59.
Walleye.
91.
Hurts.
5.4.
Walleye.
95.
Hurts.
5.4.
Walleye.
13.7.
White bass.
12.8.
5.9.
Walleye.
13.
Walleye.
13.
Walleye.
13.
Walleye.
13.
Walleye.
13.
16.
5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 4, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5
5.6, 5.7, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5, 6.7, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 6.6, 5.6, 5.6, 5.6, 7.6, 5.6, 5.6, 6.6, 6.6,
Three adult jumpers.
Two, six, two, five, eight, two, five, eight.
You got your beat.
I ain't three-quarter with that.
It works good until you try to tight.
We're going to try to put a make for all around the hook.
You can't do either one of those anymore.
Yeah, you got to modify your typing profile.
You got a short finger, doesn't mean the end.
I used to be able to tight with three fingers.
Now I'm down to one.
The other two-door reach go by.
This is getting a bigger bucket.
Yeah.
You got one gallon bucket or something.
Like an ice.
A gallon of tails.
Oh, I want a scooper on it.
Oh, yeah.
Dust pan.
It's not too much wood.
It's a little bit faster.
It's like it's exciting, wouldn't you?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
You got a bottle on it.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
You got a bottle on it.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
You got a bottle on it.
It's amazing.
It is amazing.
It's amazing.
It is amazing.
7, 6.
I'm going to go ahead and take a look at this one.
I'm going to wait then.
I'm going to wait for you guys.
I'm not going to.
I'm going to wait for you guys.
Yeah.
Do you want a lot of coffee?
Ten way fast.
Hello Purge.
Can I chop it up?
I'm going to take a look at this one.
It's 14.
It's high on you.
It's 15.
I'm just going to eat.
Yeah.
I'm going to eat that one.
You're going to have to chop it.
No.
Six.
You're going to bang it?
There's an adult chopper.
Gather it, too in there.
I'll get a little bit out of there.
That was an old diaper.
Let me get a picture of that before you sneak it off on a good country on the year.
Keep a couple of all eye on the table for this picture.
Actually, I'll just do it now.
Yeah.
Can you wait until it's recorded?
Yeah.
Wait.
Yeah.
It's going to ask me.
Yeah.
They're all on there.
They're not as quiet as many as I told yesterday, but so well over the past.
I think we're going to check out the picture.
Check out.
I'm going to leave just to train.
Oh, yeah.
Jason, you got one more check way number for me, right?
Uh, you wait one more picture.
I don't know where you want to go.
Okay, go ride.
second
track.
Okay, I'll just pour it right over to the end.
Okay.
I'm going to creep up here a little bit.
Okay.
I
…
Okay.
us a good way to keep tabs on the, you know, multiple fisheries, all the different species,
you know, how they're doing, how the reproduction's going, what the adult population's like,
what size structure is like, and gives a lot of insight to anglers as well. We put out that
report, it usually comes out around November and I typically get some phone calls and emails
asking for it before it's actually out there. So this, what we got today is not the only
survey, like you do this multiple times and average them out. It's not just the one day
that you were out there and what you got that day. Yeah, so Winnebago is an absolutely massive
body of water. It's the largest inland lake in Wisconsin. It's about 137 some thousand acres,
so it's kind of hard to wrap your head around if you're used to just like normal sized inland lakes.
We also have the upper river lakes that are part of the system as well, but the survey
does only cover Winnebago. Kind of scattered throughout the lake, we have 46 waypoints,
those are the same 46 waypoints we have been trawling on, you know, going back to 1986 to
keep it standardized and comparable across all these years of data that we have. And then we'll do
it the first week in August, the first week in September, the first week in October, and then
each one of those months we do the same 46 waypoints. So they're essentially done in
Triplekit and we take the average of those three months to, I guess, write up the final report.
I don't think a lot of people realize how much just counting goes into this.
Yeah, yeah, there was, I mean, today you guys saw it. We had some extremely high catch rates
for trout perch, which are these kind of small forage fish species. They're a highly utilized
forage species for a lot of our sawed after game fish like walleye and sauger. And actually,
yesterday, the day before you guys came out, we had 16,500 in a single net pool. I think we are
on the table counting for a good 20, 30 minutes there. Today, we actually moved over to check
weighing them as you guys probably observed. And yeah, if we kept on getting those really high
numbers, that's kind of what you have to do. But what is so significant about making sure that
this count is comparable to the last 20, 30, 40 years of counts?
Well, I mean, for the standardization of it, you know, if you were to switch up your waypoints
or do something different, this has been done the same way since 1986. If you change something
and then get a different result, you really can't use it to compare. That's a really big thing in
fisheries management in general, the standardization of methodology. And it's all relative, you know,
it's trend data and it's relative to what has happened before.
And so that's that's important for people to understand because it's not these fishermen will
think, well, they're hitting over here or last year they were hitting over there. But you can't
just go where you think they're hitting or where the word of mouth at the either the bar or the
paint shop is. Yeah, and that kind of gets into, I guess, like the the law of averages and why we
have 46 different waypoints scattered all over the lake. And then not only are we hitting like,
again, we're doing them in triplicate and taking the average of those. So you know, maybe there's
an off day and fish aren't in whatever location for whatever reason. That's why we do it in triplicate
to get that average. And then if you do it the same way, again, law of averages, everything
comes together and it's comparable over the long term. So what did you see today in terms of the
number of walleye per net pull? Was that average high low? Yeah, so currently right now in
Lake Winnebago and the Winnebago system in general, we do have a above average adult walleye population.
We had a very large year class in 2022. You guys probably saw today the biggest net pull of young
of year walleye. Again, the young of year indicating the year class strength or how successful the
spawn was. I think we had like 35 in a net pull. In 2022, we were having net pulls well over 100,
you know, basically indicating that they had a very, very successful spring.
The adult numbers are up. The average is right around five and most net pulls we were getting,
you know, between five and 10. So we do have a lot of the survey to go. We were also right on the
west side here, right in the main lake. That is where we typically see a good amount of walleye.
We can kind of get lower numbers on the north end and maybe the east side occasionally. But
they can, you know, they move around and numbers fluctuate and vary. You could look at like the
standard deviation of the data set between waypoints and it can be somewhat surprising actually.
But the young of year catch overall, you know, again, like people will be calling and asking like,
hey, how'd the first week of the trawl survey look? Like how's the year class? And it's like,
as of now we're probably sitting at above average hatch for Winnebago system walleye.
That being said, you know, those numbers could drop off as we move into the later months.
So I don't really want to make any claims on it now. But yeah, the adult walleye population was
definitely looking good above average for sure. So why didn't we see any larger walleye in the
net pole? It seemed like there were a few 11 of maybe 14. Yeah, I mean, so the average size of fish
on Winnebago, you know, you're really going to see fish between like 15 and 18 inches. You do see
bigger fish like in our spring electrofishing survey when we're up there during the spawn,
we see fish as big as 28, 29 inches. They are relatively rare. It's definitely more of a
I guess you could say like consumption or harvest oriented fishery around here. It's
really what the system is relying on is a lot of natural reproduction. And then the anglers most
definitely utilize that resource. And people, I guess, ask a lot about if adult numbers go down,
that's actually not the most concerning thing that could happen on the Winnebago system. The
most concerning thing would be the lack of production for a prolonged period of time. The
system is absolutely massive. We have a really unbelievable amount of spawning habitat for these
fish to utilize. And as long as environmental conditions line up the reproductive history of
fish, not just walleye, but fish in general, it's to spew out a whole lot of eggs and then
how many of them survive. So as long as that can still occur and those fish can be replenished,
the young of your catch, I guess, is what I'm getting at could be more concerning.
You were talking about the size of this lake versus other lakes that most people will probably
be on if you don't actively go fish Winnebago. And it is stunning to see just the drone that
were pulled out of just like the number of fish period huge. Yeah, just the biomass of the fresh
water drum that we get in the trawl is very, very impressive. I think like if you look at the like
end results from the survey, it's like well over 50,000 individuals each year. And they're not small
fish either. Like the trout perch, obviously, they're, you know, those little kind of forage
fish type. But yeah, the drum, they range from, you know, nine inches to we get them up to like 25,
26 on some exceptionally large individuals. And you also pulled a few sturgeon. Yeah,
yeah. It looks like one came across the setting. Yeah, one of them did have a pit tag. So Lake
Winnebago is home to one of, if not the largest lake sturgeon population in the world. And if you,
you know, want to take it into account like fish per acre or however, like yeah, maybe
obviously great lakes are so much bigger. So the population might have more individuals. But
for density, Lake Winnebago is probably, if not the biggest, one of the biggest in the world for
Lake sturgeon populations. And so what's the significance of having volunteers come out and do?
Yeah, so volunteers are great. You know, one, it really helps us get our work done. You guys
saw how many fish we are counting today and how many like how much time it takes to do that.
If we had to have that much more staff on the boat. And then two, you guys are out on the boat
today with a lot of walleyes for tomorrow members. And those guys not only do a lot of their own
work all around the system, I know I think you guys are covering some of their portable hatchery
work, but they fund projects for us. They come to, you know, Winnebago Fisheries Advisory
Committee meeting, have their input. And it's just a really, really good way to, I guess, gauge the
wants and concerns of the public versus, you know, what we're doing as a state agency. So not only
the walleyes for tomorrow guys, but then all the other volunteers that come out, they are typically
with a sportsman's club, or they're just a average angler who read the trial report and saw at the
bottom that they could sign up to volunteer. So it's a really good way to kind of bridge that
disconnect that often happens between anglers and the state agencies managing these resources.
They probably get a different perspective of what it's like out there. But versus just being in
their own boat. Yeah, I know. And it's like all anglers are going to have their own anecdotal
fishing experience. Like, oh, I caught more fish this year. And I caught more fish this year. And
it's like, well, if you come on our boat, will you really get a better understanding just because
of the sheer amount of fish that we're handling and the gear that we're allowed to use to sample
the population? And a couple more detail oriented. So the net and the drag cover one acre in each
of the waypoints? Yep. So the net is 27 feet wide when the boards have it expanded open. We
tow that behind the boat at four miles per hour for five minutes. If you do that calculation
there, someone can back check me if you want. It comes out to roughly one acre. So each trawl
will cover one acre. Each trawling event, you know, the 46 waypoints and triplicate will add up to
138. If you think that Winnebago is 137,000 acres, like the entire view, think about the acreage
coverage versus the whole system. It's like 0.01% of the system that we're actually covering with
that bottom trawl or, I guess, of the lake, not the system. But but that's enough to have accuracy
and faith in the numbers you're putting out. Yeah. And it's all again, going back to the
standardization and the relativeness. So it's relative to what we have been doing. And it is a
very extensive survey. I guess it's a very big lake, but we have 46 different sites scattered all
throughout. We're dragging that nut down there for five minutes, four miles an hour. It's uh,
we catch a lot of fish. Get a good idea of what's going on out there.
Can I get you to say it's probably your name and give your title and then just give us the names
of the other DRA people in the phone? Yeah, Angelo Kozola, that's A-N-G-E-L-O-C-O-Z-Z-O-L-A.
I am a senior fisheries biologist for the Wisconsin DNR based out of Oshkosh covering game
fish management on the Winnebago system. The other DNR staff on the boat, Jason Cole's was
the guy with the orange bib on. Jason is J-A-S-O-N-K-O-H-L-S. The gentleman with longer hair was
Nate Shamansky. That's N-A-T-E-S-C-H-M-A-N-S-K-I. I want to spell check that one. And then the boat
captain was Ryan Zernzag. That's R-Y-A-N-Z-E-R-N-Z-A-C-H. Great. Thank you so much. Good with that, Ann.
Thank you.