[Music] Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for north central Minnesota.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org.

Hello, again, everybody.

I'm Ray Gildow, welcome to Lakeland Currents.

Tonight our topic is going to be fisheries and we're talking to a group of guys from the Leech Lake Area that are all experts in this and they're going to tell us why we aren't catching as many as we should or why we're catching more than we should.

Anyway it's a very, very interesting topic going into the cold season and it's very, very interesting.

Wade let's start with you.

Thanks Ray for having us on today.

My name is Wade Massure, I'm the Walker Area Fisheries Supervisor.

I've been an area fisheries supervisor with the state since 2022.

I started off in Park Rapids and just recently, starting this year in June, I moved over and I'm now the Walker Area Fisheries Supervisor and with that today I brought my two local area experts with me and I'll let them introduce themselves.

Absolutely Jody.

I am Jody Derks, I am the Assistant Fisheries Supervisor in Walker and have been there since 2018.

And you come from Iowa.

Yes.

And you come from Wisconsin.

We won't hold that against you.

Carl.

I'm Carl Peterson, I'm the Large Lake Specialist for Leech Lake for the state of Minnesota.

What does it mean large lake?

Well, the Large Lake Program, there's 10 large lakes that we have in Minnesota and what they did years and years ago they realized that we've got these large lakes that what we want to do is try to focus the large lake samplings so we get it more unified and do similar, you know, similar things so we can kind of compare the results and what we're doing so and you know what, hey, what's worked on your lake, what's worked on this lake.

So we realized a lot of the traffic, you know, a lot of the fishing pressure occurs on those 10 major large lakes so we want to really put a focus on those.

So each large lake has a Large Lake Specialist assigned to it so I'm the one that's working on specifically Leech Lake.

And you've been there for how long?

I've been in the Walker office since 2012 and the Large Lake Specialist since 2016.

And you kind of wrapped up your work in the water once it starts getting cold you're not out there as much anymore.

Yeah we have specific sampling we do every year.

We sample Leech Lake every year so we do sampling in June, specific things, you know, certain things we do in July, like we'll do some near shore ceding in July and then in August we do some trawling, it's basically drag a big net along the bottom looking for more of the young year fish, the fish that were born that year.

September we do some sampling for the bigger fish.

So we're targeting specifically adults perch, walleyes, ciscos and the northerns.

And then we also do some electrofishing in the fall and we usually wrap that up about mid-October, so.

Wade what are you finding as you get new to the area what's some of the things that are interesting you.

So for this area, I mean, it's just it's always interesting going from area to area.

Lakes are always different and so coming from Park Rapids, you know, we didn't have the large lake aspect, so moving over to Walker, you know, having Leech as part of that is really interesting to me, but then not only Leech as a large lake, you also have like the Woman Chain which is a group of lakes that are just phenomenal.

But you also have Ten Mile Lake which is another extremely deep lake going down to 200 feet, that is basically its own system in itself.

It's just all fascinating.

It's really a wide array of different lakes isn't it.

I've always told people every lake is like a person, they're all unique and they're all different habitats, different forage base is different.

I've been reading that there aren't many leeches left on Leech Lake, the big ribbon leeches we used to see floating around, is that true?

Anybody can address that.

Yeah we don't have actual numbers on it cuz we didn't, you know, we've definitely noticed at least, you know, anecdotally that we don't see as many as we used to see when we're out sampling.

We had a one of the Star Tribune reporters out with us this summer looking for some and we were able to find a few as we were out there, but, yeah, I don't see as many and, you know, as far as what is occurring and what's causing that we really don't have any idea.

Talked to some specialists that work on specific leeches and they didn't have any real indicators of, you know, what would be causing that either, so.

I think one thing just to throw into there, Carl's kind of playing it down.

Him and Jody were out ceding with the Star Tribune reporter and you know they weren't finding anything in the nets and Carl just happened to look down and there was a leech in the water, reached down, picked it up, got one in his hand.

I'll be darned.

Well, yeah, I can remember 30 years ago you'd see them everywhere floating, you know swimming usually not very far, not very deep in the water.

What's the health of Leech Lake, is it pretty healthy right now?

Overall it's pretty healthy yep.

And I know that there's been talk and I think maybe it's beyond talk that you're maybe going to stock some fry in it next spring.

Yep that is potential that we will be doing that.

And what's causing that to happen?

So that is just part of our annual sampling that we do, that Carl does on Leech Lake, you know, as he samples we're looking to see, you know, we have different management objectives that we need to meet, you know, we're meeting certain objectives but then if there's a certain objective that isn't being met we have things in place that could potentially trigger stocking and so that's what has occurred.

And I understand obviously that if you were to stock larger bait fish in the lake, shouldn't call them bait fish, but if you were to stock 11-12 in walleyes that's a very expensive proposition isn't it.

That is dollar wise and you know manpower wise that's just it would be out of our realm.

How does manpower affect that?

Just because I mean not only manpower but having the area to do it, you know, because not only are we doing Leech but it's a statewide effort to stock, you know, and getting potentially seven and a half million fish that's a lot of fish and that's a lot of water that would need to be covered.

So how do you determine where you're going to put those fry when you go out on the lake in the spring?

I think Carl would be better on that.

What we've done in the past is we've looked at the size, you know, like you're talking about the different lakes that are out there.

Leech is basically, if you haven't been on Leech, if you don't know the lake well, I mean I know you know it very well but it's, you know, it's a bunch of different lakes.

It's, you know, there's deep basins, there's you know 100 over 135 ft deep in Walker Bay, but then we also have, you know, just north of there Steamboat Bay which is completely I think 9 ft is the deepest that entire bay is, so we look at those different bays, how big they are, so we break out we look at how many fry we think the lake needs to supplement some of the natural reproduction and we that up based on percentages like how big is this bay.

So we take a certain percentage of those fry that we're going to put in the lake and separate those out throughout the bays.

And do you have any idea how many survive.

I'm sure that you do.

Yeah we generally have a general idea so what we'll do is what we've done in the past is when we're done fry stocking is we'll mark the fish that we put into the lake and so what we can do is that sampling that I talked about that we do every year we'll go back in, we'll collect those fish, we'll get a number on how many we pulled, you know, how many young year produced each year and then we can actually go back and look and see if those were stocked fish or if they were naturally produced fish and we've got estimates that we can do based on how many adult females we have in the lake.

We have an estimate how many eggs they generally produce based on sizes, you know, it's a bunch of modeling that we've done different, it's part of the Large Lake Program that has developed these models and things like that.

And you do something to the fry so you can tell that they're stock?

So what we do is we take those, you know, as soon as they hatch as soon as they hatch we'll put them in it, we'll put them in just basically a jug and it's a dye in essence what it does and it dyes the hard parts, so actually some of the bones in there.

So we'll go out and collect fish in the fall and throughout the summer and we can pull out those bones, so we have to sacrifice a few of them, we can pull out those bones, look at in our microscope and it's, you know, it shines like a, you know, like a phosphorescent light so yeah you shine a certain kind of light on it and then you can see if that ring shows up then you know that was a stock fish or it was not stock fish.

I'll be.

So we looked at the numbers in the past, you know it varies based on, you know, the summer how good of a summer it was for production because, you know, different year classes, you know, show up differently.

I can't remember where I read this, I read somewhere where the fingerlings that they're raising in some of the ponds have grown larger than normal because of the maybe the warmer weather I'm not sure is that have you heard that?

Yeah we've had some interesting things with fingerling production in the state.

We're having a lot of trouble with the warmer summers because, actually the warmer winters, because what we need for good pond production and what we do for our fingerling production is we put fry into the ponds and then they grow throughout the summer, in the fall we go out and collect them and then we stock them into whatever lakes they need it.

What we need is a clean pond with no fish in it because there's no competition then we're only growing fry but if it doesn't winter kill then there's carryover from the year previous so actually those walleyes from the year previous will predate on the fish you're putting in there for that year.

So we haven't had very good winter kills the past couple years so ponds aren't producing as well as they used to and that, you know, warm summers has also, you know, created some issues with if they get too hot in the ponds and they don't survive.

But the growing season, if we have you know a long drawn out sort of warm summer, that's best for growth.

It's, you know, just like growing degree days with your corn or your soybeans or whatever same thing with walleye.

And we track growing degree days in Leech Lake for the walleyes and last year was a phenomenal growth here for the fry that we had in Leech.

Really.

Yeah they were one of the biggest going into the winter, they were some of the biggest ones we've seen in, you know, in the history of tracking, which is great for, you know, the bigger they are over the winter the better they are to survive.

And I know you have a report you put out every fall from the work that you do, how do people access that?

So those reports basically what happens is everything, all the data, gets analyzed in the fall and then everything will get finalized and then that following spring that will come out, that information will be available online, on our website.

And the website is?

Just Minnesota DNR and then you can find actually you can go into LakeFinder is the best website to go to, Minnesota LakeFinder.

You can type in Leech Lake and you can go look up Leech Lake and you can look up the data from that previous year.

I marvel at the work you do because Leech Lake as you know is I think 640 some miles around the edge, that's a huge body water, and to be able to go in there and really start identifying some of the things that are going on it's amazing.

And now climate change is affecting all of us in some way or another, I'm sure it's affecting the lakes growth of the fish that you've talked about because we got two or three weeks warmer weather than we had not that long ago.

Well that and just ice on and ice off dates are changing.

Last fall was not a hard fish kill from people because they couldn't get on the lake it was so warm, it was really dangerous.

It looks like this year people are getting on the lake pretty early.

Getting on early.

But ice is still thin.

I'm a big perch fisherman, I just love fishing perch, I've been fishing perch for years and years and I've been reading that the perch numbers across the country are going down, but now I've read some research that maybe they're not going down so much as they are getting smaller and reaching maturity at 3 or 4 inches.

Are you finding that Carl?

Yeah we've seen that on a number of area lakes including Leech Lake.

It's rare for us to see an immature male perch so they're maturing at, you know, very, very small sizes.

So what happens is you know when they mature so small they don't get big enough and a lot of our gears they'll just swim right through because we're targeting adult fish and if they're getting adult to this size, you know, the mesh on our gill nets is a certain size to catch, you know, the adults that we've seen in the past.

So the numbers might still be good they're just little.

And is there anything that can be done to get them bigger?

Right, yeah, that's what we're kind of looking at on Leech is what we try to do especially with the large lakes and all the lakes is try to get a good balance, so what we were kind of concerned with on Leech is that we were protecting too many large fish and too many walleyes.

So we had a slot limit on the lake because back in the mid 2000's production kind of tanked, we had a lot of cormorants on the lake, there're eating a lot of fish, so we did a number of things.

We started stocking fish on the lake, we implemented a slot limit to try to protect spawners, and then we also started controlling some of the cormorants who were eating a lot of fish so of those three things the lake started to come back and then we started looking at the numbers, those annual surveys that we do, kind of comparing them to previous years, and realized that, you know, what I think we have a lot of spawners, we almost have too many spawners out there, they're throwing too many small fish out there and they're density dependent things so you know all those small fish are competing with each other for the resources out there and they're kind of chewing the perch, the prey base down, so we're, you know, that prey/predator balance was kind of getting out of whack a little bit.

So we pulled off the slot limit on the walleyes to give that prey a chance to kind of come back and recover a bit.

Are you seeing a little bit of recovery?

We are.

Started this last year actually last two years ago we saw one of the fourth highest perch hatch rates we've ever seen.

It was crazy numbers, yeah it was just like tons of them and if you got an underwater camera like when you're perch fishing there's a lot of little ones out here which is just tremendous for them to eat.

You know it can be frustrating if you're trying to fish because there could be a lot of sorting that has to happen but we also we did a creel survey last winter, it was a rough year to have a creel survey on the winter because it was just you couldn't access the anglers weren't out there.

I had a great winter cuz I could walk out but you know the people that really want to use their houses they just couldn't get them on the lake, so the pressure, the winter pressure was really down in certain parts of the lake.

But they're starting to plow some roads on Leech Lake we haven't seen in the past so that pressure is increased, so we're seeing a lot more wheelhouse traffic, a lot less day trip angler traffic.

Carl, maybe you could talk a little about Woman Lake and some of the research that you've been doing there because that's really fascinating I think.

Yeah, Jody might be a better option.

Yeah so Woman Lake, we have an egg operation on the Boy River just upstream of Woman Lake and what we were finding is traditionally, historically we had always put back 10% of the eggs that we had taken, 10% of that fry would be a put back return to make up for what we had taken from natural reproduction.

A study from 2007 to 2015 actually looked at the variable hatch rates and the survivability of not only the fry to fingerling stage but from fingerling stage up to adult stage or a harvestable sized fish and what we found is that actually when it comes time to stocking, less can be more, so rates varied anywhere from like a 1,000 to up to about 6,000 fry per littoral acre, and a littoral acre is an acre of water that is 15 ft or less, that's where the majority of our production is happening in a lake and so what we ended up finding was that 650, 500 to 650 was kind of ideal for Woman.

We went down to 500 fry per littoral acre, and since we've done that, starting in 2016, we have had consistently stronger year classes in our gill nets, so talking age 1, 2, 3, 4 walleyes, they've been consistently stronger.

We might not see as many young of the year walleye during our electrofishing survey but as Carl mentioned earlier they're bigger, and what we know from years of study is that the bigger the fingerling can be going into its first winter the higher it's survival.

So fewer fingerlings but bigger will eventually equate to more fish reaching our creel.

I'm assuming it was you guys that did the work on crappies last winter to see what ages were, is that was that your group?

The Barotrauma stuff?

I'm not sure.

I would assume that would be the Barotrauma stuff.

Where they were aging them to see how old the crappies were.

I have a friend that worked with a fishery somewhere and they had underwater drones and they were tracking these fish and he's a doctor, an MD, he's retired semi, but he said they were finding that some of these 10 inch crappies were 16 and 17 years old.

Oh yeah.

Does that sound like long?

So I think people think when you see a 10 inch crappie that's just a little young one, it's not necessarily, is it.

Not at all.

That's what's interesting about those fish especially cuz certain fish like northerns they'll grow fast, you know, we'll harvest our fingerling northerns or or you know like a muskie 12 inches you know it can grow 12 inches in the first summer where a walleye 6 inches is a good number ours on Leech Lake this summer they were seven which is tremendous.

But, you know, those pan fish especially if they're in the stunted populations, it might take 10 years for like a bluegill or a crappie to become a you know catchable fish that you want to bring home so.

Wow I think that it was I think an article in the Outdoor News about that, I think it shocked everybody that saw that said what, a 10 inch crappie is only is it 17 years old.

Well , then another thing that you can think of too is especially in these northern waters compared to the southern waters you know we just don't have the temperature and the productivity as well you know those are two large factors that help in that growth and so, you know, not having those they grow a lot, lot slower and, you know, you'll get some age on them.

I know you guys work with lake associations very well, have a good reputation of doing that, do you work with the University of Minnesota their research areas quite a bit too?

Yep quite a bit.

We actually have somebody coming up, there's a group coming up this winter, we're going to do some core sampling on the lake with a study through the University of Minnesota where they're going to actually drill down and try to get 200 years worth of core samples off the lake.

So what they're looking at is some walleye habitat so how much, what was walleye habitat like back over, you know, up to 100-200 years ago and how does it compare to where it's at now so kind of look at some of those things, but yeah we do quite a bit of research.

You know some things we're looking at with the Lake Association and the Cass County Soil and Water Conservation District is not just looking at those adult fish as well we're also looking at, you know, some of that food chain some of the bottom of that food chain so how is that affecting things especially now that we got zebra mussels in Leech Lake as well so are there you know are we taking out that bottom of the food chain, is it switching from out in the middle of the water column more into the shallows and the shoreline and, you know, how is that being affected.

But yeah we definitely work with Bemidji State University quite a bit, they've got a real good Fisheries Program up there so we work with them because it's close proximity as well.

What I read where we're starting to see mercury levels increasing in some of the perch and the walleyes, do we know what's causing that?

Well what they think is that those it's methylated mercury and what happens is there's different bio accumulation, there's different chemical things that happen in the water and when they're up feeding more in the shallows as opposed to out in the middle of the water column that methyl, you know, the natural mercury that's going into the systems is getting turned into methyl mercury that's getting up taken by the fish by they're eating those small things and you know through that food chain that it's coming up to the food chain and some of those smaller lakes they're noticing that that's what's happening.

That's what that, you know, some of that University of Minnesota research has shown that and our DNR folks as well.

They haven't told us as adults to not eat fish yet but I know they're being very careful with kids with infants with mercury levels.

When you guys go out in the fall and do your work do you ever get volunteers to help you?

All the time.

You do.

All the time.

Where do they come from, where do your volunteers come from?

All over.

We've had just anybody that's called the office that people have been interested, a lot of them are lake association members, input group members, that kind of thing.

It's popular with Leech people like to come out and see the gill nets and in the fall and trawling in the summer that kind of thing.

We take them out on just our regular area lake surveys as well all you have to do is get a hold of us and we can get you the paperwork signed and get you out on the boat with us.

I know the zebra mussels have changed fishing pretty drastically in the lakes where they're at.

Used to be able to go out in 8-9 ft of water and catch a walleye under the boat now they see you coming and they're gone.

Do you guys have any, I know the DNR hasn't taken a strong position on forward-facing sonar, do you guys have any concerns about that.

Well, we definitely have concerns about the, you know, the fishing on Leech is definitely we think it's changing just because the water clarity and water the fish are starting to get like you said a lot more spooky so you know pulling up on a big pot of fish and pulling a few off there is a little bit more difficult because they're getting just so much spookier and that's what the folks that are you know the days where I still do it drag a lindy rig through and the fish are scattering it just it's not working as well anymore so a lot of the guys that are doing better, they're actually casting to the fish, a lot more slip bobbers you know you hardly saw slip bobbers.

Never.

Never.

You know Mille Lacs, yes but not at Leech.

Or in Wisconsin.

I went to school in Wisconsin we'd use slip bobbers over there because you could use two lines so, you know, you throw a slip bobber then jig with the other one but you know now they're starting to, you know, fish away from the boat a lot more as opposed to fishing behind the boat like I'm used to doing so yes there's definitely some concerns and fish you know we're looking at it statewide, especially the DNR is looking at it.

Like we asked, we kept track of the last two creels last winter and this summer on Leech Lake how many boats and how many anglers were actually using forward-facing sonar and we've got some folks that are looking at it statewide so.

Is you know are the folks that are using forward-facing sonar having better catch rates than the ones that are not using forward-facing sonar and trying to look at some of those things and, you know, how do we regulate that.

Boy that's a tough one.

It is.

Do you have the data I suppose you don't have data yet really.

Yeah we've got it but we haven't, you know, we haven't analyzed it all.

Like Wade said we just now finished, the creel just finished a month ago, so we're still in the process of crunching those numbers but you know the few pieces of research that we have looked at it the catch rates haven't been drastically different, you know, the guides that are using the forward-facing sonar seem to be catching a lot more fish but, you know, those, you know, a lot of times the guides catch more fish anyway because they really know the water bottom, they know what they're doing as opposed to somebody that's maybe coming from out of town that, you know, doesn't know the lakes, they're trying to learn the lakes so it takes them, you know, a couple days to learn where, you know, on the lake the best places to fish are especially a lake as big as Leech it's 100,000 acres a lot of water to look for.

I know a lot of the lakes in your area, a lot of the lakes in the Brainerd area, have good crappie populations and one thing I would be concerned about as just a form as a guide is that that's a lot of pressure when you have a forward-facing sonar and you find these schools of fish in a small lake people just need to think about releasing and don't catch them deep because they're probably not going to make it anyway so that to me would be a concern and I know.

That is one of the concerns that we've heard from people you know as state employees one of the biggest concerns is probably hard water.

You know people get out with forward- facing sonar and they go find those deep holes and you can pretty easily target them so we have heard those concerns and you know that's something we are definitely listening to as a state and you know we're looking into it.

How about rusty crayfish are those populations stable?

Actually they were fairly stable but I don't know if the zebra mussel numbers are helping rusty crayfish but I just looked at the rusty crayfish numbers here the other day and on Leech Lake we had the highest catch rates, we keep track of the rusty crayfish in our nets because they a lot of times they'll get entangled with those nets and we'll have to pick them out, so we actually keep track of the rusty crayfish numbers, and it had kind of settled out but this last year they took another uptick so we're waiting to see what happens with those rusty crayfish numbers for sure.

And are you seeing increases in our area lakes of aquatic invasive species or is that mostly stable now do you think?

Well, the number of zebra mussels are increasing you know there's just you know we don't have that many lakes in our Walker area, we have 200, roughly 200 lakes, that we manage in our Walker Fisheries Area including Leech Lake and you know there's maybe I think 10, around 10 that have zebra mussels in them right now so really the vast majority of our lakes do not have zebra mussels.

I didn't realize that, I thought more of them had those in there.

No in our area we're surrounded by it now with Leech Lake has it, the Woman Chains, you know, Ten Miles, so they're starting to see more and more now but it's just a few.

I mean it's great that there's not that many lakes that are infested right but how things have changed in the last 20 years isn't it crazy?

Yeah and I know some states now are limiting how many crappies you can keep if you've got four well they just limit reduce the numbers because they were taking too many, killing too many and don't catch them deep you know when you catch these fish deep cuz I know they used to down on the south end of Leech and catch them down there in 60-80 ft of water and they say well we released them, you could drop cameras down there and see dead fish all over it's really, really sad to see.

We are the persons responsible for this resource, it's not you guys, it's us the end users so.

Well, tell me how do people get in touch with you guys.

I think you just do a great job it's very complicated work and Jody coming from Wisconsin I'm amazed you can keep up with it.

Yeah, right.

You have a website?

Yes.

Just for Walker, I mean if somebody wants to get a hold of you in Walker how do they do that?

So if you just get online, do like a Google search, you can look up Walker Fisheries Office Minnesota and first thing will pop up is Walker Fisheries Office, click on that link, you know it'll give you a little spiel about what our office is, what it covers.

There's several different tabs.

If you scroll down to the bottom we have a tab that says talk to us, if you click on that, that has my name, my email and my office phone number and then from there it just goes down the chain.

It's got Jody's name, his email, phone number, Carl.

It's got our other area specialists Erin Haws and Jon Gustafson and it's got all of our emails and every way to get a hold of us.

Actually the best way to get a hold of us really is to just stop on into the office say hi.

There you go.

On the south end of Leech, right off the highway.

You guys do a great job, thanks for taking time to jump on with me and I look forward to seeing you on the water.

Of course.

Thanks Ray.

You bet.

You've been watching Lakeland Currents.

I'm Ray Gildow, so long until next time.