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have a 11:47.260 --> 12:05.900 It's almost like oh that was like an aspirational thing like yeah maybe we'll get into some 12:05.900 --> 12:06.900 wildlife. 12:06.900 --> 12:13.100 You can go catch something else yeah you start doing the math on that it's a lot of 12:13.100 --> 12:19.180 time a lot of money now with you know the way electronics and all that's going yeah 12:19.180 --> 12:28.340 yeah and then after the sky just throw them back oh I know I know and I do the quial surveys 12:28.340 --> 12:34.540 in the winter and it's nice to meet people who are just catching release but for our 12:34.540 --> 12:40.860 purposes it's also nice to see some fish up on the ice so no I know I know in some places 12:40.860 --> 12:47.340 you know we stock at a rate of you know seven or nine expecting it's all even out at three 12:47.340 --> 12:52.980 you know so people look at our stocking or portion they think oh this is going to be 12:52.980 --> 13:04.660 a good one and it's a reason we put so many fish in sometimes yeah so he's got a stocking 13:04.660 --> 13:19.180 okay okay that is interesting okay we were we've done a lot up on Namakagan and reading 13:19.180 --> 13:25.540 some of the reports there like they used to be it like over nine yeah yeah yeah and like 13:25.540 --> 13:30.060 then they crash come back and they're like above average but it's still not even half 13:30.060 --> 13:34.580 of what it was right right peak and it's like that gives you the sense of like I do 13:34.580 --> 13:38.420 a lot of deer hunting okay you remember like yeah you see 50 deer day kind of thing right 13:38.420 --> 13:42.100 well that was the peak never come back yep that's a good old days yeah like that's not 13:42.100 --> 13:46.060 coming back and anyone who thinks it is like but they played in the DNR like oh there's 13:46.060 --> 13:54.220 no right all the wolves yeah they were way over pop down in like the south of here used 13:54.220 --> 14:02.340 to be thought of is just a world-class walleye destination and for trophy size fish and supposedly 14:02.340 --> 14:06.220 they're still out there but their numbers are so low it's just become impossible to 14:06.220 --> 14:12.340 catch them you know we'll go stock them but you got to tell people you know like seven 14:12.340 --> 14:19.420 eight years you know you're tan and stained like flowages and whatever so well just even 14:19.420 --> 14:23.820 going over to Marinette and into the Bay Green Bay where it's like three year old fish 14:23.820 --> 14:28.620 are full size yes yeah and they've got huge fish but that's such a giant body of water 14:28.620 --> 14:31.700 most people can't even safely bring their boat out right right they're eating different 14:31.700 --> 14:39.060 stuff too and there's a lot there yeah there's no I'm good to go and you guys are all right 14:39.060 --> 14:46.140 yeah so our empty state fish hatchery founded in 1901 there's originally called the Monocua 14:46.180 --> 14:50.380 fish hatchery and then the name changed to the Woodruff fish hatchery the reason for 14:50.380 --> 14:56.860 our location here we're pretty centrally located amongst a lot of like clear freshwater lakes 14:56.860 --> 15:03.580 good places for us to harvest eggs from and also good places for our fish to end up the 15:03.580 --> 15:09.460 hatchery began raising mostly black bass so your small mouth and large mouth bass over 15:09.460 --> 15:15.780 the years we've transitioned to what's known as a cool water hatchery so cool water meaning 15:15.860 --> 15:24.260 we're pretty much set up to raise walleye northern pike musky some sturgeon but as it 15:24.260 --> 15:31.500 is now we raise our musky to a foot long fish and then two sizes of walleye so we raise 15:31.500 --> 15:38.140 our small fingering walleye they go they will get put out into lakes around memorial day 15:38.140 --> 15:42.660 or large fingering walleye which are going to be eight to nine inches they're going to 15:42.700 --> 15:50.700 get put out around labor day the reason for the name art empty art was supervisor here 15:50.700 --> 15:58.180 and he was pretty integral in the way that we raise our musky as far as walleye go I think 15:58.180 --> 16:08.780 this year we have 13 of our 15 lined ponds are being utilized to raise walleye so as 16:08.780 --> 16:15.140 far as the split goes we mostly focus on walleye here this sign right here gives kind 16:15.140 --> 16:22.940 of a pretty simplified you know basically timeline for what we deal with here at the 16:22.940 --> 16:28.860 hatchery so for walleye as soon as the ice goes out on a lake we're going to be out 16:28.860 --> 16:35.780 looking for where we're going to set our nets I should mention that we do not take any adult 16:35.780 --> 16:41.180 fish back to the hatchery it's only going to be fertilize eggs coming here so ice is 16:41.180 --> 16:45.920 off the lake we have open water we're going to put boats on and for walleye we're typically 16:45.920 --> 16:52.580 looking for pea size gravel maybe what you might consider rubble on the bottom of the 16:52.580 --> 16:59.580 lake up near shore maybe you know three to five feet of water walleye you're not typically 16:59.580 --> 17:04.180 going to see them during daylight hours so we're looking for their spawning habitat 17:04.180 --> 17:09.460 and we have a lot of historical data on where that is on any given lake so we're going to 17:09.460 --> 17:14.180 set our nets we're going to take our eggs and I'm going to get into that in a little bit 17:14.180 --> 17:19.340 but those eggs are going to come back to the hatchery and within 10 days you're going to 17:19.340 --> 17:23.020 start seeing looks like salt and pepper at the bottom of the jar those are their eyes 17:23.020 --> 17:30.380 so their eyes are going to form anything that's not showing this sign here this eye up we're 17:30.380 --> 17:37.540 going to assume was never fertilized so typically for us we're looking at 60 plus percent 60 17:37.540 --> 17:45.380 to 90 percent success with our fertilization for some comparison in the wild walleye are 17:45.380 --> 17:51.820 lucky to achieve 1 percent allow that's just ensure water movement kind of making it so 17:51.820 --> 17:57.780 that you know the sperm can never meet the egg so those eggs are going to sit and do 17:57.780 --> 18:03.420 their thing they're going to hatch 17 days into this process they're going to hatch as 18:03.420 --> 18:09.020 what's known as a sack fry so this little kind of belly that you can see here that's their 18:09.020 --> 18:14.140 yolk sack it's still attached to them their fins have not fully developed yet and they're 18:14.140 --> 18:23.260 not able to freely swim they're kind of just wiggling around at the bottom of the jars we can let 18:23.340 --> 18:29.500 them absorb their yolk sack we try not to bother them too much during this timeframe once that's 18:29.500 --> 18:33.460 been absorbed they're going to swim out of the jars and I'll explain that when we get down to 18:33.460 --> 18:39.860 the hatchery but they're pretty much ready to go into our ponds so they go into the ponds and 18:39.860 --> 18:48.460 this is a fairly nice large fingering wall I hear so generally speaking the way we do things we 18:48.460 --> 18:53.860 will harvest out our small fingerlings and a portion of those small fingerlings get planted 18:53.860 --> 19:03.060 back into our ponds for extended growth so we interacted with this fish once before but the 19:03.060 --> 19:07.780 grand scope of what's going on in a large fingerling pond is pretty much unknown until we go to 19:07.780 --> 19:16.540 harvest those out so like I said right on Labor Day do you want me to talk about mosquito you can 19:16.540 --> 19:21.460 run a little bit through yeah okay so that different it's only just the timeframe difference 19:21.460 --> 19:27.580 and the spawning habitat I guess I can talk about it here so this is what's called a fight 19:27.580 --> 19:34.180 net the fight net consists of basically three main components you've got what I'm holding on to 19:34.180 --> 19:41.060 right now this is the lead it's a curtain of netting with your floats on top and lead on the 19:41.100 --> 19:49.620 bottom it literally leads the fish into the remainder of the net so on the typical lake we 19:49.620 --> 19:55.660 might set as many as a dozen of these sometimes it's only two or three that are necessary what's 19:55.660 --> 20:00.300 going to happen is those fish are going to be swimming along looking for their spawning ground 20:00.300 --> 20:05.260 and they're swimming up pretty tight to shore typically at night and they're going to bump 20:05.260 --> 20:10.660 this net and basically they're going to treat this like the shoreline so they're going to follow 20:10.660 --> 20:20.780 it down all the way to these frames here would you guys like to come over this way okay sure 20:30.220 --> 20:37.060 so once they're led into these frames this portion of netting I'm talking on here is sewn 20:37.100 --> 20:44.660 shut for this display net but they're going to be funneled down in through the frames through 20:44.660 --> 20:51.660 two successive funnels and into what's called the pot end of the net so they're smart enough to 20:51.660 --> 20:57.260 know they don't want to be in here but they can't really navigate their way back out they're going 20:57.260 --> 21:02.140 to end up in this pot end of the net and once a day during our spawning season we're going to go 21:02.180 --> 21:10.260 lift all of our nets so we're going to untie from your anchor and lift this first hoop onto the 21:10.260 --> 21:15.460 bow of the boat untying this little cinch knot here gives you access to everything that was caught 21:15.460 --> 21:21.380 the night before if we're out walleye spawning anything that's not a walleye is going to be safely 21:21.380 --> 21:28.420 released immediately those walleye are going to get put on board our boat in holding tanks typically 21:28.900 --> 21:36.260 with walleye you're going to be spawning at the net so you're going to gather fish on board you're 21:36.260 --> 21:43.420 going to you know take here whatever measurements you might need look for existing fin clips you 21:43.420 --> 21:49.700 might have to clip some fins if it's necessary and then we're going to go through what's called the 21:49.700 --> 21:58.260 dry spawning method so picture like a glass or a plastic salad bowl you're going to express the 21:58.300 --> 22:03.980 eggs for multiple females into that how is that people ask you know how hard you have to push on 22:03.980 --> 22:10.700 these fish we're not going to spawn anything that's not ready to give eggs so it's a pretty 22:10.700 --> 22:17.220 gentle procedure you fill up that salad bowl wait a second 22:40.700 --> 22:57.140 where is it okay so you fill up that salad bowl leaving some room at the top and then you take 22:57.140 --> 23:03.340 the product or melt from a few males and add that over those eggs at that point nothing's happening 23:03.340 --> 23:09.580 we bring disinfected water with us into the field you add some of that water and give a quick mix 23:09.820 --> 23:15.180 and within three seconds all those eggs are going to be fertilized once fertilized the eggs are 23:15.180 --> 23:20.380 going to immediately start going through what's called water hardening so they're going to swell 23:20.380 --> 23:27.180 to about four times their original size and the membrane that we think of is like an egg shell 23:27.180 --> 23:33.500 is going to seal up the micro pile is going to seal up and that egg will go from what's called a 23:33.500 --> 23:39.020 green egg they're very soft they're very fragile to something that's fairly robust that whole 23:39.020 --> 23:44.220 process takes about an hour and a half during which we're going to put them in coolers with 23:44.220 --> 23:51.340 some red clay so the red clay helps to keep those eggs from sticking to one another the fertilized 23:51.340 --> 23:57.660 eggs will produce kind of a mucus layer and in nature that's used so they can kind of cling to 23:58.700 --> 24:05.020 you know sticks or rocks or something to just not be washed around in you know the waves of 24:05.020 --> 24:13.580 wherever they are um there's red clay binds to that mucus and instead of you know creating clumps 24:13.580 --> 24:19.420 where the center of that clump wouldn't have any oxygen they're more freely flowing or freely 24:19.420 --> 24:26.860 moving within our coolers um those coolers are typically put on shore for that time just because 24:26.860 --> 24:30.700 we're gonna have to go back and keep running more nuts and we don't want them bouncing around on 24:30.700 --> 24:35.820 the boat as much as possible at the end of the day we gather up all those coolers and come back 24:35.820 --> 24:41.660 here to the hatchery so any questions that anything you'd like me to talk about with no I think 24:41.660 --> 24:46.060 that's good we we got to go out in the field a few times to see so all this kind of reinforces 24:46.060 --> 24:49.260 what I've seen okay okay awesome so we'll go down to the hatchery 24:51.820 --> 24:56.300 I've seen a mini van go by and I was like oh maybe the I know I know I don't know if you notice I 24:56.380 --> 24:59.260 looked over your shoulder to saw the same thing 25:03.900 --> 25:08.940 okay so this right here is the first stop for the eggs once they come to the hatchery 25:08.940 --> 25:14.140 it's kind of a newer construction within this building this is our quarantine area or disinfection 25:14.140 --> 25:20.140 room all the spots that you can see hanging those are going to be used to temper the water in our 25:20.140 --> 25:27.580 cooler to match the water temperature in the hatchery I should mention that we get our we have 25:27.580 --> 25:32.540 two different water sources here so we have our warm water source which is Madeline Lake and our 25:32.540 --> 25:38.940 cold water source is Clear Lake and we're able to combine those two to achieve whatever temperature 25:38.940 --> 25:45.420 we'd like out here so that whole process of tempering takes you know 10 15 minutes depending on how 25:45.420 --> 25:50.460 much of the temperature swing you're trying to achieve after that all that red clay needs to 25:50.460 --> 25:55.820 get rinsed off and any small clumps of eggs that may have formed need to be broken up so 25:56.460 --> 26:02.300 you're gonna rinse with you know fresh water and the eggs get passed through a silk screen to kind 26:02.300 --> 26:09.180 of break them apart separate them all after they're all been separated they're gonna go into an iodine 26:09.180 --> 26:17.100 bath so the iodine solution is going to kill anything on the surface of the egg remember that 26:17.100 --> 26:23.420 water hardening already took place so nothing is penetrating the egg that's a 10 minute process 26:23.420 --> 26:29.340 during which we use this handy little guy here so we call it a pig trough around here but this is a 26:29.340 --> 26:35.900 Von Bayer trough and the way it works is you line up a single file of eggs down at the bottom of 26:35.900 --> 26:42.540 the trough and count them we usually do that three times and take an average and this is a 26:42.540 --> 26:49.980 standardized size so it allows us to extrapolate eggs for court believe it or not every female 26:49.980 --> 26:55.020 fish is a little different and there seem to be some trends on some lakes as far as eggs size 26:55.820 --> 27:03.180 for walleye i don't know if this is even worse showing but um they're the smallest eggs we deal 27:03.180 --> 27:09.180 with so this number you kind of end up squinting at a line but it becomes important once we get 27:09.180 --> 27:18.140 out here so that's typically one person's job they're this this was built so that it's a separate 27:19.020 --> 27:23.420 space and then someone else is out here receiving those eggs and putting them up into jars 27:25.100 --> 27:28.700 so 27:31.980 --> 27:37.500 this is a McDonald's type hatchery jar we have a thousand and eighty of them just on this 27:37.500 --> 27:44.300 half of the hatchery here typically we're we're very efficient compared to when this was 27:44.300 --> 27:50.860 constructed so for walleye we're typically using maybe a dozen of these in a season the way this 27:50.940 --> 27:57.180 works is you got water running from this top trough 24 seven down each of these 27:58.460 --> 28:03.980 spigots into this downspout so the water is actually entering the jar from the bottom 28:04.940 --> 28:10.620 for walleye we're going to be putting about two quarts of eggs per jar and you want to 28:11.340 --> 28:16.300 create kind of a gentle rolling of the eggs in here you don't want them flying all over the place 28:16.300 --> 28:22.460 but you also don't want them squashing down on one another our biggest enemy in the hatchery 28:22.460 --> 28:30.140 itself is fungus so the more those eggs can freely move the less kind of dead spots that you have 28:30.140 --> 28:37.340 in them the more we can control any fungal outbreak if we do notice fungus starting to creep up in 28:37.340 --> 28:42.860 here we can add hydrogen peroxide to this top trough and it kind of floats the fungus right 28:42.940 --> 28:50.220 out for us other than that someone has to come through here every day and siphon out any dead 28:50.220 --> 28:57.020 eggs or anything that just doesn't look right during the height of the season that's an eight 28:57.020 --> 29:05.100 hour day once those eggs attached will be down here put this guy over the top just to make sure 29:05.100 --> 29:10.940 no one swims out early no one gets swept away by the water once we think they're ready to swim 29:11.660 --> 29:17.020 we'll darken all the windows in here we'll turn off all the lights except for these lights over 29:17.020 --> 29:24.380 the top of whatever battery we think is ready to be swimming um fry so young fish are attracted 29:24.380 --> 29:30.460 to light in the same way that bugs are so they're going to swim their way up out of these jars into 29:30.460 --> 29:36.220 what was the drain trough but is now going to allow them to swim underneath my feet and 29:36.700 --> 29:43.020 swim themselves into these holding tanks so usually takes about 24 hours they'll do it all by 29:43.020 --> 29:48.860 themselves sometimes you have to help a little bit at the end dump a couple jars out but typically 29:48.860 --> 29:54.380 they'll come in one morning and they'll all be waiting for you over here um these holding tanks 29:55.820 --> 30:00.620 for walleye they don't spend a lot of time in them we like to get them into our ponds pretty much 30:00.620 --> 30:08.220 as quickly as possible um you can't feed them in here so it's important that we just get them 30:08.220 --> 30:19.100 moving and stock our ponds as quickly as we can so anything else on hatchery stuff anything 30:19.100 --> 30:27.820 with glaringly obvious that i missed okay okay um do you want to go into the tour room is that 30:27.820 --> 30:36.060 i'm wasting your time oh no see so these are a walleye for this year um they these aquarium fish 30:36.060 --> 30:44.380 are oh you're fine so these are a walleye for this year um these aquarium fish are slightly 30:44.380 --> 30:49.660 smaller than their counterparts that are in our ponds uh they were spawned out of big arbor 30:49.740 --> 30:57.020 right of lake this year and you know they have a couple weeks left to grow to the large fingering 30:57.020 --> 31:06.300 size our biggest problems with raising walleye and captivity uh as a schooling fish we can put a few 31:06.300 --> 31:12.220 more of them into a pond than we can with musky so they can be stocked more densely into our ponds 31:13.100 --> 31:20.140 they will also readily cannibalize each other so any of them that seem to be getting left behind 31:20.140 --> 31:27.340 in growth rate will become food uh also when we go to take fish out of our ponds we're drawing the 31:27.340 --> 31:34.460 water down and condensing them and also causing some stress and that's another time we will start 31:34.460 --> 31:41.180 seeing a lot of you know cannibalism occurring um the minnows in here they're all fat head minnows 31:41.740 --> 31:49.100 and we have to purchase them the same way that bait shop does so prior to 2000 31:50.220 --> 31:58.540 crews here were able to go out and capture food for our fish um viral hemorrhagic septosemia was 31:59.820 --> 32:07.020 noticed in wisconsin for the first time then and since then we've had to you know purchase our minnows 32:07.340 --> 32:16.780 um as far as water quality goes for walleye and comparison to musky they are a little hardier 32:16.780 --> 32:26.780 when it comes to pH and dissolved oxygen they're very finicky with temperature if the temperature 32:28.140 --> 32:35.260 is not low enough any sort of handling of them just doesn't end well so that's one of the reasons 32:35.260 --> 32:40.540 why we have to wait until september to harvest them up as a large treasureling 32:43.740 --> 32:49.980 and so they'll feed throughout the time on these minnows yeah yeah um that amount of minnows will 32:49.980 --> 32:59.820 probably be gone by friday so a few days from now they are they're a lot more aggressive than most 32:59.820 --> 33:11.020 people think uh a group of walleye this size will you know biomass wise they'll eat a lot more than 33:11.740 --> 33:17.660 similar biomass of musky at this stage of life um trying to think 33:20.300 --> 33:29.500 does most of that happen in the night yeah so uh if we were to be here right when we feed them 33:29.500 --> 33:34.780 we see some action but typically these aquarium fish get pretty spooked by 33:34.780 --> 33:41.020 the lights and there's us standing here so they're not really actively feeding um as far as in our 33:41.020 --> 33:49.180 ponds go um they move through their supply of minnows very quickly so we typically get a 33:49.180 --> 33:55.340 minnows shipment on friday and by monday or tuesday there's very few minnows left i think they eat 33:55.980 --> 33:59.820 throughout the day in those cases so 34:04.540 --> 34:09.260 oh so these are musky over here yeah yeah they're lazily hanging out 34:15.500 --> 34:18.460 yeah these minnows don't seem to be quite spooked exactly yeah 34:18.460 --> 34:23.340 yeah 34:25.340 --> 34:30.860 yeah so we said i'm hit on the fathead um i think they're like straight on the side 34:33.180 --> 34:38.860 yeah i see it i think that it is a really young fathead oh so i guess it is the same straight 34:38.860 --> 34:46.860 so we hit uh two sizes of minnows so we start with um it's called a grade 11 to 18 it's the smallest 34:46.940 --> 34:52.860 minnow we can purchase and then we move on a grade 10 is smallest and then we move on to these 34:52.860 --> 35:00.380 grade 11 to 18 so this is as big as the food gets that we offer any of our minnows versus 35:01.580 --> 35:15.500 palimones yeah sure yeah we do not know um they're all 35:16.860 --> 35:25.100 yeah um i guess i can talk about that on camera if you'd like to but um i'm more curious 35:25.100 --> 35:36.540 oh yeah um so for wal i think they begin like eating zooplankton here um we inoculate our ponds 35:37.180 --> 35:43.580 with zooplankton and we fertilize them before any wal i go in so we're fertilizing them with 35:44.060 --> 35:49.820 grass tanning how the fish act in the wild versus under lights in the 35:49.820 --> 35:58.460 yeah um i'd say this size these guys are forces be a little closer to each other than they would 35:58.460 --> 36:07.180 like to be um they will school but it's pretty tightly packed in there right now um but as far 36:07.180 --> 36:12.460 as their general habits they turn the lights off and you know leave for the night 36:13.740 --> 36:17.980 you come in in the morning they're all congregating in that too they like 36:17.980 --> 36:24.940 private structure like that um right now with the lights on they're probably spending 36:26.380 --> 36:32.060 more time you know being anxious about that then they would be if they're in a little more 36:32.540 --> 36:41.340 water um and then they do react to movement out here in a way that i'm sure is not natural 36:41.340 --> 36:50.220 but um in our ponds which we'll see i'll show you what i'm talking about but um in that case i 36:50.220 --> 36:55.580 think it's as natural as you can get with the amount of control. The miners um the plastics 36:55.580 --> 36:58.780 potentially impacting the sex so yes yep um 37:01.660 --> 37:06.220 i don't know how much i should say on that. We're not looking for that okay i'm just more 37:06.220 --> 37:12.860 curious. We produce uh far more female fish than male fish. 37:12.860 --> 37:18.220 That's what he said is that we're having these ponds. Yeah. These theirs any of the exponents are not 37:18.220 --> 37:23.020 high. Okay. And so they said that's one thing they know is that they have different distributions. 37:23.020 --> 37:32.860 Yeah yeah um most of our line ponds were created in the mid 90s and we used to use their ponds 37:34.140 --> 37:40.220 and i think you could line up on a graph you know the beginning of the line pond 37:41.420 --> 37:45.580 sex of the fish at least they're correlated. Yeah 37:45.580 --> 37:53.980 I will say it's better than the reverse because if we are producing all male fish 37:55.020 --> 37:57.260 it would be much longer than all of them. 38:01.260 --> 38:08.780 Good all right so right here we've got five of our turtle. Yeah we're going to shoot. 38:08.780 --> 38:16.620 So five of our extended growth walleye ponds each of these ponds is plastic line 38:18.220 --> 38:24.380 they're about an acre in size and the deep end over by those catwalks is about eight feet deep 38:24.380 --> 38:29.340 shallow and over here is three and a half to four feet deep it's about two million gallons of water 38:29.340 --> 38:36.540 per pond um we won't be able to see much while i spend most of their time down at the bottom 38:37.180 --> 38:43.580 but it also means they're more protected from predators so on this side of the road we have 38:44.300 --> 38:49.900 you know ten other ponds across the road but back here we don't have to worry too much about 38:50.460 --> 38:57.500 birds um you know the biggest issue would be otters coming out of these wetlands but other 38:57.500 --> 39:04.140 than that they're pretty safe back here um twice a day someone was going to come by and do water 39:04.140 --> 39:11.020 chemistry samples on every pond and multiple depths so you're looking at dissolved oxygen. 39:11.020 --> 39:18.940 My battery died because we just uh my mic is one second. Oh you're from um so with these 39:18.940 --> 39:24.540 walleye ponds um beginning of the year they're going to be utilized for our small fingerling fish 39:25.180 --> 39:33.420 at that time our biggest issue with our location here uh is proximity to these wetlands and 39:33.420 --> 39:39.580 toads so toads are going to come in they're going to lay their eggs in our ponds those eggs 39:39.580 --> 39:44.060 are going to hatch those tadpoles are going to swim around and when it comes time to take those 39:44.060 --> 39:50.700 small fingerling walleye out of the ponds um we are counting them by weight so if you can imagine 39:50.700 --> 39:57.260 a bucket brigade uh you know five or six people bucketing fish up to a distribution truck 39:58.380 --> 40:02.540 and you've got a bucket that's an unknown amount of tadpoles and an unknown amount of fish at that 40:02.620 --> 40:09.020 point makes it hard so there's a lot of toad patrol that goes on down here got to get those guys 40:09.020 --> 40:16.380 out of the pond um for large fingerling fish we do have some waiting birds that might come by 40:16.380 --> 40:21.820 we're mostly worried about them taking our minnows and to be honest with you their beaks are sharp 40:21.820 --> 40:28.380 enough to puncture our liners so you know hug your horn at them just try not to let them feel welcome 40:28.540 --> 40:35.180 here but um other than that walleye are left you know they're fed and they're left to do what they 40:35.180 --> 40:44.700 need to do to grow um as far as the water chemistry goes if we notice any issues after our water 40:44.700 --> 40:51.820 chemistry test the only thing we can really do is run water so we've got right here uh shallow fill 40:51.900 --> 40:59.500 is on uh flowing water through this pond at the catwalk um there's a series of dam boards that 40:59.500 --> 41:05.100 maintain the water level and we're actually flowing water over the top of those so the water is flowing 41:05.100 --> 41:13.180 in one direction um if water chemistry is starting to get you know really worrisome we can turn on 41:13.180 --> 41:20.300 what's called our jet fill which is how we can add the most amount of water the you know quick as 41:20.540 --> 41:27.660 possible and then there's a downspout to add water you know directly below the catwalk uh typically 41:28.540 --> 41:33.740 you know this time of year you might come here and see all of our ponds running at the shallow 41:33.740 --> 41:42.220 fill uh long hot sunny days the pH is going to start climbing up and you know associated uh 41:42.220 --> 41:48.860 dissolved oxygen as well um i should mention these ponds have all been fertilized 41:49.660 --> 41:54.860 uh before any fish got put into them early on in the season so fertilization is 41:55.500 --> 42:02.220 um you know we use brewer's yeast and ground alfalfa to kickstart some zooplankton growth 42:03.420 --> 42:08.700 we typically leave one pond without fish for a period of time we treat that as our bug pond 42:08.700 --> 42:14.460 we're able to take zooplankton out of that pond and inoculate the other ponds with that 42:15.020 --> 42:23.500 um during the middle of our growing season here once we're not worried about zooplankton and all 42:23.500 --> 42:31.900 our walleye are feeding on minnows we will add a blue pondi to these ponds um that pondi refracts 42:31.900 --> 42:37.820 more sunlight than it allows to penetrate and really helps us control photosynthesis so without 42:37.820 --> 42:44.780 that we would have major algae problems all the time um at this time of year we float we flowed 42:45.500 --> 42:52.220 is that a word we put so much extra water into these ponds at this point that that pondi 42:52.860 --> 43:00.700 has left um anything that leaves our hatchery either the building itself or the ponds any of 43:00.700 --> 43:06.460 that water uh does not get reused we're not a recirculating system gets pumped out from that 43:06.540 --> 43:13.100 little station behind you up over the top of this hill to a three acre retention pond and we let 43:13.100 --> 43:19.820 mother nature filter our water for us um we're coming up pretty quickly here to large fingering 43:19.820 --> 43:25.020 harvest so the way that works it's a little different than with the small fingering um 43:27.020 --> 43:32.780 instead of bucket brigading and counting by weight we're able to use a fish loader 43:33.340 --> 43:40.780 um which allows us to basically just add fish with no water to our distribution truck 43:40.780 --> 43:46.460 so in that stage we're counting those fish by water displacement um it's a pretty nice system 43:47.020 --> 43:52.460 at the bottom of each of these ponds is what's called a catch kettle if think of a 43:53.420 --> 43:58.780 u-shaped concrete structure if i was standing in it the water level would be right above my knee 43:59.500 --> 44:05.340 and you're able to put the intake of that fish loader down into that catch kettle 44:06.220 --> 44:11.820 sucks fish and water up to a hopper where there's a series of grates that the fish kind of bounce along 44:12.380 --> 44:17.340 and the water falls right back into the pond and just fish once again are loaded onto the truck 44:17.820 --> 44:24.220 um for that it's kind of an all hands on deck operation so you've got multiple people in the 44:24.220 --> 44:29.900 pond kind of hurting the fish towards that catch kettle uh you've got someone manning the hopper 44:29.900 --> 44:36.140 because occasionally you have to help those fish keep bouncing along those grates and of course you 44:36.140 --> 44:41.580 have to have drivers for the distribution trucks and people monitoring the water level in those 44:41.580 --> 44:54.140 trucks um for stocking fish we we use two you know B-class semi-trucks and one F450 that usually 44:54.140 --> 45:01.340 gets us by sometimes we have to put a tank on a smaller pickup truck um well salt the water so 45:01.340 --> 45:07.740 you're adding salt to the distribution truck water that helps calm the fish and we're able to put 45:08.380 --> 45:13.740 much more you know on board than otherwise so they're able to leave here with sometimes 45:15.420 --> 45:19.180 you know enough fish that you won't have to send a second truck to that lake 45:21.740 --> 45:23.820 I kind of think what else for stocking so 45:27.020 --> 45:35.260 we service predominantly the upper Wisconsin river strain of walleye at this time we also have 45:35.340 --> 45:41.100 some extended growth walleye from the upper Chippewa river strain those were given to us by 45:41.100 --> 45:48.460 spooner the hatchery and spooners so for our purposes we're spawning our own upper Wisconsin 45:48.460 --> 45:56.300 fish um those fish are with upper Wisconsin fish might be stocked anywhere from locket is 45:56.300 --> 46:03.180 air down to lake du Bay and Stevens Point um our upper chip fish it's kind of all up to spooner 46:03.180 --> 46:08.380 where they'd like them but you know think like a yellow river area something like that so 46:10.540 --> 46:15.900 I always have people on these tours ask me you know the genetics of these fish and stay in 46:15.900 --> 46:23.020 Wisconsin doesn't discriminate between lake to lake basis it's all by watershed so yeah 46:24.460 --> 46:30.460 Chippewa upper Wisconsin green bay and is the fox considered different for that part of the 46:30.460 --> 46:34.620 green bay and I think it's up to a certain impoundment it's considered green bay 46:35.180 --> 46:40.540 um but then past that I think it's its own watershed as it were okay 46:42.860 --> 46:52.220 so how many typically come through here fish wise yeah um so this year I think we've got 140 46:53.020 --> 46:55.660 I'd have to really double check my numbers but so maybe 46:56.460 --> 47:04.380 it's okay don't include this it's like 140 000 um large fingerlings and 47:07.580 --> 47:13.420 about maybe half again as much for the smalls we can produce quite a few smalls 47:15.260 --> 47:23.180 the reason we even worry about small fingerling people always ask aren't you just feeding 47:23.260 --> 47:27.660 other fish with those they're very small two or three inches maybe um the lakes that those get 47:27.660 --> 47:33.420 put into them show them to be receptive to them and they're very cheap to make so 47:34.540 --> 47:40.300 the you know large fingerling walleye is a few dollars for the state to produce whereas the 47:40.300 --> 47:48.860 smalls is sense so I can get you some numbers before we're done but that it one of the other 47:48.860 --> 47:54.140 people have talked about like by the time the number that survived from the egg for this to like 47:54.140 --> 47:59.740 an actual trophy fish oh it could be hundreds of dollars for that one fish yes hundreds of dollars 47:59.740 --> 48:08.380 and a very low percent chance too so um most of our lakes around here this three to five years 48:08.380 --> 48:14.460 before that fish is going to be 15 inches and the closer they get to like a magical 30 inch mark 48:15.020 --> 48:20.060 it was you know more slowly they're going to grow uh females especially 48:20.060 --> 48:25.580 will grow quickly in the beginning and then uh they start putting a lot of energy into making eggs 48:25.580 --> 48:30.620 every year so this slows down their growth right so when someone asks is it worth it 48:31.260 --> 48:35.900 like is it worth it is there our research is this a you know we should be putting effort into 48:35.900 --> 48:40.540 stocking we should put effort into making the lakes more habitable or at least when we stop only 48:40.540 --> 48:45.660 stocking the lakes that we know will actually sustain the population yeah so that's two different 48:45.660 --> 48:51.260 schools of thought there you've got people who think that uh kind of return everything to nature 48:51.260 --> 48:55.500 and if you were to do that there's quite a few lakes in northern Wisconsin that would have no 48:55.500 --> 49:02.060 law the only reason they have walleye in the first place is because of the hatchery system uh we are 49:02.060 --> 49:09.580 you know we've been around since 1901 and only the fourth oldest hatchery in the state so it's 49:09.580 --> 49:17.020 a legacy it's been going on for quite some time um as far as supplemental stocking goes if you're 49:17.020 --> 49:24.220 going to supplement an already uh naturally reproducing population that has been shown to be 49:25.100 --> 49:37.020 you know not as productive um what we do a lot here is um our biologists will identify lakes with 49:37.580 --> 49:44.940 declining natural reproduction maybe zero natural reproduction and if you start looking at those 49:44.940 --> 49:51.100 lakes you're talking about you know really high dollar uh tourist attractions that people wouldn't 49:51.100 --> 49:57.420 want to go to if they weren't walleye in them um and then there's some lakes that are managed more 49:57.420 --> 50:03.820 as a trophy fishery and you know supplemental stocking along the way might be helpful for them 50:03.820 --> 50:14.220 but um generally speaking if you were to eliminate you know rearing of walleye and stocking of walleye 50:15.020 --> 50:23.580 I think the major outcome is suddenly the view you know much fewer walleye destinations in the 50:23.580 --> 50:33.180 state um especially you know if you look at when this place started focused on black bass that was 50:33.820 --> 50:38.300 what people were wanting to catch um they started bringing walleye all over the state 50:38.860 --> 50:45.900 and that became you know why people wanted to come to Wisconsin so it's interesting that that 50:45.900 --> 50:53.260 that history like Wisconsin in many ways literally grew it's walleye traditional yeah yeah so um 50:55.500 --> 51:02.620 funny like anecdotal stuff with musky any you know world record musky 51:02.620 --> 51:09.900 back in the 20s and 30s seem to be caught by someone who owned a bar or tavern um walleye kind 51:09.900 --> 51:16.940 of started following suit with that and people were advertising you know come to my resort we have 51:17.660 --> 51:23.900 you know swingers of walleye you can come catch um the state realized pretty quickly they had to 51:23.900 --> 51:32.140 support that effort and you know because of that we've got you know two of the world's largest 51:32.140 --> 51:37.500 you know walleye hatcheries in northern Wisconsin with awesome spooner 51:40.940 --> 51:50.140 I think as far as you know kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way you put the money and time 51:50.140 --> 51:57.980 into it and people will enjoy it so to say that it's a waste of time depends on what you're trying 51:57.980 --> 52:02.700 to get out of it um would it be awesome if we could move to 52:04.620 --> 52:11.820 all habitat protection development rehabilitation sure have you yet to see anything that says that 52:11.820 --> 52:19.500 that's a hundred percent successful you look at even you know some fairly recent studies on 52:19.500 --> 52:24.860 creating habitat for walleye spawning they don't seem to have much promise so 52:24.940 --> 52:33.740 so we seem to have reached a point with walleye in particular where um and you can talk to 52:33.740 --> 52:40.060 biologists who knows a lot more about this than I do but there's lakes of greatest concern when 52:40.060 --> 52:46.940 it comes to walleye that despite many efforts to kickstart natural reproduction don't seem to be 52:46.940 --> 52:53.660 responding to those and therefore facilities like ours are going to have to be responsible to keep 52:53.660 --> 53:01.740 walleye in them so most people don't know that walleye are a river push yeah yeah so how many 53:01.740 --> 53:07.660 of the lakes up here that people like became walleye destinations like were originally stocked 53:07.660 --> 53:13.100 maybe not by the steve but like walleye weren't native there to be kidding it's hard to say so 53:13.100 --> 53:23.100 until the modern genetics um they'd be really hard to pin down a number of lakes um even pretty 53:23.100 --> 53:33.820 safely say that you know these small acreage landlocked lakes with you know poor spawning 53:33.820 --> 53:38.940 habitat to begin with probably you were never meant to have walleye in them just because they 53:38.940 --> 53:45.500 can naturally reproduce somewhere doesn't mean that they belong there as it were they of course 53:45.500 --> 53:56.140 belong there now if you ask people but you know a lot of larger deep water clear water lakes 53:56.140 --> 54:03.180 probably have a walleye population in them to begin with but you know in back of the 1800s 54:03.180 --> 54:09.820 there were people just filling up a milk jug of fry and bringing it wherever they wanted so 54:09.820 --> 54:16.060 it's one of the reasons we work so hard to maintain the genetic integrity of our fish leaving here 54:17.740 --> 54:22.460 we're trying to avoid obviously creating what's known as a hatchery strain of fish where we're 54:22.460 --> 54:29.820 breeding spawning the same fish again over and over um but also there's a reason why they're 54:29.820 --> 54:36.860 genetically diverse and maintaining that seems to help with natural reproduction as well what 54:36.940 --> 54:42.380 would happen if the state stopped doing this like in there were no more walleye people just 54:42.380 --> 54:48.540 move on to something else and just another fish would take its spot in the ecosystem but sure what 54:48.540 --> 54:56.780 would be lost sure um ecosystem wise most places would be fine there's other fish species that 54:56.780 --> 55:04.140 would fill that niche um I guess I've talked to plenty of people I pull up in a truck to a boat 55:04.140 --> 55:10.380 launch and I go and I start getting ready to dump fish off and I have plenty of people asking 55:10.380 --> 55:17.260 hey what do you have in there what do you bring into us walleye thank you no one is mad that we're 55:17.260 --> 55:22.940 putting walleye into the lakes um if I were to say I've got to load a smallmouth bass I'd get 55:22.940 --> 55:30.540 run out of there in some places so smallmouth bass um it's a public opinion matter they think 55:30.620 --> 55:36.460 it's a major competition for walleye maybe it is maybe it's not I think it really depends on 55:36.460 --> 55:39.980 the system you're talking about it was largemouth bass that were actually more competitive 55:39.980 --> 55:49.260 yes it is yeah but you tell them tell that to a 60 year old with a 200 000 boat um they don't 55:49.260 --> 55:57.900 want to hear it so um I think the fallout from not having any walleye on the landscape it'd be more 55:58.700 --> 56:04.460 uh you'd see it more with how people use the resource you wouldn't necessarily see 56:05.260 --> 56:12.700 major changes to the ecosystem I'm sure there'd be some but uh you'd be a lot less money spent on 56:13.580 --> 56:19.820 you know coming here with your boat from Illinois um we a lot less time spent on the water 56:21.340 --> 56:27.180 a certain times of the year um you got to think spring walleye is a big deal ice fishing is a big 56:27.180 --> 56:34.220 deal for walleye so it just be less tourism dollars coming in the winter coming in the spring 56:34.220 --> 56:40.300 so people might gravitate more towards you know musky fishing in the fall for that reason or 56:41.500 --> 56:46.380 bass fishing has kind of taken a foothold in Wisconsin and it's an important driver for 56:47.100 --> 56:53.420 tourism but I don't personally think anything's going to replace walleye is it just something 56:53.420 --> 56:59.580 different about it yeah yeah and it's part of the culture in a way that it's hard to sell 57:00.140 --> 57:07.260 a certain demographic of people on bass or musky you know both of which have become a very 57:07.260 --> 57:15.660 catch and release oriented species um people like keeping a few walleye a year some people keep 57:15.660 --> 57:22.060 more than that people like keeping a few walleye or having a fish fry um you know there's just 57:22.060 --> 57:27.900 wouldn't be their vacation in Wisconsin without it honestly well people aren't coming to take 57:27.900 --> 57:33.900 tours here to watch a small mouth or a move it right right no and there's you we have two 57:33.900 --> 57:40.620 types of people here we have the musky diehards and the people who want to learn more about walleye 57:40.940 --> 57:47.340 uh there's really no one who's coming on a tour taking time out of their day just to learn about 57:47.340 --> 57:53.740 our white sucker production or just to look at our nice 1933 buildings it's you know people love 57:53.740 --> 58:04.060 these fish and you know I think with good reason but um I'm not going to say that if this was a 58:04.060 --> 58:09.980 large mouth bass pantry we wouldn't have any visitors it's I'm you know it's not quite that far but 58:10.700 --> 58:17.260 it's a certain type of person um who comes here in the first place so what's it like for you when 58:17.260 --> 58:21.340 you get to actually like see the full cycle of this and bring them to a lake and let them go 58:21.340 --> 58:29.260 I like it a lot uh so I start the year on a spawning crew um you know get out of here and go do 58:29.260 --> 58:35.660 something hands-on very enjoyable I am starting to really enjoy working with the ponds more as I've 58:35.660 --> 58:43.340 been here longer um the full I have pictures on my phone of here are eggs that we spawn and here 58:43.340 --> 58:50.220 are fish leaving my truck and it's fun I feel like you have a little bit of you know stake in the 58:50.220 --> 58:57.100 game a little ownership of the resource in a way but uh yeah I really enjoy it and do you 58:57.180 --> 59:02.460 catch him with a small ai what's your fishing technique yeah um 59:03.180 --> 59:09.340 you know people but generous I uh I mostly bass fish in the summer time I don't really like 59:09.340 --> 59:15.740 eating fish unless it's uh something I caught through the ice it's personal preference but I 59:15.740 --> 59:21.580 like walleye fishing in the winter time okay yeah yeah I know there's a lot of people that like 59:21.580 --> 59:27.900 especially summer they won't touch a crappie yeah that too yeah all right I think that covers 59:27.900 --> 59:31.740 what we wanted out of this this was great okay thank you to say and spell your name and give 59:31.740 --> 59:41.020 your title just so I had to correct sure yeah so I'm Ryan Flaherty that's ryamflahtyy and i'm a 59:41.100 --> 59:46.060 fishery use technician advanced at R&P fish hatchery excellent thank you so much you're welcome I really 59:46.060 --> 59:54.300 appreciate it yeah 01:00:11.020 --> 01:00:25.740 so 01:00:41.020 --> 01:00:43.020 So 01:01:11.020 --> 01:01:13.020 You 01:01:41.020 --> 01:01:43.020 You 01:02:11.020 --> 01:02:37.300 So this building here with the kind of sliding garage door facing us that's full of fight 01:02:37.300 --> 01:02:58.300 Yeah, so when we use those spike nets, they're only one time used per season. So we put a, let's say, we're walleye spawning and big are vibrato, then that that net will get hung back behind those boats will get all fresh nets to go to our sucker lakes.