In this episode of NDO Podcast we visit with Scott Gangl, Department fisheries management section leader, about the life cycle of lakes and reservoirs, how that relates to our fisheries management, and how he knows where the fish are biting.
(Intro music)
Cayla: Welcome to episode 81 of the NDO podcast. On this episode, we've got Scott Gangl back with us for the, we're debating whether it's the fourth or fifth, sixth, seventh time, to talk about the life cycle of a lake.
Casey: A lot.
Cayla: Yeah, I guess I kind of. Yeah. Lost you in the running.
Casey: Silently, like taking the lead on the number of times somebody's been on the podcast.
Scott: Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with that. Like I said when we were talking off air, I think you guys just want your numbers to go down so somebody else can bring them back up later, I guess.
Cayla: It's all part of the game.
Scott: Yeah.
Cayla: Scott is the fisheries management section leader. He's introduced himself several times. But, uh, yeah. If you just want to again, briefly talk about what that role includes.
Scott: Sure. Well, I'm the fisheries management section leader for North Dakota Game and Fish. My job entails supervising and overseeing the management activities of all of our biologists around the lake. The biologists around the around the state, not around the lake.
Casey: Well, if they're on the lake you have to supervise them there, too.
Scott: Well, yeah, I mean, those guys do pretty well on the lakes themselves, but we've got different biologists stationed around the state and different district offices. And, uh, those are the guys that do the day in and day in activities of managing the lakes. They sample the lakes, see what's out there, make the decisions. And I just kind of coordinate and oversee their activities and make sure that they have the resources that they need to get the job done. So.
Casey: So maybe tell us again how. And you just told me the number. I can't remember it, but how many lakes we have that we manage as a fishery across North Dakota at this point.
Scott: So right now I think we are at 425. We've kind of plateaued now over the last few years. We've seen a really huge increase, probably in the last 15 to 20 years. Well, longer than that it's been going up. But we we've kind of plateaued now to where we've been as high as 450 and then we lose a few. And right now we're at about 425 of what we call active fishing waters, which is just the lakes that we have good established populations of fish in there for the public to catch.
Casey: Yeah. There could be other lakes that have overflowed or things like that that might have some fishing opportunities.
Cayla: Yeah. Do we have any more after this week.
Scott: Yeah, yeah. There might be some new ones coming up. We've had. Yeah, over four inches of rain.
Casey: We washed out all the fish in our OWLS pond I think.
Scott: Right. Yeah. Sure. So no. And then we always have some that might be on the radar that are newly stocked. We haven't put them on our website yet. Because, you know, our philosophy is we want to direct people to fish where there's actually fish to be caught. And so if the fish are, you know, six inch walleyes is all that's in that lake. We don't want people to go in there thinking that they're going to catch a limit of of keepers. So we have a few that might be a little bit, um, you know, still in the stage of development or, or some that we lose. You know, like I said, we were at 450 at one time. Now we're down to 425. Some winter kills a few winters ago occurred, and we took some off the off the list and stuff, but we're still sitting off one.
Cayla: Yeah you took off one of my perch lakes.
Casey: Speaking of perch. Yeah.
Scott: Well, that might be one of those. That's.
Cayla: I know it's time to keep an eye on it again. Yeah, I know.
Scott: Without naming any.
Casey: Names, any.
Cayla: Off air.
Casey: But. So that that brings us to a question of we have reservoirs which are man made, we have natural lakes, and we have some pretty big ones, and some like the Prairie Pothole area that has kind of blown up with high water years and things like that, maybe go through like let's go through the life cycle of why, what fish are put where, and then what happens over time with one of these systems or all of these systems? We got an hour at least. So hit us up.
Scott: So I guess let's start first by talking about the life of a lake, you know, or a reservoir or any body of water has a definite lifespan where it's it's not going to be the same forever. These bodies of water evolve as they age. Um, to the point where you have to modify your management in each one to, to accommodate that evolution. Starting first with reservoirs, we'll just talk about reservoirs. At first, you know, we had a period of reservoirs building that, um, in the 1950s and 1960s where we built a lot of new fishing waters. A lot of our WMA lakes were built in the 60s when there was that big push for building new waters and when those lakes first fill, you've got all that, you know, it used to be just dry. Some of them are pasture land or coulees or whatever they are, and it and it floods. And when that happens, it releases a lot of nutrients into the system. It's what we call a trophic upsurge. So trophic is just like the different food chain levels. And then upsurge is just it's just an upwelling of, of productivity you could say. So when you flood that new vegetation, you flood that new ground. There's nutrients like phosphorus, nitrogen, things that get released into the into the water.
Scott: You also have a lot of organic material and things that tend to tend to break down and provide good habitat for, for food, for fish. Okay. So that's the first thing that happens when you get this new lake effect is you get this new flooding of new, uh, newly flooded ground and vegetation, and you get this trophic upsurge. So what that means is there's productivity, there's nutrients released into the water that, you know, starting at the bottom of the food chain are going to start stimulating, uh, photosynthesis of algaes things that, um, are at the very basis of the food chain. So think of plant material things, things that rely on those nutrients. Then you have the next level up, which is zooplankton and, and things that graze on the algae. So that trophic upsurge in a new reservoir is really, um, you see this explosion of, of food in the reservoir for, for animals, for fish. Um, and then you also have a lot of habitat. You have the flooded vegetation, trees, brush, even grasses, shrubs, weeds, things like that that were on the landscape all got flooded. And that breaks down and then you start seeing some bigger insects that colonize those things, and they'll eat that sort of stuff.
Scott: So when a new lake is filled, it's very productive just because of all that newly released food. And at that stage, you know, we don't have a lot of issues with collection of organic material that's going to cause like winterkill situations where it's going to decompose, it's not going to consume a lot of oxygen. So at that stage, when it's a new lake, it's very productive and water quality is really good. And so when we stocked a lot of those new lakes back in the 50s, a lot of them were trout lakes. And some of the older, older people in our constituency remember fishing places like Sweetbriar Dam west of Mandan and just catching lots of big trout because they were so productive that we could stock trout in there. They were able to survive, they were able to grow really well, and people remember that. But over time, as those reservoirs age, what happens is a lot of that algae that's produced, it's not all consumed, starts to break down. Some of the plants break down, it collects in the bottom of the lake, starts to, you know, as that decomposition occurs, it starts to consume oxygen. When you have a reservoir, you have inputs from the watershed.
Scott: All the water that comes in brings more organic material in to the reservoir, and it just kind of collects there. It's kind of a collection basin, you might say, for all that stuff. Over time, these reservoirs age, um, through that organic material that comes in, you may have silt that comes in. You have a week like we had this week where you get four inches of rain in a few days. You see a lot of runoff. A lot of that muddy water is going into these reservoirs where then the sediment settles out. You start seeing siltation. So over time, you know, a lot of our reservoirs, as they age, um, they start to fill in with some of these sediments and stuff. We start seeing water quality issues. The dissolved oxygen in the lake isn't as good as it used to be. So now, over the years, you know we can't stock trout in those lakes anymore. So then we have to because they don't survive the winters, they can't survive the summers. Some of these lakes are too warm now. You know, we've seen increases in temperature across the state, you know, and that's a real increase. Um, lower dissolved oxygen. There's just less habitat out there for the trout to survive.
Casey: I was just thinking of this. Odland dam would be one of those ones. That was a pretty prime example of that, that now there's been a whole bunch of money spent on it to try to refurbish it at some level and get some of that siltation out of there and make the lake deeper and those kinds of things, some of that organic matter pull out.
Scott: Sure. And we we've attempted to do some of that stuff. And basically what you're doing is prolonging the life of the lake. But you'll never get it back to where it was when it was brand new. When you see those new reservoirs, they really are so productive and good that it's hard to duplicate that. And what you can do is take some of that sediment out, but you're never going to get the productivity back because that that ground that was previously unflooded is now flooded. So it's not growing as well.
Casey: The only way to do that would be to sacrifice the reservoir.
Cayla: For how long? Yeah. How long would you could theoretically could you drain it, and then how long would you have to wait before you…
Scott: You know it. We've talked about that before. You know, some of our lakes if we have like, especially the WMA lakes where we own the dams and stuff, would it be feasible to do that? Um, if it was only just a fishing water, that would be something that we would probably consider as our as a management activity.
Casey: Because we could shoot some pheasants in the bottom of it, probably when stuff started to come back.
Scott: Absolutely. And that's something that we've that's had something that we've discussed internally is as to, you know what? What would be the downside of draining Sweet Briar Lake? I know that's probably not popular with a lot of the people that fish there, but what would be the downside? Because we could bring it back and it would be so much better if we left it down for 3 or 4 years. And getting back to your original question, how long would it take? You know, one year it would dry out the sediments, another year you'd establish some vegetation. It would be about 3 to 4 years of good established vegetation necessary because what happens when you get that organic material, um, building up on the bottom, you sometimes get this, um, situation where those nutrients that used to be released into the water are now sequestered into the soils. They're just stuck there, and they're not really being released anymore into the water as productive nutrients anymore. So what you can do is by drying that you oxidize those sediments. You get that plant growth, You know, they're going to transfer some of those nutrients into plant growth, and then it's going to be released again. You can stimulate that new reservoir effect by drying those out. And we've talked about that actually about, you know, how could we make the best of both worlds if we took a, WMA lake and dried it out and created pheasant habitat for 4 or 5 years and then reflooded it?
Cayla: Then those people would be grumpy.
Scott: And then those people would be grumpy. And but I mean, I think if you if you did it right, you could actually provide benefits for, for a lot of people. The downside is that a lot of the reservoirs that we have were built not to be drained, like Sweetbriar. I think we can drain it down ten feet or so. And then that's as low as it'll go. And so we don't have the capability to do that without breaching a dam and having to rebuild it completely. But it's a good idea. It's something that we've definitely talked about.
Casey: Yeah. And you think, well, what? Back when those lakes were built, those reservoirs were built. We had, what, 80 fishing lakes in the state?
Casey: Maybe less.
Scott: 50 to 80, depending on what? What time?
Casey: So if there was ever a time that we could sacrifice a lake to get it back to maximum productivity with 434 lakes or 425 lakes, you think we could do it.
Scott: But yeah
Casey: It’s infrastructure and how do we get that done is the biggest thing.
Scott: Yeah. Back then there weren't very many options. And now we have so many options that if we did sacrifice one of those lakes or one in all corners of the state, we could probably, you know, have some other options to fish. But like you said, the infrastructure and the logistics of getting it down. The other problem is that a lot of these reservoirs, like a sweetbriar, has such a huge drainage area. It you know, we talk about pumping or something like that. We could pump it down even further. But then one good rain, it's full again.
Casey: Yeah.
Scott: And that's why if you drive by Sweetbriar on the interstate, it's full a lot because it has a huge watershed. So some of those aren't really some of those aren't really feasible options. They're good options, but they're not something that we can do very easily.
Casey: Right.
Scott: So, you know, once those lakes do start to, um, start to age, you might say some, some of the, some of the options change, then, you know, we manage those lakes as, as trout fisheries originally. Now we, you know, we, we transition to maybe a bass bluegill fishery. Some of them have pike, walleye. A lot of them have multi-species fisheries. Now that that cover what's in there now for habitat. So now we have more vegetation. We have warmer water. We might want to do something with sunfish, panfish, things like bass or bluegills or walleye. Everybody wants to have a walleye lake in their backyard. So we try to have some walleye in some of these lakes too. Some of them might have a few perch in there too and stuff. So they're more of a multi-species now.
Cayla: It's crazy. Power has sent me like the fishery surveys from like, a long time ago. Yeah. And it's like walleye wasn't even on there and yeah, it's like trout. I don't know, it was just weird to look back on and what people wanted and what they fished for and how far they drove to fish and all that stuff is just so different.
Scott: Yeah. It's. Well, and part of it is, you know, the public has evolved over the years too. You know, my grandparents and their generation really loved to fish for Northern Pike. And that was the big thing. Again, when the Missouri River reservoirs were built, we flooded a lot of new vegetation. And that's a habitat that pike really thrive in. And so that was what was available at the time. And if you go back into the North Dakota Outdoors magazine, I can't remember what year it is. But there were articles written by our fisheries staff at the time saying these new reservoirs are great, but they'll never amount to anything as walleye fisheries. They're just not suited to produce walleye. And that's just like now looking back at that. It's just like based on their knowledge at the time that was probably true. But now, I mean over time we've seen that that's, you know, quite, quite different.
Casey: There was a I mean, even nationwide, there hadn't been a lot of reservoirs this size that you've been able to watch an age in and see what happens to them over time. At, at those times when they were saying they oh yeah, they're flooded. New vegetation in the pike are running rampant, you know.
Scott: Yeah. And and you, you're talking about reservoirs, you're talking about like Lake Sakakawea or Oahe and those and those I mean, you know, size regardless of size, those reservoirs are aging too. And if you, you know, if you fish much of the upper end of, of Lake Sakakawea, you know, that that's sedimenting in quite, quite a bit. We've lost a lot of volume up there. Um, I know the Corps is really interested in that. The Corps of Engineers, because they have a lot of purposes for that reservoir besides just fishing. And so, you know, the water volume that it can hold is really important to them. So they monitor how much smaller the reservoir is now than it was 50 or 60 years ago.
Casey: Yeah. It's crazy.
Scott: So, you know, we talked a little bit about how we can replicate that new reservoir effect and, and how we can drain these reservoirs to produce more habitat and stuff. And so one of the things that we should probably talk about is drought and how that affects these reservoirs, because we may not be able to drain them or we may not be able to drain them all the way. But Mother Nature kind of does that for us sometimes. Like I mentioned, Lake Sakakawea, the Missouri River system, you know, they have multiple uses designated for Lake Sakakawea. So it's not just fishing, but when droughts occur, you know, those uses are all somewhat compromised. But what you see is the water levels are much lower on a lake like Lake Sakakawea or, or Lake Oahe right now even is quite a bit lower than it has been in recent years. That's not necessarily a bad thing. You know, it's probably counterintuitive to have a fisheries biologist talking about how droughts are good for fish. But when you can dry those lakes out and knowing that they're going to eventually fill back up, you know, some of those droughts have been some of the some of the better producers of fish after they're over, you know, during the drought, it's painful. And during the drought, we see our smelt populations suffer. On Lake Sakakawea we see fish production is a lot lower, the fish are a lot skinnier, and fishing may not be as good. But once that reservoir fills back up every single year class of northern pike on those reservoirs. We see those big booms coming after a drought and a reflooding of those reservoirs. So when we have good pike fishing on our big reservoirs, it's because we had a drought, and it's because we came out of that drought and flooded that vegetation again, that those pike need to, to thrive.
Casey: Because yeah, we don't we don't stock. Do we stock any pike in Sakakawea ever?
Scott: No we haven't. And we I mean, we only reserve our walleye stockings for years that we think that we need it, um, when we have multiple years of poor reproduction in a row, but we don't stock Oahe at all, and we don't stock the Missouri River below Garrison Dam at all. And Sakakawea is only stocked, you know, sparingly as needed. So a lot of what we see out there is based on natural reproduction. One of the concerns with the drought years is when it's low enough.
Cayla: On Sakakawea.
Casey: Right, on Sakakawea.
Cayla: I just wanted to clarify for.
Scott: Right.
Cayla: Yeah, right. Not necessarily on our other lakes.
Scott: Right. Yeah. Right. Yep. So when we see droughts, we see less natural reproduction. But then we also see that refilling brings about a lot more natural reproduction too on forage walleye and all of that. So.
Casey: So maybe go into the difference. And there some of there's a lot of similarities between reservoirs and other lakes. Um some of our what we call prairie pothole lakes, they fluctuate quite a bit year to year. Um, but we also have Devils Lake, which is a natural lake, which I always get a kick out of. Wasn't the Garrison Diversion McClusky Canal project built to try to bring water to Devils Lake? Like at one point?
Scott: I believe that was one of the purposes.
Casey: Yeah, Devils Lake flooded and it was like, nah, we'll just, you know. Yeah. Stop the project short.
Scott: Yeah. I mean, I was looking at Lake elevations And, you know, back in the 50s, 60s 70s, it was 40, 50ft lower than it is now. There wasn't much of Devil's Lake left there. And yeah, I think that was one of the purposes of garrison diversion, because that new Rockford Canal was built to run water over that in that direction, to provide water to the eastern part of North Dakota, but also as a potential water source for Devils Lake to augment what was there because it was so low.
Casey: I think that's crazy. And now we got pumps trying to get rid of it.
Scott: Yeah. Now they're pumping the water out of the lake.
Casey: Because it's flooding too much.
Scott: Yeah.
Casey: But anyway, so those lakes and maybe go into the differences between reservoirs and, and those types of natural lakes, but also like how, how does that go with like some years we have like these explosions of good perch years and like say a Davis Lake or something. It's like a couple of years, especially ice fishing. You can catch these nice big perch and then a couple of years later, it's gone and everybody thinks we caught them all.
Scott: Yeah.
Scott: So, you know, our natural lakes function similar when it comes to that trophic upsurge that I talked about earlier. As we've seen our prairie potholes, those, those glacial lakes that were formed, um, we're seeing those coming up gradually over the years. And that's had a similar effect of, of, of releasing that productivity and providing good habitat for fish. What you're seeing with those perch booms that you're talking about is when, when those lakes come up, there's a lot of flooded vegetation. Okay. And perch. If you're not familiar with how perch reproduce, they lay their eggs in these ribbons. They're all kind of, um, connected together in a ribbon called a skein. And they drape it over the vegetation to keep it up off the bottom sediment, and then it's fertilized. And fertilized. And that's where those eggs hatch. And so perch require that flooded vegetation again to, to reproduce. And so when you see these lakes that, um, are newly flooded, it gives them all this opportunity to reproduce. And that's what, that's what really causes those perch booms. We get these big year classes and stuff. That's what we've seen a lot in our prairie potholes. And that's what we saw in Devils Lake over the years, is it was coming up and it came up gradually for a lot of years.
Scott: Every year it would be a little bit higher, a little bit higher, a little bit higher, maybe down when it was dry and then up, you know. So from 1970 to 19, um, 99 or even the early 2000s, it was constantly coming up and we're constantly flooding new vegetation for those perch to reproduce on. Meanwhile, we're releasing a lot of the nutrients that their food was being produced on. So we're seeing a lot of new, um, new insects, zooplankton, scuds, gammarus. Those are big. Those freshwater shrimp are a huge food source in Devils Lake and several of our other prairie potholes and stuff. And so we were seeing that explosion as well. So that was providing perfect habitat for perch to boom on in those situations. One thing that, you know, knowing that perch lay their eggs on, on structure like that, whether it be flooded trees or flooded grasses or flooded vegetation, we've experimented with things like Christmas trees and lakes. We put it in our reservoirs to make them more productive and stuff.
Casey: And I was involved in some of the Christmas tree stuff in Audubon through our Boy Scout troop in Turtle Lake.
Scott: Yeah.
Scott: And yeah. And that used to be a pretty major thing in the winter times. People would gather Christmas trees, sportsmen's groups would get together, they'd tie them all together, they'd make big holes in the ice, and they'd sink them out there and stuff. And what we've found over time, and there's been research done on this actually, that show those perch will use those Christmas trees. They'll use any of that habitat when it's fresh and new and clean. But it seems like over time, as those, you know, the flooded trees, the flooded vegetation, um, starts to get covered with material, whether it be moss or algae or just detritus. Detritus being stuff that just breaks down in the water and settles out and stuff. Let's just say once that stuff gets dirty, yeah, they don't use it as much as they as they do when it's clean and new. So for whatever reason, they like clean stuff.
Casey: Yeah.
Scott: And that's where we see those booms coming when you're flooding new vegetation versus old vegetation.
Casey: Picky spawners.
Scott: They can be. Yeah. But they know what works and what doesn't. It seems like or they're genetically programed to know what's what works and what doesn't.
Casey: So so then yeah, after one of these lakes gets to a certain point, it's been brand new. At what point do we decide to put walleyes pike, bluegill, all this other, you know, opportunity in.
Scott: Well, we used to always think of the pike and perch as being the backbone of any prairie lake, because these lakes were shallow. They don't always have the best water quality, meaning dissolved oxygen can get low at times and stuff. And those are two of our hardiest species when it comes to game fish that can handle low oxygen, right? So that used to be the, um, the, the go to's for, for new prairie lakes or pike and perch. And when we were growing up, you know, back in the 80s, 70s, 80s, there were a lot of lakes, had pike and perch in them.
Casey: He didn't look at you, Cayla, when he said that.
Scott: No, you weren't born.
Casey: You weren't there.
Scott: No, I was, I was. Um, but. The thought at that time was that walleye need clean water, and they grow slower because our biologists were familiar with what they had seen in reservoirs, and I should point out that our natural lakes, the prairie potholes, Devils Lake and those just based on the water chemistry, the productivity, the nutrients available there and their depth, they're much more productive than our reservoirs. And so our reservoirs were good fish producers when they were brand new. But over time, you know, they're not as productive as they used to be. And so a lot of our experience at the time, because that's what we had mostly back in the in the 80s, was reservoirs and smaller, smaller lakes. But a lot of that experience told us, you know, it takes, you know, four years, five years to grow a walleye to catchable size. And some of these shallower lakes that might winterkill once in a while. We don't have that much time. So let's stock something that'll grow faster and maybe survive the harsher conditions. What we've learned, and this is just through experience, I suppose you could say. Those newer prairie lakes are so productive. We didn't think they were, but we just. Somebody decided to try it anyway. They were getting deep enough to where.
Casey: May or may not winter kill. So yeah.
Scott: We had a higher likelihood of those lakes having fish survive through the winter and stuff for a longer period of time. Well, maybe it'll last 4 or 5 years. Maybe we can get some walleyes going in there and it's like, Holy cow. After two years they're already 16in. You know, it's like they're so productive that those fish. Just grow like crazy. And that's one thing about fish, you know, they have what's called indeterminate growth. You know, they don't just reach a certain size and stop growing. They grow based on the resources that are around them. So if there's no food, they grow really slow. If there's really good food, they'll grow really fast. And we were actually I don't think anybody expected to see the growth that we saw out of them. And then that's kind of, you know, that's probably about 15 years ago that we really started transitioning to be more aggressive with our walleye. Stockings, and started developing a lot of these prairie pothole lakes into walleye fisheries. Just because we realized that if there's a good forage base in there, good, good numbers of fathead minnows, we can go with walleye and have some good fishing in a couple of years. Even if it does winterkill, we can do really well.
Casey: So when we've kind of gotten lucky with some of these, they were at that fringe area where it's like, yeah, we could try walleyes in them. And they just kept getting bigger and bigger and deeper. And so the winter kills have slowed down in some cases. And the walleyes have just kept going.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah. And so now they've become you know like permanent constants on the landscape. You know, places that people go to and they consistently catch walleyes.
Cayla: Are we seeing some of those lakes start to kind of shift in their cycle though. Like will they eventually start to become less productive. And. Yeah okay.
Scott: Yeah. And I don't know how. I mean, the shift has been fairly slow, but again, these lakes are have been fisheries for like ten, 15 years now. Yeah. We're talking places like a Horsehead Lake or Alkaline has been around 20 some years, but it's only been a walleye fishery for less than 20 years. And so we're starting to see points where, you know, these lakes aren't coming up anymore. Some of them aren't, some of them are. But, um, we're not seeing that gradual rise every year where you're getting that newly flooded productivity released into the into the water. So as they stabilize, you're getting more of a system that's it's still very productive, but it's going to be more of an equilibrium with, you know, every year it's going to be, um, more dependent on what's the weather like? Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it warm? Is it cool? Is there, you know, a good, good amount of, uh, snowpack that year or not, and it's going to be more subject to year to year fluctuations instead of, you know, it seemed like for a time there, every year we were we were seeing these lakes come up and the fishing was just good. Or we were just it was it made our jobs really easy. And now it seems like we're going to be seeing more of an equilibrium, um, of water levels, meaning that they're not going up and down as much anymore. They might fluctuate a few feet here and there every year, but they're not consistently rising anymore. And that will change how we manage things because they might not be as productive. We might have to, um, stock fewer walleye. We might see slower walleye growth in some of these lakes. Maybe one year we'll have a really good boom in forage and they'll grow a little bit better or whatever. But if you have a lake that doesn't fluctuate much, think of Lake Audubon. It doesn't fluctuate.
Casey: It stays exactly the same all the time.
Scott: They draw it down two feet in the winter and bring it up two feet in the summer. And it's not very productive. It's granted, it's big, deep and cold, but it's also, you know, it's it doesn't fluctuate much. And that's kind of what you're going to start seeing in some of the other lakes around the state. Um, Devil's Lake might be another good example where that one is still extremely productive because it's just got so much nutrients in the water. But over the last 12, 15 years, it's kind of stabilized to where it's fairly flat. The water levels are staying fairly flat. And, uh, you know, it's responding that way. The fishery is responding to that too, by being more of a, you know, you're going to have years of good reproduction, you're going to have years of poor reproduction. It's just going to be more subject to Mother Nature and those ups and downs.
Casey: Mhm.
Casey: And I suppose too, it's, it's one of those things that no different than the trout in the early reservoir days. Over time different species are going to be able to thrive differently throughout that life of a lake or life of a. So like the perch booms in the little lakes might not happen if the water stabilizes and sits for a while now. Not that the perch will all be gone, but it just might not have those amazing boom classes, right?
Scott: And you have to look at a boom as being a boom. You know, it's not something that we can sustain every single year. And we get that a lot. You know, we might have some winters where the perch fishing is extremely good following a wet cycle that flooded a lot of new vegetation. Those lakes are very productive again. And then it kind of stabilizes and we don't see that much reproduction anymore. We see these big year classes, but they don't happen every year.
Casey: So it's probably more likely a couple of years ago, 2 or 3 years ago if you're catching a nice big perch.
Scott: Yeah.
Casey: This winter.
Scott: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, it takes 3 to 4 years to get a get a 12 inch perch or ten inch perch and, uh, you know, takes five years to get them truly up to that jumbo 12 inch plus size. So. So, yeah, I mean, it takes a few years to, to produce that.
Cayla: I just always want to be the first person out there.
Casey: The one that says I found it just.
Cayla: Looks around like. Yeah. And then it just like.
Casey: Yeah, that happened to me one time. We drove out to this lake. It was Nate and I. Drove out to the lake and we were like, we'll just try it. There isn't a track on the lake and we're like, this is either going to be really bad or this is going to be really good. And we ended up limited out on perch. Nice. You know that 12 inch sized perch. And I was like, Holy crap, I think we finally found it, right. And then a couple days later there was a lot of people out there.
Cayla: Words, word travels fast. The spider webs.
Casey: I don’t know if somebody was watching us from one of the cabins or whatever it was. But.
Scott: But yeah, it happens fast.
Cayla: Mhm.
Casey: And the weather got nice. People got out too but.
Scott: Well we put them there for everybody to enjoy.
Casey: That's right. Exactly. I am not usually the guy.
Cayla: Yeah Gangl actually…
Casey: that hoards a fishing spot. I usually tell people, but I was like, I want to try it one more time before I start telling people.
Cayla: Scott actually just has trail cams at all the lakes
Casey: It's like those weather cams.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: that the weather stations have.
Cayla: That's what his office looks like.
Casey: You get on the black, on the back web, whatever you call it. You can find those webcam photos, right?
Scott: I just got AirTags on your guys's cars. Keep doing the scouting for me.
(Laughter)
Cayla: All right. Uh, so leading up to our fishing guide comes out every three years.
Scott: Two years.
Cayla: Two years. Next April. Yes?
Scott: April 1st of 2026 is when the next fishing season starts. And that's when the next proclamation cycle starts. So we have a two year proclamation cycle. And the proclamation is the rules that are set for fishing in North Dakota. And that goes into the fishing guide. The fishing guide just kind of summarizes all those rules and everybody can refer to that as their kind of guiding document for what to do. So every year or every two years we set this proclamation that we go through the process of selecting new fishing regulations, changing fishing regulations, if, if any changes are necessary, things like that. So the last time that the proc was updated was 2024. And since then our fisheries chief, Greg Power has been compiling feedback from the public. We always we're always open to suggestions. People are always, you know, interested in getting special regulations on certain fish populations, certain lakes, certain times of the year, things like that. So we compile a lot of that and we consider it all. And um, every um, August this past August, August of the of the year before the new season starts, we have a meeting where we get together with our biologists and we kind of hash this out.
Scott: So there's two types of regulations that we typically look at when we're talking about fishing. Biological regulations, which typically are ones that are necessary for the population to thrive survive, sustain itself. And then we also have social regulations, which we tend not to really dive into very much. But they're valid in that, you know, these are regulations that we look at and say, is there anything that we can do to make the fishery better for or enhance the experience for anglers? So that means, you know, if we implemented a certain regulation, would it mean that there'd be more fish for people to catch? Would it mean that the fish would be bigger? Would anglers just enjoy it more if we had this regulation? And a lot of the regulation suggestions that we get from the public are purely social, like you need to have, you know, this particular regulation because I want to catch bigger fish or something like that, you know, and things like that. So then we always sit down with our biologists and go over the, the suggestions and the biology and say, would that regulation actually work? Because our philosophy is pretty simple. It's keep the regulations as simple as possible.
Scott: Try not to over complicate things, and we try to implement regulations that would actually have a reasonable chance of achieving its goal. And so if we can say, well this regulation would probably help the population, we would implement it. But if we have information that says that it would not help the population or if it would actually harm the population, there are instances where regulation, if you put it on, uh, it's misguided. It could actually harm, harm the fishery. So we tried to avoid instances where we're going to set up a regulation that's going to create false expectations and not do anything. And so that's what we do in August. We've gone through that process. We've put together a list of fishing regulations or regulation changes that might potentially be worth pursuing. Right now where we're at. So we've got kind of that list. It's still in draft form. So we haven't finalized it yet. But what we're going to do is roll that out to the public at our advisory board meetings this fall. And so if the public is interested in that, they'll be able to receive information on that around that time. Yep.
Casey: Yeah. And those will start late October. We'll start having those. The dates aren't all finalized yet but.
Scott: Right. So about a month yet and stuff. But we've got a list of or we have a package of regulations that we're planning on. You know, nothing too major, but I think I think it'll be pretty well received for the most part. Um, yeah. And then in October and November is when we roll those out. What typically happens then is we receive feedback from the public on various things get anglers input on these proposed changes, and then make any tweaks if they're necessary. And then sometime after the first of the year, the governor gets a copy of them. We take everything, put it together into a package for the governor, and then it becomes the governor's proclamation that he would sign, then to put them into rule.
Casey: Into the law. Yeah. One thing that is always interesting, too, is like you said, you take we've even done full blown research studies because of a suggestion that we're hearing. Um, now, we maybe proved that it wouldn't have worked, or we maybe proved that it would work and we've implemented it. But it's sometimes some of that stuff drives our biological assessments that we do, too.
Scott: And that's one thing that. Yeah, just because you made a suggestion and we didn't implement it doesn't mean that we didn't give it hard thought, because we do actually consider everything that people suggest. It's just that sometimes, uh, you have to determine whether it would actually have an impact, whether it's actually in the greater good and whether it's actually something that can be reasonably effective.
Casey: And because, yeah, you don't want to just put a regulation on and people will think it's doing something, but it isn't going to do it at all, whether that's make it more likely that you're going to catch a big fish, or more likely, that you're going to catch more big fish or whatever that is. And it's like, well, I don't know with that many walleyes in some of these prairie lakes, I don't know if there's a regulation that can change that in some of those little lakes with all those walleyes.
Scott: Right.
Cayla: All right. Yeah. So stay tuned for advisory board meetings and then yeah obviously next spring the new proclamation. Alright. Thanks for being on especially on a Friday afternoon. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have anything better going on though?
Scott: Oh I was going to go home early today but thanks.
Cayla: Yep. All right. We'll get into the department. Droppings the pronghorn gun season opens October 3rd at noon.
Casey: Yeah, we got youth pheasant season opening. Um, October 4th through the fifth for ages 15 and younger.
Cayla: Uh, the NDO calendar photo contest deadline is October 6th. So if you took any, uh, high quality photos of wildlife species or, like, active hunting and fishing. Um, yeah, we'd love to see them.
Casey: And then we have our regular pheasant season opening October 11th.
Cayla: And then, as Scott mentioned, advisory board meeting circuit kind of starts. October 20th is the first one?
Casey: I think it's a little later than that proposed, but.
Cayla: October 20’s-ish. Yeah. Okay.
Casey: But all right, now that we've dropped the droppings, you can get off the pot and get outdoors.
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