In this episode of NDO Podcast we visit with Aaron Slominski and Paul Bailey, Department fisheries district supervisors, all about paddlefish. We talk evolutionary history, adaptations, current populations, management strategies and even how they taste.
Cayla: Welcome to episode 96 of the NDO podcast. On this episode, we have Paul Bailey back with us. I don't know, 17th time or whatever. Um, and Aaron Slominski, I usually ask beforehand how to pronounce that, but.
Aaron: Yeah, that's close enough. Slominski.
Cayla: Okay. Uh, our Western Fisheries District supervisor. And if you haven't listened, Paul is our South Central Fisheries district supervisor. Um, yeah. We're going to talk about paddlefish, I guess, all things about their habitat, history here, how we manage them, some cool features they have. Anything else I'm missing?
Casey: We'll have to get you get you paddlefishing so you can have some to put in Cayla's kitchen.
Cayla: I don't know, I hear mixed reviews or lots of buttermilk I guess is what I hear, but I'll give it a go.
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: All right. Yeah. Uh, I guess Aaron, we can just start with you a little bit of your role now and background, and then Paul can remind us his.
Casey: This is gonna make Paul, like, the number one guest on here, right?
Cayla: Yes.
Casey: Yeah. He'll be ahead again.
Paul: Wow.
Cayla: Yeah. Steph was gunning for you.
Casey: Steph was gunning for you.
Cayla: Yeah.
Paul: Well, if I can keep pace with Steph Tucker on anything, I consider that a major victory. But. Yeah.
Casey: So this is Aaron's first shot at record 20.
Aaron: Sure.
Casey: Right.
Aaron: So just a little bit about myself. Probably much like Paul or Casey I guess I started, with the North Dakota Game and Fish as a fishery seasonal employee. When I was in college, I graduated from the University of North Dakota several decades ago by now I guess, but spent the better first part of my career, I guess, in the Riverdale office close to a decade, and then been in Williston, I guess, a little over a decade now. So right around 20 years with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department.
Cayla: Nice. Paul.
Paul: Yeah, same story as Aaron, I guess. I, I began my Game and Fish career as a seasonal employee out of our Riverdale office, graduated, well, yeah, decades ago now, but happy to get to work right now out of our Bismarck office where I was born and raised.
Casey: So I just have to add, I started in Riverdale office as well. It must be a good spot.
Paul: It is a great spot.
Cayla: You guys need to start Riverdale Recruitment alumni association.
Aaron: Great spot to get trained.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: You get a little taste of everything.
Cayla: I guess it is. Yeah. Kind of like, uh. Yeah. Unique fisheries and wildlife.
Casey: I took the wildlife route, but spent some time in the boat with the fisheries guys in Riverdale and even Shane doing some paddlefish stuff.
Paul: There you go.
Aaron: Yeah, like I said, the fishery seasonal there you get abroad experiences with several different fish species and was really, really, uh, pretty cool district to work out of.
Casey: Yeah. I mean, you get a little bit on the river, a little bit in Sakakawea the big lake, and a little bit on some of the little prairie lakes. So. Yeah. All right. So paddlefish, who wants who wants to start I guess.
Cayla: Well, yeah, I was going to say like one reason we chose these two is because of where they're at in the state. So we have.
Casey: Bothhelp managePaddlefish.
Cayla: Garrison Reach and the Williston Reach. Um, hence these two guests. But yeah.
Paul: Well, maybe the beginning is a good place to start with paddlefish even begin. So, uh, I guess there's some really neat information in the fossil record about about paddlefish. And what it shows is that the heyday for paddlefish was really during the Cretaceous period, which was about 145 million years ago to about 66 million years ago. And during that time, the fossil record reveals that there was eight different species of paddlefish that existed in the paddlefish family. Uh, so, you know, just like we have, you know, in the perch family of fish, we have walleye, sauger, yellow perch. Uh, there used to be several members of the paddlefish family that existed during the Cretaceous period, and only four of them made it out of that KP extinction event when that wiped out the dinosaurs. When this asteroid hit that Yucatan Peninsula, or right off the coast of, of present day Mexico and, uh, led to one of these mass extinction events. Only four of paddlefish species made it beyond that KP extinction. Two of them disappeared about 50 million years ago, and only two species of paddlefish made it to present day time. Uh, one is what we have here in North Dakota, our paddlefish. And the other uh, it was a Chinese paddlefish, which was last seen in the wild in 2003.
Aaron: Something like that. Yeah. And it's declared extinct in, like, 2020?
Paul: Yes. And now has officially been declared extinct. So, uh, what we have left, uh, is our current North American paddlefish.
Cayla: I was gonna look up the scientific name, but then I didn't.
Paul: Polyodon spatula.
Aaron: Yes. And it actually has a pretty interesting meaning. Yeah. Look at the words polyodon and spatula. So polyodon might mean many teeth.
Cayla: Okay.
Aaron: Um, and then a reference to paddlefish. We'll probably talk a little bit about some of their unique adaptations, but probably a reference to their gill rakers. I would assume they don't have teeth in their mouth I guess. And then spatula. I guess they elongated rostrum.
Casey: Pretty obvious, when you see them.
Aaron: Maybe someone or spatula. I guess someone probably thought it looked like spatula.
Casey: Never thought of that. You could use it to cook.
Cayla: Do you think when they named it though? When they named it? Or did we have spatulas which came first or.
Casey: Well, I don't know which came first.
Cayla: Did someone say this looks a lot like a paddlefish?
Paul: I'm not sure the derivation of the word spatula there, yeah, is it any flat object for flipping pancakes or what?
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: We had to bring food into this.
Cayla: Every time.
Paul: Pancakes. There we go. Okay, here we go.
Casey: All right, so the range we talked about where you guys work. Obviously that spans some of the range. Maybe hit on that a little bit. Aaron you're dealing with stuff in the upper reaches.
Aaron: Yep. So the I guess the stretch of the river through Williston we just refer to as the Williston Reach. But uh, Yellowstone- Sakakawea stock of paddlefish inhabit I guess, the what you consider the Williston reach of its range in North Dakota anyway, so it'd be basically paddlefish that live in Lake Sakakawea above the Garrison Dam to below the Fort Peck Dam in Montana on the Missouri River, and then the entire Yellowstone River.
Casey: And then the Yellowstone River. Maybe talk about that. I mean, it's it's a little river in North Dakota. We don't have much of it. Yep, considerably.
Aaron: I think there's not too many river miles in North Dakota, but it's kind of a we have a shared resource with the state of Montana. Also, this this stock of paddlefish, the Yellowstone River is probably one of the longest free flowing un-impounded rivers in the United States, and it's still a very natural river with a kind of a natural hydrograph. And, you know, a lot of spring runoff events. Turbid water that paddlefish probably prefer over the Missouri River is more of a below Fort Peck Dam. It's kind of like our Garrison Dam tailrace. Highly regulated flows. Cool, clear water. Something paddlefish don't necessarily prefer, I guess. And there are a few tributary rivers below the Fort Peck Dam on the that dump into the Missouri River. Like the Milk River, very natural river. And years where the Milk River has a lot of like spring runoff. There might be more paddlefish that do migrate up the Missouri, so they can probably go up both rivers. They're making a spring migration, but they prefer the Yellowstone if it's more of a natural, turbid river. Once the spring runoff comes.
Cayla: Is this, where else has paddlefish, or is this it? I feel.
Casey: Like in the nation.
Cayla: Yes.
Casey: Um, Missouri's got a lot of them.
Paul: Yeah. So paddlefish are I mean, across North America are are found throughout the the Mississippi River drainage. So the Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Allegheny, Tennessee. But they're a big river fish. So we don't find them in our smaller tributaries, like, you know, like the Knife, the Heart, the Cannonball Rivers. Uh, the Yellowstone is a very large tributary to the Missouri River. So they do, uh, you know, populate that habitat. So that's basically where we find paddlefish is basically throughout the whole Mississippi River drainage in the, you know, the major, major tributaries.
Aaron: And we're kind of dealing with the northernmost part of their range in North Dakota and Montana.
Casey: So like typically, we'll take a look back before the dams were here since none of us saw that. But, um, like with Fort Peck being there, would that reach the Missouri River been very useful for paddlefish, or just would that have been too clear?
Paul: No, they were they they existed above, uh, naturally, above what is present day Fort Peck. So there's still a population above Fort Peck Dam. Uh, that was kind of cut off from the rest of the population when Fort Peck Dam was constructed. So, no, Montana has a a recreational snag fishery, everything for that population above Fort Peck.
Aaron: And then I guess maybe you probably want to touch on the Garrison Reach.
Paul: Sure. Yeah. So basically, you can find paddlefish anywhere in the Missouri River system throughout North Dakota, from the Missouri Yellowstone, above Lake Sakakawea, throughout Lake Sakakawea, and then what we call the Garrison Reach of the Missouri River below Garrison Dam to Lake Oahe and then throughout Lake Oahe as well.
Casey: So give everybody listening an idea about what a paddlefish is. I mean, what are we talking about? What do they look like? What what makes them kind of a little bit they're a little bit odd compared to the rest of the fish we deal with.
Paul: Sure. I mean, they're by far one of the most unique fishing, unique fish species we have here in North Dakota. Obviously, their rostrum is a dead giveaway for their uniqueness and hence their name. Their name too. But no, I mean, we just start maybe with their body shape and what you know, that that provides some really good clues about the habitats they prefer. And you know what, what their life history is. Uh, when we look at just the physical characteristics of one of these fish. So, uh, paddlefish have this very torpedo shaped body. They're very hydrodynamically shaped. Uh, they can withstand high current velocities in a river, uh, riverine system. And that body shape, their deeply forked tail, uh, that narrow tail portion of the fish before you get into the tail of the fish, uh, all suggests that these are really good long distance swimmers with that hydrodynamic shape, that powerful tail, that deeply forked tail, uh, and that, really helps dictate their life history. Paddlefish are good long distance swimmers. Due to that that body shape.
Aaron: And then if you ever spook a paddlefish with a boat. You'll notice they're capable of really fast bursts of speed. Incredibly. And then, you know, the dorsal fin is kind of shaped farther back. You look at a northern pike, probably the same, capable of just quick bursts of speed if they have to.
Paul: Like I said, another neat aspect of paddlefish or something that sets them apart from a lot of our other North Dakota fish species, is their what we call an obligate ram respirator. So basically a paddlefish has to be swimming or or hold themselves still in flowing water, uh, in order to respirate. So if you've ever had like a, a walleye or northern pike in your livewell, uh, and you can watch that fish go, what's through? Called a process of operculation. So a walleye can sit still in standing water and go through this process of opening its mouth, uh, and having its gill covers closed to to draw water into its mouth. Then it can close its mouth and open its gill covers. And by repeating that process over and over again, the walleye can be motionless other than opening its mouth, alternating with opening its gill covers to draw water over its gills. A paddlefish can't do that. It doesn't have the musculature. And the, uh, you know, the skeletal structure in its gill covers to do that. They're a paddlefish’s gill covers are just these two leathery flaps. So for a paddlefish to breathe, uh, it has to have water flowing over its gills naturally, either by that fish swimming forward or that fish holding its position in flowing water.
Aaron: It's much kind of, I guess, like a shark. There's several, I guess, unique features that they're similar to a shark.
Casey: Yeah. So and we don't there isn't a whole lot of other. Or is there other freshwater fish that that require that type of breathing ability?
Paul: Uh, that's for sure. That's the only one we have in North Dakota that I'm aware of is the paddlefish having to being that obligate ram ram Respirator. Most other fish do can operculate.
Aaron: We've noticed that. I guess it's not a lot of, you know, hatchery transport that occurs with paddlefish, but Paul's probably recognize that too. But they don't do well in tanks.
Casey: Yeah. Right.
Aaron: They kind of go they go really docile. And they're almost, you know, they don't look like they're doing well because they don't have that water.
Casey: Room to move.
Aaron: Yeah. Versus other fish that you can haul in a tank no problem.
Casey: Makes a little bit of a challenge if you're going to try to raise them somewhere and and push them out like we do with all the other fish.
Paul: Right, right. Yeah. There's certainly some challenges to their, their, their culturing for sure. Uh in the hatchery setting. But uh, another I guess, unique feature of paddlefish, uh, that might lead back to Cayla's kitchen and some what some people would say is making them a little less, less than palatable. Uh, they have very highly vascularized, uh, flesh. Uh, that's also pretty rich in lipids. Uh, and there's still some good tasting fish. I think that, uh, kind of fit that bill. A lot of people would say like Chinook salmon also fit that bill. Uh, that a lot of people obviously prize for the table, uh, paddlefish are a bit more polarizing when it comes to table fare. Uh, but paddlefish are also really high in myoglobin, which is a protein found in muscle, uh, that helps store more oxygen to fuel those kind of long range movements that that paddlefish can undergo. Turns out I just I must not like the taste of myoglobin. Maybe it's like cilantro to me or something.
Casey: I like it.
Paul: You do? So? Yeah, if you like.
Cayla: That's because you like ducks and geese, yeah.
Paul: I much prefer pheasants. Something that's low in myoglobin, uh, versus a snow goose. Uh, that there are a lot of waterfowl that tends to be higher in it, so. Yeah. Yeah.
Cayla: Mm. Weird. What if it is like a I don't know, I think it just because I like to hunt pheasants but yeah, it tastes better.
Paul: I don't think it's the cilantro thing where it's a genetic predisposition in humans, but, uh, I'm convinced I just don't like myoglobin.
Cayla: We need to do a research study on it and. Yeah. Taste some food. Yeah. We can.
Aaron: I guess everyone has a different palate.
Casey: Mine typically is different than other people, so we'll give you that.
Aaron: That's why I guess everyone likes, you know, perch or walleye. You got the white, flaky flesh, but, you know, like that's probably why they have such white flaky flesh. They don't do that. Long distance migrations typically, you know, like a, like a paddlefish would or salmon.
Casey: So I don't do long distance migrations either. I just live vicariously through the things I eat.
Paul: There you go. Yeah.
Casey: I just want to know what it tastes like to do a long distance migration.
Paul: But if there is a plus to paddlefish flesh, it is that they can be rich in lipids like that which a lot of people say you smoke paddlefish. It's really good. Well, one of the reasons that make it so that paddlefish so smokeable or easy to, to smoke is that high lipid content. So you know, you can screw up walleye on a smoker pretty easy because they're not very lipid rich. You can dry them out in a hurry. Paddlefish tend to hold that moisture better and are more forgiving for smoking.
Cayla: All right. And then they got a big spatula Rostrum.
Casey: Yeah. Well, I've had people ask me how the swordfish population is doing. And it catches you off guard at first and you're like, I know what you're talking about.
Paul: Yeah.
Aaron: So the function of the rostrum was probably misunderstood for a lot of years. You know, maybe some people thought it helped them root for whatever clams or something. Dig, dig in the mud for foraging. But obviously that's not the case. The more people have learned about paddlefish and serves probably several functions, uh, it could be probably like you think, you know, like we're talking about the shape of the paddlefish. Very hydrodynamic. Might be used to steer, help steer underwater. And it's also covered with a lot of electrosensory little pores and everything. Um, and we can go into that a little bit about the electrosensory part of that rostrum. And you probably helps them detect prey items in paddlefish feed exclusively on zooplankton, so that rostrum can maybe help them find and detect better areas for foraging.
Casey: Mhm. Well their eye isn't very functional.
Paul: Right.
Casey: So something's gotta help him find it.
Paul: Exactly. Yeah. You look at a paddlefish, they make these tiny eyes that as Aaron suggested, you know, that they they're adapted to what the Missouri River certainly was, this very turbid environment. And when you're in that environment, vision isn't a great asset to you.
Aaron: Look at a catfish eye.
Cayla: Yeah.
Aaron: Right. Very small reduced eye.
Paul: Right. So fish in these very turbid environments oftentimes have some unique features that allow them to forage in these environments. So catfish have, you know, a body that's covered in taste receptors. And they have their barbels which are whiskers that help them detect food out there. Well, paddlefish, their unique adaptation is this rostrum covered in those electrosensory receptors called ampullae of Lorenzini that basically functions as a zooplankton detecting wand.
Cayla: You can hear it out there.
Paul: Yeah.
Aaron: So when they.
Casey: Swim with them.
Aaron: Our first hatched, I guess. And they're small. They say paddlefish will probably seek out individual prey items. So one small young of the year paddlefish just hatched is probably seeking out individual zooplankton. Whereas as they grow bigger with that large mouth, they as part is swimming around and respiration is probably foraging at the same time with the numerous gill rakers. They have to filter out that zooplankton.
Paul: So and these ampullae of Lorenzini are. These electrosensory receptors are not only on the rostrum, but they also go down the head of the paddlefish and over their gill covers as well. So almost the whole like front third of this paddlefish is basically out there detecting food sensor. The tiny little electrical impulses giving off given off by zooplankton.
Aaron: You might see kind of a series of small dark spots, kind of, those little dark spots probably contain some of those little pores. Ampullae of Lorenzini.
Casey: Mhm. Yeah, they're kind of they're very bland looking critter in some ways, but yet also kind of cool, unique looking with those little, yeah, markings and stuff on them.
Paul: They're kind of deceptive. I mean, you look at a paddlefish from a distance, it's this kind of gray blob. But when you look a lot closer, there's some really neat features on that fish. Yeah. And those ampulla of Lorenzini are certainly one of them.
Casey: Especially with like the littler they are, the cooler they look like when they get really big things kind of get stretched out and some of the markings fade.
Cayla: Same with sturgeon. They're little things are so spiky when they're little. And then it's just kind of a big blob after that.
Casey: So yeah, maybe I mean for people that don't know zooplankton like that's you said they're seeking out one individual zooplankton. It's hard to imagine a paddlefish being small enough that it's gonna do very good on just one at a time. But because zooplankton are.
Paul: Yeah, they're they're.
Casey: Super tiny.
Paul: If you look at a drop of water under a microscope. I mean, or I mean, you can look at just a glass of water you may have taken from a lake, and you'll see these little specks of dust floating around in there. And our zooplankton community here in North Dakota is dominated by copepods and cladocerans. So that's mainly what our paddlefish are feeding on. They've got their rostrum out there that helps them detect when they're in a good area to forage. That paddlefish then opens its mouth, which is this, I mean, very large. I mean, you could fit a volleyball in there on a large paddlefish. And as that paddlefish is swimming forward, that water passes through their mouth, over their gills. But their gills are also lined with what we call gill rakers, which are basically this filtering device that lets the water pass over its gills to keep the fish oxygenated, but filters that zooplankton down the fish's throat. So that's another very unique adaptation our paddlefish have. Are these highly developed gill rakers for filtering out that dust sized zooplankton out of the water.
Casey: It's always crazy. Like when I mean, for example, there's whales that do kind of the same sort of thing, but the biggest fish in the sea is always eating the littlest thing, right?
Paul: Yeah.
Casey: You know, paddlefish are one of our biggest fish in, in the system. And it's like they're eating the smallest speck of dust out there.
Paul: Right, there's something to be said for that. That, uh, yeah. The the lower you may feed on the food chain, uh, sometimes allows you to obtain that, that larger body size. So one more, uh, unique feature while we're talking about paddlefish, I guess, is, uh, their, uh, you know, their body shape and some of the structures that they have, uh, another one they have that they have is called this parietal or pineal eye, uh, which lies on the forehead of a paddlefish. Uh, if you look closely at a paddlefish, again, not just this gray blob, but if you look closer at it, at what would be the paddlefish’s forehead. You'll see this kind of X-shaped structure there. And it's not an eye, uh, but it is a photoreceptor, uh, so it doesn't form an image like the, the, the two eyes this paddlefish has and that we have. But it does allow that paddlefish to detect light. But we don't know exactly why or what this is for. A couple of maybe good explanations would be it helps that paddlefish keep track of photoperiod for reproductive purposes. So much of a paddlefish’s life is dictated by the seasons when to reproduce, when to seek out wintering areas, those kinds of things. So it could be handy for that. Uh, but also what a paddlefish feeds on that zooplankton. Uh, those zooplankton also tend to exhibit what's called positive phototaxis drawn to areas of certain light conditions. So maybe that parietal eye also helps the paddlefish detect certain light conditions out there that are better to be better areas of zooplankton abundance for them to forage in. So not sure. Uh, another kind of mystery out there, but, uh, a neat structure on these paddlefish for sure.
Aaron: Yeah. I guess the more you find out about a lot of various animals, the photoperiod is the big driver of a lot of things. Like Paul was saying, it probably helps trigger spawning cues. You know, photo photoperiod is getting longer. Maybe it's time to make spawning migration on top of other environmental cues.
Casey: Mhm. Yeah. And a lot of times when we talk about some of our other fish species, we talk about temperature, water gradient, you know temperatures that kind of spawn, the kick off spawn or things like that. But it's obviously probably a mixture of both, in a lot of ways. But how to maybe paddlefish will we can go on to the the next section here like life history lifespan and then that reproduction you that you mentioned.
Paul: Yeah. Perfect segue there that uh, yeah. What what does govern when a paddlefish reproduces typically is three things. One is the flow regime. Uh, Aaron sees this firsthand. And I think a lot of our paddlefish snaggers see this as well, that, uh.
Aaron: I guess. Yeah. So, you know, paddlefish are are staging in the river sometimes all winter, but they do make a spawning migration up the river in the spring. They're heading up mostly Yellowstone River, and they know it's time to make a spawning migration. Probably, like I mentioned, the photo period, but also discharge of the river flows coming down the river when we tend to see higher flows down the Yellowstone River. Paddlefish swim farther upriver. And that's, uh, probably one of the the triggers also water temp too warming waters in the spring too. But you will see that some years, you know, even the Montana folks that manage the harvest season in Montana when we have a low flow year, not as many fish will swim farther up the Yellowstone River.
Paul: So yeah, it really is those three things that controlled, you know, paddlefish’s, uh, uh, reproduction or when it decides to try and reproduce is that that discharge or rising water levels in the spring tied to historically when we saw that the big pulse of mountain snowmelt coming down the Missouri Yellowstone rivers. Couple that with water temperatures and then photo period are kind of the three things that combined to let a paddlefish know when to do what it needs to do.
Casey: Mhm.
Cayla: And how does that differ I don't know whichever one of you wants to go first. But obviously there's like dam between your two kind of populations I guess like where are they coming from and where as, as far as they can go. And then like the garrison reach can't actually reproduce.
Paul: Right. We’ll start there. That's an easier one.
Cayla: Uh, I don't know.
Paul: That, uh, yeah. Our, our, uh, one of the, one of the challenges paddlefish have faced is, uh, how we've altered their habitat. Again, they’re a big river species. They're accustomed to long movements. Uh, they need these large, uh, long stretches of river to live to fulfill their life history and reproduction. We don't have that between Garrison and Oahe dams, uh, anymore. Uh, we've got paddlefish out there kind of going through the motions that we see in the Missouri River above Lake Oahe. Every year, uh, attempting to reproduce. But our habitat, uh, flow regime water temperatures are just too altered there for these fish to successfully naturally reproduce. So what we have below Garrison between Garrison and Oahe dams. These paddlefish, this population of paddlefish is in all likelihood solely maintained through fish being entrained through Garrison Dam. Uh, most likely as juvenile fish, uh, that can pass through uh the the power generating turbines at at Garrison Dam without being chopped to bits. So smaller fish obviously make that a bit easier. Uh, and paddlefish have what's called a physostomous air bladder. Uh, walleye have what's called a physoclistous air bladder. So the difference between the two is that a paddlefish has air bladder has a duct connected to their throat. So if a paddlefish goes, uh, under, like a massive decompression going passing through Garrison Dam, it can just burp out that air from its air bladder. As that air expands, it can still be pretty traumatic. Uh, but, uh, it increases the chance of that fish being able to survive. So that's what our, you know, uh, salmon, trout, uh, also have that, uh, physostomous air bladder, a walleye, on the other hand, uh, a lot of our other North Dakota fish species that are more prone to that barotrauma have an air bladder that can only increase or decrease the amount of air in their, uh, by cellular transport. So that's a slow process. So a walleye is much less likely to survive entrainment through Garrison Dam than a paddlefish.
Aaron: But yeah. And the Yellowstone Sakakawea stock of paddlefish is a is a natural, reproducing, self-sustaining population. So we don't rely on stockings to maintain that population. And just with the the Yellowstone River being as natural as it is, they're still prime spawning habitat all up and down the river.
Casey: Um. So, I mean, when you when you talk about spawning habitat, a lot of times, I mean, people know like walleye, we need more of a gravelly type of situation, perch and things like, you know, plants or things to to anchor their stuff to. What's a paddlefish need as far as like this is the spawning habitat they need?
Aaron: Probably. Probably similar to a walleye I guess. Rocky, gravelly cobbly areas in the river. Um, probably wouldn't, you know, do so well laying their eggs on the mud bottom. As farther you travel up the Yellowstone River too the, the river definitely gets a little more rockier, too. You know, we have a lot of silt and stuff in the lower portions near the confluence of the Yellowstone, but farther up there's better spawning habitat.
Casey: So how far up are they going? Like Glendive? Past Glendive? Like, I'm just kind of thinking.
Aaron: Yeah. Higher flow years, way past Glendive. They have a diversion channel around the intake dam, which is only going to help migrating fish like paddlefish and others. But they found them way up the Bighorn River on high flow years, coming down the Bighorn so they can capable of, you know, hundreds of miles.
Cayla: So when we open the season opens on May 1st?
Aaron: Correct.
Cayla: When we open that, those ones are are they going there to spawn or they're traveling? They're gonna keep going.
Aaron: So what's interesting about paddlefish and probably other maybe other fish species too. But the folks in Montana who manage their season, um, find that a younger, younger segment of paddlefish population is harvested during the Montana season, so the older fish don't make as far as spawning migrations, they probably don't want to use and expend as much energy traveling as far upstream. So the fish that we see in our harvest season in North Dakota tend to be a little bit older. So some of the really old, long lived oldest fish that we see aren't necessarily traveling as far upstream. So a younger fish is just going to, can expend more energy traveling.
Casey: Work smarter, not harder is that.
Aaron: Imagine when you get older and you want to go pheasant hunting.
Casey: Right?
Aaron: You know, maybe you could walk ten miles a day and maybe it hurts to walk two miles a day after that.
Paul: So refresh my memory. Was it the oldest one that the fish that we've documented in North Dakota was was it a 68 year old?
Aaron: I don't remember the exact age, but they can live well past 60.
Paul: Okay, yeah, I thought that's the number I remembered from, uh, some of Dennis Scarnecchia's work was, uh, upper 60s, for sure.
Aaron: They live to be 50 years of age or is common. So essentially, once a paddlefish lives to be one year of age, it's probably big enough to escape all predation from birds and other fish. So it has probably a high likelihood of living to be 50 plus years of age.
Paul: So that's one kind of similar. Paddlefish’s life history. You know, their maturation and lifespan is very similar to a humans that, uh, male paddlefish tend to, uh, first sexually mature at, what, eight is about the youngest you see up there to a little.
Aaron: Bit earlier, a little bit later. So 8 to 10 years kind of standard maybe for a male and then 15, 16 years of age before they mature as a female.
Paul: And then yeah, living into their into their 60s. Potentially. Both sexes do. Uh, but as far as reproduction goes, male paddlefish might attempt to spawn every year, sometimes every other year. Females have a different spawning periodicity, typically every 2 or 3 years that they will, uh, uh, attempt to spawn or develop those eggs.
Aaron: Yes. And, uh, you know, large paddlefish could be well over 100 pounds. And some of those really big fish have egg masses as big as 20 some pounds. So it probably takes that many years to develop an egg mass that large.
Casey: So while they're so they're not trying to make this this seasonal run then in those off years.
Paul: Right. They're just all about building up energy reserves and to, to facilitate, uh, that that investment they have in gametes. So a male paddlefish has less invested uh, into gamete production. So the best chance that fish has a male paddlefish of passing on its genetics is reproducing as frequently as possible. So every year, every other year, potentially female paddlefish have a slightly different strategy. They maximize their ability to pass on their genetics. By creating this much larger egg mass. They've got a bigger investment into it, but they can only do that every 2 or 3 years. But if you've got, say, 30, 40 years of reproductive potential in you, they still have many opportunities to pass on on their genetics that way.
Cayla: I wonder how they know to go like, yeah,
Casey: Egg sacs full, I gotta go. Right the females that might be a little easier.
Paul: Yeah, yeah. I mean you could speculate that. I mean, yeah You know, some of the low water years we have on Lake Sakakawea, we know Lake Sakakawea is less productive. There's less zooplankton forage out there available. So under those conditions, I would anticipate a female paddlefish might be reproducing on the slower scale. You know, every maybe 3 or 4 years when we have those high water years. Zooplankton is rich. I imagine those paddlefish conditions are good. I'm going to try and reproduce a little more frequently.
Aaron: And probably common amongst other long lived fish species. Maybe like sturgeon, you know, some some of those fish aren't spawning every year and probably just kind of a something a long lived fish species is not going to probably do. You know, a perch is only going to live 5 or 6 years. Yeah. It might spawn every year, might overpopulate, you know, and that's not necessarily the case with a with a paddlefish, you know, kind of what you might consider episodic reproduction, recruitment. You know, they don't need to make it happen every year. But they might take advantage of prime conditions, high flow years, other things.
Casey: Okay.
Cayla: Paul, did you say that they like max? Their max weight happens though before they probably because of how much is eggs.
Paul: Right. So yeah I mean I guess a lot of folks are interested in well, what they're the biggest fish we have in North Dakota. Uh, when are they the biggest? Uh, and we paddlefish exhibit sexual dimorphism. So they the male paddlefish, you can often tell the difference between a male and female paddlefish simply by their size. Uh, correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't something like, uh, you know, about 99% of the paddlefish that are over 50 pounds are females? Uh, something like 95% of the sexually mature paddlefish we see, uh, that are under 50 pounds are going to be males somewhere around.
Aaron: Uh, you know, a male paddlefish shows up in the harvest season. Generally, they're less than 50 pounds. A 50 or 60 pound male is a pretty large male. And that's the small end of a mature female that's going to show up. Is that 50 pounds, probably. And there might be some smaller, you know, obviously in the same, same thing with, you know, a large male. But typically if you see a lot of those 20, 30, 40 pound fish, none of them are mature females. They're all going to be males.
Paul: But the the heaviest of the females tend to be middle aged. So a young female paddlefish, uh, tends to have a lot of gonadal fat surrounding their egg masses, but maybe not very large egg masses, whereas a really old female paddlefish oftentimes doesn't have much for fat reserves. So this gonadal fat but still might have a fair number of eggs. It's those middle aged fish that have a lot of both gonadal fat and eggs. So it might not be the necessarily the oldest fish in the population or the longest, but the heaviest typically are these middle aged, probably, what 30-40 year old female paddlefish.
Aaron: And size really has nothing to do with age. Yeah. You know, I mean, 100 pound fish might not necessarily be the oldest stock. And typically paddlefish grows really fast. The first part of their life cycle. So some of the unique stuff you see with some of the aging, the paddlefish, they might grow really fast for the first 20 years of their life. And then after that they might hardly grow at all. So someone might harvest a fish that was tagged, you know, ten, 15 years later and it hardly grew.
Casey: Yeah. Okay. That that brings up I mean, you just talked about tagging.
Cayla: I was gonna say speaking of tagging.
Casey: You go right into that. But you both are running tagging programs on paddlefish in your respective areas. Tell us a little bit what what we're hoping to learn and what we're looking for while we're doing that.
Paul: Sure. One of the main things we're learning from these tagging studies, uh, is an estimate of population size. So how many are out there and an estimate of exploitation. How what percentage of those fish are anglers harvesting annually? Uh, now, we don't have a harvest season or snagging season on the ones below Garrison Dam. So obviously this is a much more, uh, crucial information, uh, for Aaron in his management of that population, uh, above Sakakawea.
Aaron: Yeah, I guess so. We we consider them a species of conservation priority, which just means that they're managed under a stricter set of rules and regulations that other fish species have. You know, so that's why we have a season and, uh, specific harvest cap, but you can't, I guess, mention paddlefish management without mentioning one person, Dennis Scarnecchia from the University of Idaho. So Doctor Dennis Scarnecchia has been working with North Dakota and the state of Montana since the early 1990s, and we can thank a lot of what we know about paddlefish from Dennis's dedicated research for the last three plus decades. So we kind of collaborate with Dennis a lot of our a lot of our management activities. Um, so a lot of the netting tagging we do, you can kind of do some population modeling for us. And we've learned a lot about the paddlefish from these tagging projects that were conducted. So in the early 1990s, when they first started tagging paddlefish in the Williston Reach, they didn't know anything about paddlefish, you know? So they actually did learn, you know, so that's the male and female spawning periodicity through these tagging projects are what are anglers utilizing? Are we, is our harvest regulations strict enough to maintain this population of naturally reproducing self-sustaining paddlefish? So a lot of the work that Dennis does for us helps us manage this population better. And we've tagged right around 11,000 or so paddlefish since the early 1990s in the Williston Reach. And a lot of the tag returns that we get through the harvest season help us determine if we're got strict enough regulations to maintain this population.
Casey: And and remind me what? So, like you said, we manage them kind of cooperatively with Montana this population because they're, we're we're snagging the same fish essentially. And so our harvest, the harvest that we have is set at what now for both.
Aaron: So we have a collective agreement with the state of Montana to allow 2000 fish to be harvested from the Yellowstone Sakakawea stock of paddlefish, 1000 fish from each state. Um, and we've had that thousand fish harvest cap since about 2003. So prior to that, the harvest cap changed over the years. You know, when I think our first official season probably was in 1976, but folks have been snagging harvesting paddlefish well before that. You know, there's been documentation when probably when people started taking the first black and white photographs of people in the early 1900s with pictures of paddlefish, you know, from the Glendive area or somewhere up the Yellowstone River. So we we, uh, recognized that they're not an endless resource. We need to we can have a harvest season, but we can also protect them for the future. And we've run through that 1000 fish harvest cap since 2003.
Casey: So that collective 2,000 cap is what do we what do we feel that is as far as percentage of population roughly. Do you know that with.
Aaron: With, uh, some of Dennis Scarnecchia’s recent population estimates from our Yellowstone Sakakawea stock of paddlefish, it's anywhere of around 30,000 mature paddlefish. Okay, so we're not counting the fish that are immature that haven't made a spawning run. And that would be the for the Yellowstone Sakakawea stock of paddlefish.
Casey: Okay.
Cayla: I feel like usually I've done the things we talk about, but I haven't done this. But there's like catch and release days, so the people are not snagging or they are and they just.
Aaron: So yeah, we run our our season. It opens May 1st every year and we have three snagging release days. So Sunday, Monday and Thursday.
Casey: Are snag and release.
Cayla: So you're still snagging them though right? You're not like... okay.
Aaron: Sunday, Monday and Thursday are snagging release and the four days of the week are harvest.
Casey: And harvest. Yeah.
Cayla: And if you get a tag like can you snag and release without a tag? I don't know, I have usually I've participated in the thing, but I haven't done that.
Aaron: If you get a tag, you can decide if you want to go on a snag and harvest date or a snag and release day.
Cayla: But you need a tag.
Casey: You need a tag to be able to snag and release.
Cayla: Okay. All right.
Casey: An unused.
Aaron: Unused tag. If you harvest a fish, you're done.
Cayla: Yeah. Okay. But if you have a tag you can...
Casey: There's a couple of things that happened there. I remember when snag and release came up. It was kind of the, you know, the the harvest season was closing pretty quickly and people were wanting an opportunity to still like, I have a tag, I never got a chance to go or something like that. So it was kind of a little bit to expand the season.
Cayla: Yep.
Casey: Um, and then I think two, it just kind of breaks up the congestion. It gets up there.
Aaron: So some of our shortest, um, snagging harvest seasons were as little as four harvest days. So same thing. Yeah. Someone who bought a tag may not have been able to go if it was just for four days and closed. So um.
Casey: Or they were all trying to go in four days because they knew it might be over fast.
Aaron: So you can determine if you want to participate on a snag and release or snag and harvest day. Um, and if you want to just purely snag and release, then you can snag and release as many paddlefish as you want during the season. But once you harvest a fish, you are done.
Casey: So maybe just because this is I haven't done the snag and release portion because I like to eat ‘em Paul. So if I'm going to go. But what's the best way for an individual to release this fish as far as the snag and release and that we have some regulations behind it too. But um, maybe talk about that because it's of course, people who are harvesting them are gaffing them, which obviously that's no good, you know, to do.
Aaron: So there's no use of gaff gaff during the snag and release days, um, encourage people not to lift them vertically and hold them by their gill flaps. You know, you'll do a lot of damage from 100 pound fish or large fish. If you're going to hold it up, you want to take a picture of it. You can hold it horizontally, you know, in the waters near the water's edge, but do not drag them up on the bank. And you know, some people even use barbless hooks, smaller hooks. Um, but yeah, just the the treat them, treat them nicely during snagging release.
Casey: I mean, should a person even, like, cut the line off and just leave the hook you hear? I've heard that with other snagging stuff where it's kind of like, you know, just cut. If you don't want to take them out of the water, take a picture. You're better off to just cut the line.
Paul: And yeah, paddlefish are a pretty resilient fish. So if you're using I mean, a lot of folks might like Aaron said, downsize your hook size a little bit to make sure you're not puncturing into the the internal organs of that paddlefish. So in that case, I mean, just grab your pliers, pop that hook out is probably the best advice there. Uh, they can recover some. I mean, we see them with some horrific prop scar or skag injuries on some of these fish. We can just see the spirals of where a prop went down these fish, and, uh, they're able to survive some of that. So. Yeah, just like Aaron said, minimize your time handling that fish. Hold them horizontal, never vertical. And a good rule of thumb with any catch and release fishing is don't have them out of the water longer than you can hold your breath. So I think that's gotten a lot handier. Now everyone's got the cell phone in their pocket. They can snap that picture in a hurry instead of having to dig out a camera out of your backpack or whatever kind of thing. So, uh, but yeah, just, land those fish as quickly as possible. Pop that hook out. Don't hold them vertical. Uh, get them back into the water quickly. And, uh, we've seen multiple tag reports, I think, Aaron, haven't we? Of where anglers have successfully, uh, caught and released, uh, tagged paddlefish.
Aaron: Yes, yes. Some of these fish have been caught and released several times.
Casey: So yeah. Maybe that's where is the tag located. So that it maybe takes less time for somebody to, you know, once you catch a fish to figure out if.
Aaron: I guess all the tags are in the, in the jaw. You know, if you want to report a tagged fish even during snagging release, you know, you just gotta said you can take a quick picture, you know, or whatever. But just just be mindful and, you know, try to try to treat these snag and release fish as nicely as you can.
Casey: Yeah. The idea is for somebody else to be able to snag them at some point or them to reproduce.
Paul: Yeah. So I think this has been pretty positively received. We don't get a lot of participation maybe in the snag release days, but we know there's some some folks out there not like you, Casey, who don't want to eat a paddlefish.
Casey: I should do it once, but.
Paul: Right. But, you know, still want that experience. And I think that's something our department is certainly all about, is allowing people to enjoy our resources here. And that's snag and release season is certainly one way for folks to do it.
Casey: Yeah. And if you want to see a rod bend, catch a paddlefish.
Paul: Oh yeah yeah, yeah.
Casey: It's one thing to catch a fish in the if anybody's ever, like, accidentally snagged a carp. And it feels like it's three times the size as it is. Yeah, that that's kind of like paddlefish because you never snag them up front.
Aaron: No. A lot more leverage if you snag them farther back in the body too.
Paul: Yeah.
Casey: That tail snagged one that that 50 pounder is gonna. It's gonna work. You still.
Paul: Yeah. And I think, uh, yeah. Given the amount of walleye fishing that goes on throughout the Missouri River system here, I think a lot of our fish stories are probably paddlefish driven here. Yeah.
Casey: Mhm. So we talked about the population up in the upper reaches and that we have a season. And you kind of mentioned it Paul in the, in the Garrison Reach that they're not really highly reproductive or reproductive at all.
Paul: Mhm.
Casey: Um, and that's, that's pretty much why we don't have a season. Correct. I mean, there's no way to regulate.
Paul: Partly it's partly that and partly we don't have maybe the, the, the public shoreline fishing access that would really facilitate a paddlefish snag season, uh, down here like we do. Uh, up by Williston. Uh, the nice thing up by Williston, too, is that's kind of the only game in town. Uh, during paddlefish season, there's not a lot of conflict with, uh, other angling activities going on up there. Uh, anyone who's fished the Missouri River in Bismarck, uh, near Bismarck, here in, you know, April, May, June, when the paddlefish tend to be present here, uh, know that there's a lot of other users on the river. They're primarily primarily walleye fishermen. So it just might not be the most compatible, uh, use of this fishery, having people slinging around, you know, 4 or 6, eight ounce weights and big treble hooks.
Casey: See if you can get it all the way across the river.
Paul: Right, It's, uh, so it's partly that there's a number of reasons, but those I mean, those are two of the primary ones. They're kind of the lack of that great, uh, shore access where these paddlefish tend to be concentrated. And then what we would see as being some conflict with, uh, other angling uses and recreational uses out there might be more, more headache than, uh, than it's worth, especially when we already have another opportunity for people to enjoy paddlefish here.
Casey: So would these paddlefish in the lower reaches be or in the garrison reach be, uh, viable if they got into a different area?
Paul: Yes. Yeah. They're a fully functional paddlefish. Uh, that could live out their life history if it wasn't for Garrison Dam in the way. Yeah.
Casey: Not that I'm advocating to get rid of Garrison Dam. I'm just wondering if the process had been stunted so long.
Paul: No from a paddlefish perspective, that would be one of the best things we could do is removing, uh, Garrison Dam, but obviously it would come with some other headaches. But, yeah.
Casey: Power. Our electricity bill would probably go up too.
Paul: That could happen. Yeah. Yeah.
Casey: But so yeah, we've got kind of a unique partnership up in in the harvest area. I did clean one of my paddlefish one time just because it was like I was at sundown and it was a male. I'm like, I don't need to go all the way to cleaning station, but talk a little bit about a partnership with North Star Caviar.
Aaron: Yeah. So just much like Dennis Scarnecchia, uh, North Star caviar has been operating since the early 1990s. Um, so North Star Caviar is a nonprofit entity managed currently by the Williston Convention and Visitors Bureau. So every year, uh, they set up shop right at the confluence. So does Dennis. Right? They have a they manage a cleaning station right at the confluence, and they will clean a harvested paddlefish free of charge and donation of the eggs from paddlefish that they turn into caviar and then they can sell it on the market. And they're licensed under CITES to do so. So you can't just process caviar without having a CITES license. So like I said, they have been operating since the early 1990s. And uh, a lot of the the way we manage paddlefish, actually the cleaning station that they provide is a great way for us to collect a lot of the data from the harvested paddlefish. So, um, the cleaning station is very popular amongst anglers. Um, about 85 plus percent of people most years take their fish to the cleaning station to get processed. And we learned a lot of things gathering data from these harvested paddlefish over the years, from the from the use of that cleaning station. So every year during during the season, like I said, on a harvest day, Dennis is there collecting all of the data from these fish links and weights. He will take a jaw for aging purposes. That's how paddlefish are age, and he ages every single paddlefish that has been harvested and brought to the cleaning station. So the the nonprofit part of North Star Caviar, the caviar proceeds. Uh, portion of the proceeds comes back to the Game and Fish Department to fund further paddlefish research. Uh, portion of the proceeds go to the the help fund the historical sites right there at the confluence, Fort Union, Fort Buford, and a really great nonprofit. Part of the nonprofit. Proceeds go to open a fishing access down at Rider Point, which is a popular shore fishing spot. Uh, a couple miles downstream of the confluence. And it's private land. So North Star Caviar will pay to keep that land open for public access because it is a popular shore fishing, paddlefish snagging spot. So with the North Shore caviar operating, we can manage our harvest season through the documenting all the paddlefish that come through during during the harvest season, through the cleaning station.
Casey: And besides getting your fish cleaned there, I think the biggest thing that brings people there is the big scale. They can put their fish on, take a picture next.
Aaron: Everyone's interested in how every other fish is. And that's that's a big, big draw for people.
Casey: Yep.
Cayla: Have you tried the caviar? Anyone?
Casey: I have tried the caviar.
Cayla: Was it good?
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: I've never even had any. Is it all. Well, it's not all paddlefish caviar.
Casey: That is.
Cayla: Yeah. No, but I mean, like, just in general if you've.
Casey: Yeah. Paddlefish caviar is one of the ones that sought after what sturgeon and paddlefish are just.
Aaron: The, the, the shape, how small they are, texture and all the like a little bit darker apparently for make good caviar. I mean you can make caviar of probably any fish eggs, but sturgeon and paddlefish are probably what most people seek when they want caviar.
Casey: Yeah, I have had salmon caviar. It was a little stronger.
Paul: A little fishy. Yeah. Yeah.
Cayla: I don't run in these circles.
Casey: No. So you mentioned something interesting, and then maybe I'll go into it a little more is you guys are aging him with the jaw. Most people don't know why that is. Why? Why not use something else?
Paul: Well, uh, paddlefish, uh, have mostly a cartilaginous skeleton. So they do have otoliths or ear stones, uh, that, uh, are an aging structure we use in a lot of other fish species. Uh, but their jaw is probably just the most easy, uh, structure on them to section and determine their ages. It's a little larger, so it's a little easier to see the annuli on that jaw than it would be on an otolith. So, uh, what we do is, as Aaron mentioned, Dennis Scarnecchia collects, uh, these jaws, uh, sections. A thin section out of that jaw can look at it under a microscope and count annuli on those jaw samples, much like you'd count rings on a tree to determine how old that fish is.
Aaron: Yep. And I guess a lot of the the fish that Dennis has aged for us tells us kind of some unique things about this population of fish that we're harvesting. Uh, it kind of shows that, you know, we do see reproduction recruitment every year, but there are instances where there's dominant year classes that make up a big part of the population and we can't really talk about the the Sakakawea Yellowstone stock of paddlefish without talking about this dominant 1995 year class that we've had that we've learned is out there through Dennis aging. Um, so and and more currently is kind of a strong year class. Showing up in the harvest is a 2011 year class.
Cayla: Double one, double one double double double one.
Aaron: But you can you know we we do see ages representative through most year classes. But kind of like we mentioned the the nature of, you know, long lived fish species and maybe the nature of paddlefish kind of episodic reproduction recruitment. So in both instances Lake Sakakawea was prime for paddlefish recruitment in both those years. So anyone who's old enough but maybe Paul Casey and a little bit me, probably not Cayla, but remembers the drought from the 80s, you know, the late 80s and was across the whole Great Plains major drought. And we kind of broke that drought cycle in the early 90s. You know, 1993 is when, you know, it was a really wet year. So Lake Sakakawea was down several dozens of feet, you know, in the late 1980s. So you can like any aquatic ecosystem when everything dries up. Terrestrial vegetation starts to grow on some of that exposed mudflats and sand.
Casey: Good pheasant hunting years.
Aaron: Yep, really good wildlife habitat, but when it becomes flooded, it is really good fish habitat drives the productivity of the system. So when we started to gain our water back in 1995, there was a good reproductive effort by paddlefish. But those paddlefish that reproduced had a lot of prime forage in the reservoir due to all that flooded vegetation. So whether it's a duck slough for ducks or perch, slough for perch, Lake Sakakawea is just a bigger aquatic ecosystem. So any time you get a drying up and filling up is turned into some great productivity for a lot of species of fish and paddlefish greatly benefited from that, and that 2011 year class is kind of the same conditions everyone might remember the the extreme drought that was going on for almost a decade, and we kind of broke that drought cycle. In 2008. We gained a lot of water back in the Missouri River system. And then the record runoff year of 2011 down the Missouri River basin. So that record runoff year in 2011 probably led to a really good reproductive effort by paddlefish. And in Lake Sakakawea really was pretty much at full pool in 2011. A lot of that flooded vegetation drove productivity, and there was a lot of prime forage for young of the year paddlefish to survive and recruit to the adult population.
Paul: So that really is one of the biggest challenges in managing a long-lived species like paddlefish. With that, what we call episodic recruitment, that I mean, Aaron just mentioned we had in the last few decades, we've had two really strong year classes, 95 and 2011, that presents some real challenges in, in, uh, managing that fish population because we've all we've got the goal here along with the folks at the University of Idaho, Dennis Scarnecchia and Montana, that, you know, we want to manage or conserve this paddlefish population for years to come, while at the same time allowing anglers to enjoy that resource. And that's where the real challenge comes in, is how do you do that when you don't know when's the next reproductive event going?
Casey: You're praying for a drought refill, right? Problem. In a closed system, almost.
Aaron: You know, a male paddlefish is not making its first spawning run until they're almost nearly a decade old. So you have to wait for a lapse of a decade to see kind of maybe what the next strong year class might be out there. And, you know, Lake Sakakawea is an aging reservoir, right? It's much like any any reservoir that gets the the longer they are there, the less productive overall they will be. So you'd imagine any flood event, any high water event, leads to a tremendous amount of silt deposited in the upper end of Lake Sakakawea. So when the Yellowstone River has a big runoff period in the spring, and then the mountain snowpack starts running a little bit later in May and June. Notice how turbid the water gets. And anyone who fishes at west end of the reservoir, it can kind of wreck the walleye fishing because the water gets really turbid. You know, some years it might only be up to White Earth Bay, New Town Bridge area in a really high runoff year event, anyone familiar with Lake Sakakawea knows some of that turbidity will go all the way to skunk Bay, Independence Point. You can see it. You can see it on satellite imagery. But when the runoff stops, where does all that turbidity settles out.
Casey: Adds to the upper end.
Aaron: Adds the deposition zone on the upper end of the reservoir. And it's kind of unknown, you know, is Lake Sakakawea going to be as productive of a fishery for paddlefish in the future.
Casey: Mhm. Mhm mhm. Cayla, you would have the chance to catch a fish older than you and bigger than you.
Cayla: I already have. Okay, well, maybe not older, maybe 70.5in.
Casey: Sturgeon. Yeah.
Cayla: Yeah, but I don't know how old it was.
Casey: Weight, was it bigger than you? Because these would be heavier.
Cayla: I don't know. No, I don't think so.
Paul: We didn't have one heavier than you in the boat last summer when you joined us was it?
Cayla: Had to be close, but I guess I don't know. Is that. Do we count that as catching?
Casey: Yeah.
Paul: And you wouldn't let us put you on the scale so we would not confirm it.
Cayla: Had to be close, but.
Casey: Yeah. I don't know. I think we hit everything unless you guys have something you want to add. Yeah.
Cayla: All right. Thanks for being on guys. That was a cool one.
Paul: Yeah. Happy to be here.
Aaron: Thank you for having me.
Cayla: We'll get into the department droppings. Um, just a reminder, as boats start going in to. Well, actually, I didn't even have this on there, but it is a boat registration year, so I guess that's step one. Um, if you haven't reregistered your boat and then clean, drain, dry and make sure any, uh, docks and lifts, Things like that that you're putting in have been out for at least 21 days.
Casey: Yeah. And then like we were talking about the paddlefish snagging season is opening May 1st, so be sure to have your tag in hand before you go to Williston unless you live up there. That'd be a great idea, because if you get up there, you might not be able to get one.
Cayla: Um, as we start again, kind of recreating outside, just a reminder to be mindful of fire conditions, you can check on all of those things, any county restrictions, things like that at ndresponse gov.
Casey: Yeah. And then we just encourage you as spring starts turning here we to leave baby animals alone. They're probably trying to hide from you and everything else. And mom knows where they're at. So now that we've dropped the droppings you can get off the pot and get outdoors.