In this episode of NDO Podcast we visit with Jerry Weigel, Department fisheries production and development supervisor, about raising, stocking and transporting fish, how the demand for fish has changed over time and why his job is so rewarding.
(Intro music)
Cayla: Welcome to episode 97 of the NDO podcast. On this episode, we have Jerry Weigel with us. So he's the fisheries production and development section leader. So we're going to talk all about stocking, how we decide what gets stocked where. Probably, already, I can tell some good stories.
Casey: Flying largemouth bass.
Cayla: Yeah, flying largemouth bass? That sounds crazy. So. Yeah. Thanks for being on, Jerry.
Jerry: Oh. You bet.
Cayla: We can just get started with where are you from? And how'd you get started with old Game and Fish? I don't even know where Jerry's from.
Jerry: Well, I'm just a local boy from down in Linton. I grew up fishing and driving my bike out to Beaver Creek to catch northern pike and bullheads in the summertime. And ironically, we didn't have walleyes, they wouldn't make it up to the town of Linton from Lake Oahe so I never caught my first walleye until I think I was a senior in high school, but yeah, obviously had a passion for the outdoors and pursued it through college and was able to get on with the department in the middle of 1980s. And so, yeah, I'm afraid I'm an old guy here with the department right now.
Casey: One of the few people left that knows how to skin and eat a bullhead.
Jerry: Darn right.
Cayla: Oh, goodness.
Casey: We ate a lot of those.
Jerry: Oh, ditto.
Cayla: So yeah, when I talked to you about doing this podcast, you kind of just wanted to start with like how fishing has changed in all that time. And then what that means for you know, on our end of stocking.
Jerry: I mean, it's just amazing. And unfortunately, you need to have a few decades as an adult to really appreciate how good we have it now. I mean, when you go back to when I first started, you know, we maybe had 150 less, way less than 200 public fishing waters. And back in the day, it really all mattered to what was happening at Lake Sakakawea, Devils Lake or Lake Oahe. The rest of the lakes were, you know, they just were there. And you know, fast forward to now with all the water we have, we're literally at 450 fishing waters. And the kind of use when you think of you know, Stump Lake or Lake Alkaline, Horsehead Lake. I mean, there's just amazing fisheries out there. You know, maybe one of the downsides that's evolved, that's getting to be lost is when I was growing up, that was the days of big families camping next to Lake Oahe somewhere next to a lake and shore fishing, everything was caught. I mean, that's they're just, I don't know, there wasn't many people that had boats back then. And so, there was a lot of shore fishing were now highly driven by boats. But that doesn't mean there isn't shore fishing opportunities between the fishing piers the department tries to put out and you know, just the sheer amount of water that's out there that you could still certainly do it. So, but it's not the big recreational event. The other thing, you know, without a doubt, there was because I remember it very well is the, the fishing opener. The first week of May was a big deal, you know, for us, everybody was hogging our good spot on Beaver Creek there. They had fished for the week and then they were gone. But that was a big family event also.
Casey: Yeah. That's when we actually had kind of a gap between we had a closing date and an opening date.
Jerry: Ice fishing would close and then you literally waited for that. Yeah. You had to wait for the, the, you know, the first week of May roughly is when the opener was. And so yeah, no, it was good stuff. And, you know we're fortunate enough to have really good production, hatchery production capability. So with all this water that showed up on the prairie, we're able to, you know, take advantage and adequately stock it and, you know help and push some of the fisheries that are out there.
Casey: Yeah. And realistically, we've probably, we've switched fish species partly because we have the ability, because we got more water to be able to have walleyes on the landscape.
Jerry: I mean, you could say when the state was original, before all the reservoirs started getting built and all the prairie water showed up, without a doubt, northern pike were more hardy. They probably did well. They were able to colonize and spread out more. Walleyes were really limited to the Missouri River, and I don't think they wouldn't have been in Spiritwood, the Red River, just very few waters would have had walleyes. And they just were, you know. But fast forward, I mean, I, we talk about this in the hatchery world here in North Dakota that we are so fortunate that the one species that we seem to be very consistent and very good at just happens to align with what our constituents really like to catch. That's been really fortunate because even northern pike, they're not as easy to produce. Not near the numbers game that we can do with walleye. So yeah, I know that part we're really lucky.
Casey: Northern pike almost do better producing on their own. When you get them in the right places.
Jerry: They do and you know, we certainly have epic amount of walleye fisheries, but there's no problem going out and finding northerns if you are a die hard northern pike fisherman.
Cayla: Do you know what's the deal with Russ's little experiment with northern pike? Because he was asking Ashley to film it, but I was like, there's got to be a reason we're doing these cage things, because it's like the fry don't do very well.
Jerry: No. So I joke about the smartness of fish. And at the very bottom is muskie.
Cayla: Really.
Jerry: They're dumb as a box of rocks.
Cayla: Because it wouldn't seem like it.
Jerry: And then you move up and you get to northern pike are a little bit smarter, but they're still very dumb. They, as a juvenile fish, they die so easy. They don't even try to stay alive, where walleyes are survivors. You can have them in a pond and there's no food that they should have in there, they will find a way to live off of back swimmers and just anything. They'll stay alive. Northern pike got to have a certain size food or they starve to death, they're just too stupid. But so the little northerns, they go through a stage where after they hatch, they have to be attached to some reeds and stuff, and then they swim up and finally start swimming around and eating food. And they're still very susceptible to a lot of things that they don't make it because, we had that in the ponds. There's a little magic that has to happen or we'd have poor pond success where walleyes, you just throw them things out and they're just out doing their thing. And so, we really try to limit the northern pike production now, mainly because we need every pond for walleyes at Garrison Hatchery and we do the northerns first and walleyes behind the northerns and those walleye ponds that are second cropped are never as good as a non-cropped walleye pond.
Jerry: So we're already taking a little hit. So we don't want it to just keep growing and growing and growing because it makes our walleye production go down and you know, missing, since Valley City had zebra mussels here a number of years back and we haven't been able to get the water supply secure so we can use that output anywhere in the state. Right now, we limited it to just waters that have zebra mussels, which is very few that, that in addition to having all this water to stock, that's really putting a crunch because Valley City was our go to pike place. They would raise all the pike. Garrison would raise all the walleyes. Valley City then would do all the bass. And if we did, crappie did perch, they just were the place that provided the variety where Garrison is just so good at walleyes and so now you take Valley City out of it. And, you know, if we want to do perch, we want to do bass. Those directly compete with walleye. So for every perch and bass pond, there's no walleye pond that year. And so, it's just, you know, there's definitely some balance going on, on some of that.
Casey: And we're working on some options to hopefully get Valley City back up and running. Be able to use statewide. We got to find a water source.
Jerry: Well, right. And you know, the challenge there is, is just, you obviously have to filter out the water to filter out these very tiny zebra mussel babies, let's call them. And as such Valley City water is already probably some of the dirtiest, has the highest silt load, it's just a challenge to filter regardless of even having to filter the zebra mussels. And the problem is, you can't just accept 95 or 98% clean. It's got to be 100% clean. But they already have a couple wells and they're using some of that well water. But of course, the output is very minimal, but we're going to continue to look to see if there's some options because we desperately need that production out of the facility.
Casey: And how long, I can't remember how long have we been fortunate to have this partnership, Fish and Wildlife Service and us with the hatchery. When did they build?
Jerry: You know, when I go back and look through old photos from literally the 50s, the first years Garrison Dam would have been the late 50s, early 60s. It was built along with Garrison Fish hatchery was built along with Garrison Dam. I see our trucks. I see Dale Henniger in a fish truck there that I think that partnership informally existed from the get-go. I think and part of it was probably driven by staffing. I think we both had not enough staff. So collectively we could get the job done. And I think that's where it evolved to where we collectively have always taken the eggs. And obviously the fish hatchery has always raised the fish. But then collectively, we've always came back and trucked the fish around to the lakes across the state. And then we made that more formal in the late 80s where we built, first, we definitely, the salmon fishing was coming on board and the.
Cayla: On Strawberry Lake.
Casey: On Strawberry Lake.
Casey: Yeah, they were stocked in Strawberry Lake once.
Jerry: Oh my gosh. Well, there's been some head scratcher stocking over the years. And I think unfortunately some of them were accurate. They weren't just mistakes. But so, to address the salmon stocking. Without a doubt. We need some enhanced hatchery production capability. So it just timed with the federal Wallop-Breaux funding expansion that occurred in the 1980s, when they added the excise tax on motorboat fuels and the amount of money that the state was able to get federal aid money dramatically went up. And so, we used some of that to build the salmon. We call it the salmon building there at Garrison Hatchery to raise salmon. But we obviously raise lots of trout and stuff in it too. And then you know, fast forward, the way we went about it is we paid to build it. And then we said, hey, we'll give you an operating grant to operate it for us. If you need to add staff, here's the, you know, we'll fund that. And then a couple of years later, we actually added the 40 new acre and a half ponds, which were more than double what previously existed, to the point where, you know, when you go up there, it looks 100%. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and we pay them to operate it. So that's no surprise. But the actual ownership of what's there, more than two thirds of the capital investment is by the Game and Fish Department, and probably rightfully so, because, you know, 99% of the output is used for the North Dakota. So it's just a great, great partnership. It's very unique. It doesn't exist anywhere else in the country. The federal government, you know, obviously floats to the top as man. Here's a great example. If you want to get stuff done, get stuff done cheap, have obviously buy in with your constituency because you're partnered with them. And it's worked well. So, you know, the federal government is involved, they provide some funding and stuff and we're involved and it's been just an amazing, amazing partnership.
Casey: Yeah. It's interesting. So most people don't know, but Jerry has been here a while, but he's still one of the guys that knows all the new technology. So what's changed in the hatchery system as far as technology to help our abilities go?
Jerry: There's just a lot of things. And, and part of that is, is if you learn early on that you never got it figured out, that there's always, yeah, I'm not going to say there's a better way to do it, but keep your mind open to trying new things because we've seen that in even pond production back in the day, they used literally alfalfa bales and they would throw chopped up hay out in the ponds to stimulate, you know, food for the little walleyes and northerns. And that evolved to alfalfa meal. And then the other thing is, is we lined a couple ponds because they were leaking and they were losing so much water. And then when you added the new water, there was no food in it. And it just was tough to raise fish. And lo and behold, not only did the liners keep water in the ponds, but oh my God, did it raise bigger fish?
Casey: Yeah.
Jerry: And so we switched to lining ponds to raise bigger fish and have more consistency. And that's been probably really magical up here in the prairie. You know, on the salmonid side, it's, it's maybe dialing in what works best to get the, because you want to get the best return because all salmon and trout, you typically, first of all, you're having to heat the water because the water all winter long at Garrison Dam coming off the bottom of the lake is, you know, a mid to upper 30s and you need to have water closer to 50 if you want fish to grow. And so yeah, we have to heat the water in any way you're putting a lot more money into fish, labor and everything when they're in the hatchery for months and months. And like rainbow trout, we literally keep them for a year and a half. So, so they're, I mean, they're well over a buck a fish. And so, there's where anything we can do to maximize the utilization of them, to make sure that our constituents are actually where we're stocking them. We're not just creating a fishery that makes us feel good. We're creating something that people are using. And the best thing when it comes to trout and salmon is they're fishing them out. They're catching them all that that would be the ultimate. Yeah. So yeah, that's probably one of the things we certainly, you know, I've been personally involved with the transport side of things.
Jerry: And, and we've, you know, it's always a big, it's kind of like a, you know, a grain harvest in the fall or a sugar beet harvest where it's just really going hard and heavy for a week or two and you're shipping all this fish. And then obviously there's long miles, long days and, and then you get to those, those last lakes of the day and you stock them. And the fish just didn't look that good. Or sometimes it didn't, it, it happened relatively quick in the day. It's like, why aren't my fish doing well? And so you, you use technology with oxygen monitoring equipment. And basically we found some equipment that keeps the fish happy till the end of the day. So no matter what now, no matter how hard the day is, when you get to that last stocking, your fish look amazing and you have that at least you feel like this day was worth it. And we're going to make something happen here and do good things. And I think it, it actually a, you know, some of those things take time to tease out, but it seems like we're needing a few less fish per lake because I think what we're stocking is doing better now than it did 15, 20 years ago.
Jerry: And or just, let's say we're getting more mileage out of what we raise out of the hatchery. So I know folks, a lot of times when you show up to stock and, oh, we're getting walleyes and I think they're thinking that you're stocking them just short of keeper size. And it's like, no, they're a few years away. They’re literally 30 days old. So I mean, and like, oh, those little things, are they going to do anything? And I said, hey, every fish starts out like that.
Casey: That's right. Yeah.
Jerry: What you're catching was like that at one time. So yeah, I know they'll do something. And so no, that technology is definitely increased and even on the survey and the management side, I mean, I think our guys are getting better and better at, you know, tracking what is happening out in the lake. And, you know, we all agree we don't care where the walleyes or northerns come from, whether they're naturally reproduced or they come from the hatchery. We just want that consistent year class that we know is going to support and sustain the fishery is all we're after. And there's where I think the guys are just getting better and better at monitoring and being able to detect that to make the best decisions on, hey, do we need to stock, do we not need to stock? And so yeah, no, all good stuff.
Casey: Yeah, it's kind of funny. Sometimes people will look at the, the stocking list that we put out and they'll be like, oh, they dumped a bunch of walleyes into this lake. Let's go fishing. And it's like, well, you might want to look at about three years ago to see where that was.
Jerry: And an interesting sidebar there. We've recently partnered with OnX Fish, and they were testing their brand new app with, which was a spin off of OnX Hunt, which is really popular. And so they are working with Minnesota, Wisconsin, and some, a few of us upper northern states. And obviously each state goes about things different and how they stock and this and that. And anyway when they finally released their product and this isn't, they didn't write this OnX Fish just for North Dakota. It's a national program. Anyway, they had this stocking thing in the app where it would rate low stocking, high stocking. And, and I kind of, I thought, well, golly, when I, when you come to our like northerns and walleyes, we're talking fish that are several years away, I don't really see the relevance to, you know, that stocking indicating that this is a good lake to go fishing or not. And so I said, you know, guys, at least for North Dakota, I don't know that I would have any stocking stuff, honestly, because we provide the survey data, the netting data. I said, yeah, that's the magic bullet.
Cayla: Yeah.
Jerry: You're giving them what they need to see. The stocking isn't really helping the fish bite better.
Cayla: Well, and maybe if natural reproduction is higher or the stockings previous have done well, you guys don't stock it. So then it would just be like, yeah.
Cayla: Yeah.
Jerry: I know.
Cayla: Yeah. It's more relevant. What's actually what was last netted.
Jerry: And I think what it was is there are some states where they, they stock a bigger product that's within, you know, less than a year, like our trout, our trout are ready to catch. And, and, but here in North Dakota, it, it didn't matter. So then we, you know, we work with them to, because we want, we don't want to put data out there that just overwhelms. And, and you know, or we always joke about paper fish where you stock and they're there, but so no, it's I think we try to really put things that are useful and are going to genuinely help because I personally think, at least in our state right now and it's, you know, it's because we're not a state of 10 or 15 million citizens that who are so lucky to have modest to low angling pressure. And that's why if there's a reason why we have very simple regulations and all the no slot limits, all this complicated stuff that has a place and biologically there's a cookbook to where it's needed. We don't have that. We don't meet that. And we're just so lucky to not have to, to deal with that, you know complications, so.
Casey: Do, now you mentioned a lot of times, you know, we're stocking the little ones, but there are times where we're actually moving fish, adult fish for certain situations.
Jerry: Absolutely. And that is probably grown over the years, because if we go back to when we maybe had two before we had 300 fishing waters, we only needed 5 or 6 million walleye, which seems like a big number, but it's half of what we're stocking now. And so we had ponds available to raise, bass to raise. We had Valley City available so we could do a lot more species. In fact, there were several years when we were shipping 1 million to 2 million yellow perch, fingerlings. And but fast forward to now we lose Valley City and we just, we have such a need for, to, to, to meet the walleye lakes. And so then the plan B is to, to still adequately create bass fisheries and crappie. And, and a lot of the other perch in particular is the guys go out in the spring and they catch brood fish, adult fish that are in a lake where they're a little overpopulated. They certainly have room where you could take some out and not affect its fishery. And they move them to lakes to, to not create the fishery with what they stock, but create the brood fish to hopefully have a spawn that creates the fingerlings. And this has been highly successful with yellow perch. I would say the majority of the perch fishing, including Devils Lake that didn't start from a hatchery perch. It started from some adults that were moved in there. And so, that is very successful. The guys do it all the time with both largemouth and smallmouth bass, crappie, bluegill very common. You know, that's, that's the way we are able to continue to enhance and create those fisheries without using hatchery fish.
Cayla: I was sitting in on their fisheries meeting and towards the end I was telling him it sounded like an actual real game of go fish because they were like, I got, I would like some cats for my bullheads in this lake. And he's like, well, if anyone's got white bass, I'll trade you some bluegills for. It was just like, they're actually just like a little. Yeah, I don't know or an auction for fish swapping.
Jerry: And honestly, even that process is kind of like a hatchery where you have all your production coming from one place. Ideally, if you want to move some yellow perch, you don't want, you know, all six districts to have to be setting nets and trapping perch and taking care of their own lakes. If one district has the mother load and it's like, and you get enough on a truck and you can go to 4 or 5 lakes in a day, you just you stock them all out of that lake. And so, yeah, I know that's that's very common. And I know I was telling Cayla, that actually happens on the national scale because again, you know, all our states we're good at, we're really good at something. Or maybe we were a little bit heavy on our production output and, and our state need has dropped a little bit, but we're, we either have no ability to produce a certain species like ironically or beneficially the we partner with the state of Wyoming going back to the late 1990s. They had a tremendous trout cold water production and still do. But had no ability to raise walleyes at all. And we obviously had the walleyes. And we were certainly needing unique to salmonid species. Or the other thing is, is we were getting into these community ponds and if we could get access to, we call them brood calls and their brood fish that are used for egg collection. But just like in the farming world, you have to retire them and replace them while those retired brood fish where we're talking 3 to 5 pound each fish were just fun stuff in these community ponds. And so anyway, the state of Wyoming has gotten all their walleyes from the state of North Dakota. And so anyway, this annual meeting is, is all the state's talking about, hey, I've got some striped bass or I've got some you know, muskies, unique species or a lot of times is you're trading eggs and fry. I mean, literally to the point where some states collect the milt for to make saugeyes and some states, you know, have the eggs. And so there's just a tremendous amount of that a fish product flying around the country every spring.
Casey: It's like the fish stock market.
Cayla: Yeah, yeah. It is.
Casey: Traders on the floor jumping up and down. Yeah. So that was nobody, almost nobody raises more walleye than we do. And so we've traded, like you said, Pennsylvania for muskie.
Jerry: Well, the other thing is, is that's the other along with a large output, probably more so is and we learned this the hard way. There was a couple of years there in the 90s where we did not get enough eggs and oh, we'll just go ask for some help. Hey, Minnesota, you got some. Oh, we we've been done for a week or more. We have none. We basically found out that we had to go literally quite a ways north into Alberta to get to a lake that still had walleyes. And so the North Dakota walleyes in Devils Lake and Sakakawea are some of the latest spawning walleyes in North America. And certainly, for the lower 48, if all of a sudden, whether it's a storm or some crazy weather that you either didn't get enough eggs or you just stocked your ponds, and then a blizzard comes and all your fry die. Golly, we need some more walleye fry. Let's call North Dakota. They're probably just getting started. And so, we have bailed out a lot of states and it's usually a minimal thing they need. You know, ten, 20 quarts of eggs. Well, that's not even a day's take. And so, it's easy for us to do. And you feel good that when you know, a state's whole walleye program is either going to happen or not happen, and we can collect some eggs or send them some fry and, and make it happen. You just feel good about that. And then, you know, it's always, you know, scratch your back type of deal. And if we ever get in a crisis, I think there's a lot of states that would definitely want to help North Dakota out.
Cayla: Yeah. So talk about the timing this this time of year. So I'm gathering maybe trap and transports happen first, then kind of your catchable trout. Then the guys are out spawning pike and walleyes that goes to the hatchery. And then for you said like a month basically. And then once they're raised, that starts or.
Jerry: The month of April is definitely go time for the whole division because the majority of the trap and transport is going to occur. All the spawning other than walleyes will roll into the first week or two of May. And then, you know, the catchable trout, we want to get them out after the ice is gone. And certainly, before school's out. So, you know, as school's out and the water starts to warm up, folks can get out there and catch them. So. Yeah. The very first thing is going to be northern pike. Northern pike spawn literally when there's still ice on the water there. And so, we actually took northern pike last week at Horsehead Lake and today they're taking them up on the upper end of Devils Lake.
Casey: I saw they were breaking ice to get the nets in.
Jerry: Right. Well, they were breaking ice on the way up, but they're still driving UTVs, fishing on the main Devils Lake. And that's very common. Walleyes will be a little while yet, but no, because you want to move your perch and stuff. Pre-spawn. And so, northerns are first.
Cayla: Well, spawning northerns are first, right?
Jerry: Spawning northerns are first, but even then spawning perch would be second. So if you want to move them before they spawn.
Cayla: Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Jerry: You got to get out. You know, that's why there's just a narrow window and then walleyes are after that you know, the, the, the crappies and largemouths you certainly can wait till end of June if you want or May, but Yeah. And then as far as all the eggs go back to the hatchery, and then typically it's 30 to 40 days, there's ten days or so for the eggs to hatch. And then there's another 30 to potentially 40 days that we raise them. And the whole it's like, well, why don't you leave them in there longer? Well, little fish are always adjusting their food size as they grow. They want bigger food and it's always a balance. If they don't have the bigger food, their brothers and sisters kind of look like they could be food. And that's what happens very fast. And we see that not so much with walleyes, but almost every year we'll see northern pike when we're shipping them or they'll be tails sticking out the mouth of of another one. And so, you want to get them out before that, you know, certainly starts to happen and you want to get them out when they're good and healthy. And so typically we stock the northerns, maybe they're inch and a half long but they don't look like a minnow. They look like a very tiny northern pike, it's great look exactly the same. That's usually northern pike are usually Memorial Weekend, roughly, is a good target when we're shipping those. And then the walleyes, That's the only thing we have walleye fry in June, which is unprecedented in the lower 48. But we typically are really into shipping walleyes the last two weeks of June, usually done by 4th of July.
Casey: So the, you know, you've got the fish transport unit, the fish wagon. Yeah. And most people will recognize it if they see it. It's got some pipes coming over. Looks like a unique trailer.
Jerry: But yeah, I mean some thought it's like a big Schwan truck or cooler or something.
Casey: But do we the like when we're trap and transport adult fish for spawning, do we use that unit as well or is that different?
Jerry: Absolutely. Yeah, they're just, it's, they're designed to move anywhere, any size fish. And so yeah, we are, we've got, you know, not short on fish tanks, we've got plenty of tanks. So the guys are, have lots of options to move things and even so something that started the last say 5 or 8 years is this kind of came from spawning down at Lake Oahe. We were always having to throw all these catfish. We had a lot of catfish and we didn't, we don't spawn catfish. And it's like, golly, you know, down south, that's a big fishery. We should take some catfish and throw them in one of these ponds. Okay, so they kept some catfish back and they stocked them in the community ponds. And anyway, our drains on our fish tanks are six-inch drains. And, and they just between the big northerns that they also move excess northerns into community ponds. The one biologist said, boy, it'd be sure nice to have a fish tank that we didn't have to dip all the fish in and dip all the fish out, that we could just pull a lever and they would drain the lake like we do with our little fingerlings. And so anyway, the last tank we bought, we got it with a 12-inch drain. So yeah, now, they don't have to dip the fish out anymore.
Cayla: They just got to put them in now. Yeah.
Jerry: They go flying fast.
Casey: Yeah. Well and yeah, when they're starting to get big enough to. Not go through that six inch one. They're getting heavy. Yeah. They're getting heavy too. Yeah. Yeah. So how do we how do we determine maybe what goes in a lake or what do we. You know, what are we looking for? What species? What.
Jerry: Yeah. And so that all comes back to. Our managers, you know, the biologist for the lake. And again, the how they've gained the experience and what we've learned with the different size netting and things. And, and you know, just little interesting little observations that you do. And then we talk. About it like one thing, this started like ten, 15 years ago as these new prairie lakes were developing. And the guys commented that yeah we sampled this Antelope Lake or something. And usually when we're looking for sampling for little walleyes, we traditionally would set, we call it a little three by four. It's a trap net with very fine mesh. And so, it would catch a young walleye. Well catches all young fish. And anyway, they would check that trap net. And here there would be thousands of pounds of minnows. It's like, oh my God, this lake has got so much bait. When these walleyes finally grow up, boy, they're going to have something to eat. Well, that net is set every fall. Catch a lot of minnows. Catch a lot of minnows. All of a sudden, one year don't catch a minnow. None. And it almost timed. It was like clockwork. The next spring or that winter, the walleye bite would be epic and they would hammer the walleyes. And this was a good thing and kind of, I wouldn’t say they crashed the population, but they took enough out of there that the next year thousand pounds of minnows were back. And so it almost became a benchmark that you could push your walleye populations until they crashed the food, which would create an amazing fishery, which usually got utilized. It wasn't wasted. So there's, there was some relationship there, but no, the biologists definitely between their, their sampling. And you know, people say, well, I want you know, variety of species, there's a little challenge because there's a number of our waters that are alkaline or salty. It's a different kind of, it's not table salt, it's a different kind of salt, but it can get to the point where it actually inhibits walleyes and, and perch from reproducing. Obviously, Stump Lake was on the edge until it got freshened. But those things also really can affect the ability for crappie or bass and stuff to survive. And then, you know, unlike lakes in the South that seem to really do well with bass and bluegill, the classic thing is they don't have any walleyes or northerns in those lakes, and not that bass and crappie can't deal with northerns and walleyes, but they probably can't deal with the high population of them. And so, there's a balance with what you what you do. And we certainly do the guys are doing, right. Like when you think about the crappie opportunities out of the Jamestown and Pipestem amazing crappie fishery. Bluegill up in Lake Metigoshe traditionally is just a really a fun bluegill place. And then honestly, the smallmouths in particular in Audubon or even Lake Sakakawea, they're just unutilized. There's epic bass potential there if people want to go have at them.
Casey: Yeah, there's I remember one year I took the boys on Audubon, we thought we were going to go catch walleyes. And that usually burns me. I'm not a very good walleye fisherman, but I was like, all right, let's go in shallow and see if we can't catch some pike or something else. And we pulled across this rock that was like the size of a Volkswagen. You could see it and the smallmouth bass started coming out from underneath there. We must have went over that rock a hundred times.
Jerry: Well, and obviously if you've only caught walleye, you have no idea how fish can actually fight.
Cayla: Right?
Jerry: And maybe that's the good thing with northern pike and the interest in them is they're a fighting fish for sure.
Casey: So, so I had a guy from British Columbia one time that I took fishing on Sakakawea, walleye fishing, and we were catching some walleyes and I would, you know, bottom bouncer spinner type of thing. And I would pull mine in and, and check the bait every once in a while, and he'd go, oh, maybe I should check my bait. And he'd pull it in and he'd have a walleye on there that he'd been pulling. And he was like; these are the laziest fish ever. He's of course, he was used to fly fishing king salmon, but he was like, these are the laziest fish I've ever caught.
Jerry: Yeah. No, that's I mean, you can't have everything there. Just an amazing great eating fish, but they give up on the fighting ability a little bit.
Casey: But they're a challenge, I think, to you know, and catch a big one. Like it's just more challenging. I mean, you can go catch pike if you're in a pike space, you're going to catch them.
Jerry: Yeah.
Casey: You know.
Jerry: You know, it's something like that's you know, that we're able to, to balance is, you know, going from the 200 fishing waters in the state to doubling to 450 fishing waters is our division, certainly our management staff, it's pretty much the same staff. And so there's certainly areas in the state where they've got a crazy amount of lakes. And like now that we're sharing our sampling data, the net netting survey data, every now and then somebody said, well, golly, they didn't have this lake last year. How come they didn't net this lake? Don't they get to every lake? It's like, no, there's definitely some lakes that they just obviously have to prioritize what lakes need to need the attention and which don't need the attention. And, you know, you somewhat tie that to use the lakes that are getting used the most. We want to make sure we're dialed in the best. We're a lake that just gets some occasional use. Maybe it doesn't have a boat ramp. Honestly, sometimes if we can get the feedback from the anglers on what they're catching. Data is data we don't. That's good enough. So no, the guys are doing a great job of balancing all these extra lakes and just being efficient. Yeah. You know, in some cases, they're substituting the electrofishing where they're using electricity to go out and sample because the beauty with that is you don't have to set nets and wait to come back the next day. When you're on the water with the electrofishing boat, you're instantly getting your data and you can go to the next lake and the next lake, and you can do a lot more with that.
Cayla: We're doing some not new things, but we're, I think there's an increased effort on largemouth bass starting?
Jerry: So it's interesting with the largemouth bass. Again, going back to when we didn't need many walleyes, we had Valley City, we partnered with the state of Colorado and we basically had access to all the bass fry. They had just tremendous extra fry, largemouth bass fry. So we were bringing back in excess of a million fry and stocking out a million bass. And we really went a little crazy spreading them out all over the place. And that's one way too, you kind of find out a species how well they do is do they make the winter? Do they survive the predation? And a lot of those didn't amount to much. But the lakes that they did carry on. Well, here's the other, I think the other subtle thing we learned. So we were getting these fry from just north of New Mexico, which is way south of us. So even as compared to our spawning bass, these were spawning weeks earlier. And so, we were putting a, you know, let's say a one inch and a half, two inch little bass in the lake, months, a month, weeks to a month ahead of our natural bass. Well, that made him go into the winter a little bigger. And I think we were artificially creating fish that could survive the winter here, because when we quit stocking them, the they just didn't recruit. And I think there's a lot of systems where the spawn is so late and the little fingerlings are. They just aren't hardy enough to survive the winter to whereas if you can jumpstart them. And so we're, we're, we're trying to do. Here's what we're trying to do with bass is we're partnering with other states that have excess fingerling production. Last year we got some fingerling production from state of Nebraska and did some nice largemouth bass stocking. We're going to try at Valley City has some well water that they can actually they have enough water to do one pond. And so we're literally going to put all that into largemouth bass to do that. And the other unique thing is muskies you know, it's a real balance with muskies because I, you know, you can't deny that, you know, of the states around us, we have epic northern pike as far as trophy northern pike, we have really good northern trophy, northern pike. And so are we going to create another cousin of the northern pike that's bigger and better, you know, maybe yes or no. The bigger thing is, is clearly the better habitat is, is east of us and we're kind of on the edge. So just because we can raise walleyes as good as, you know, let's say Minnesota, Wisconsin, doesn't mean we can raise muskies and be as successful as Minnesota and Wisconsin. And the other big thing is in the hatchery world, even those states, they just have determined that just a little 30-day year old, they just don't. You got to have a, you know, a ten-inch fall fish. In fact, the new science for those states is saying you really need to have a year and a half fish.
Jerry: So now you're talking a 14, 15-inch fish. Yeah. And I mean, this was five, five years ago or more. Walleyes were pretty much a buck an inch fish. So if you were stocking in a ten-inch fish, you had ten bucks into that fish from the hatchery standpoint. So you have to balance what are you going to, you're going to use how much of your constituency's money are you going to spend to create a muskie fishery? And so, what we've tried to do well. The other big challenge we have is we can get the fry and eggs really easy. Let's say we sacrifice a pond at Garrison, whatever, to raise these things. We have so darn many pelicans, cormorants, everything that likes to eat muskies. Muskies really like to sunbathe right at the surface of the hatchery pond and we tried it and they all got eaten. And so, we definitely try to partner with other states that have excess fish and they raise them for us. And so we've actually been stocking, Wyoming's been raising our tiger muskies for ten years now. We've got dabbles of pure muskies from Iowa from South Dakota. And ideally going that route is our expense is the trip to get them and bring them in, stock them. And so, we're trying to minimize our impact and yet still provide some unique trophy opportunities for muskie. So and I would say like crappies and smallmouths for now, and bluegills are pretty much trap and relocate opportunities and they're doing well on those.
Casey: We also are trying to establish lake sturgeon in…
Jerry: Right? And so historically, they were in the Red River and they were extirpated and the Minnesota actually started it on their side. And the river coming in there at Grand Forks and they're being raised at Valley City. The eggs come out of I think up by Lake of the Woods. And we thought, you know what? We should try to see if we can't get something going up in the Pembina River and stuff. So, yeah, we've been trying those. The other brand-new species, which it's kind of you just don't, you know, look out at what, what's, what's out in the United States for species and say, hey, let's try this. Let's try that. You know, so but one thing that we are trying a couple of years now is tiger trout, which is a cross between brown and a brook trout. And you know, they should be a unique fighting fish. I think they're going to do. Okay. We've been stocking them up at Hooker Lake and actually just like whenever you start a new species, you can start a state record pretty small.
Casey: Yeah.
Jerry: So there'll be a little bit of that repeating itself here. But the other one we're going to try, which we're kind of excited about is the Garrison Tailrace, we're going to put tiger trout in there and all our salmonid records. Every trout, every salmon state record has came out of the tailrace. That just finds a way to raise the biggest. It probably because it has the very best habit year year-round for them. So they do very well in there.
Casey: Yeah. We just talked to, a gentleman that had fished Hooker Lake and caught a tiger trout, and he was pretty excited about it.
Jerry: Yeah.
Casey: I don't know if he got the state record or not. It's going to be a race.
Cayla: Was that just a couple of months ago? Was the state record right out of Hooker? Yeah. But yeah, like you said, it'll probably be a little bit of shuffling.
Casey: Well, you got anything else? How many miles do you drive pulling the fish wagon?
Jerry: Well, probably the number that might be most you know, the driving is kind of like if you asked a farmer, how many hours do you spend in a combine?
Casey: Yeah right.
Jerry: And when it's harvest time, he's going to say too many.
Casey: Yeah.
Jerry: But the rest of the year it just sets. And I'm kind of the same way with fish hauling. But the one little benchmark is, you know, maybe not every year, but every other year. I'll have a month or at least a four-week period where I'll do 10,000 miles in a month.
Casey: And we've got how many do we have? Two of those units now.
Jerry: I mean, we have three of them. You know, Garrison is the big challenge. And then Valley City, unfortunately, if we could have it at 100% capacity, there would be a guy that would be very busy over there too. But you know just, just like we do a lot of things in the division, whether it's boat ramps or this and that. We just have most states, the hatchery folks transport the fish. So you have a variety of different people doing it on a given day where we just try to target a couple of us, get good at it and we obviously learn all the lakes, learn all the roads.
Casey: But 400 and something lakes, 2 to 3 units. That's a lot of miles and a lot of time, you know, and we don't stock them all.
Jerry: But yeah, and thank God for you know, Google Maps and Android Auto and just, there's just ways you can be very efficient, you know, and, you know, we all kind of come from a background, you know, that long days is, you know, certainly on the prairie here, the month of June, that's when we're shipping. We got the longest days of the year. So I mean, might as well stay up while the sun's out.
Casey: So how many lakes do you typically stock with one load of fish. Say you fill the.
Jerry: Walleyes is probably on the trout because they're so big. Maybe 1 to 2 lakes, three lakes. But on the walleyes, it's pretty typical to go to a dozen lakes.
Cayla: Oh wow.
Jerry: On a day as high as 20.
Cayla: Wow.
Casey: And that's just one load of fish. Are you?
Jerry: Yeah, yeah. I mean, typically with walleyes, there'll be two of us. And then we mix the third truck in there at least three times because we're going to the entire state. We typically are trying to go to 200 lakes, but you're usually leaving the hatchery with half a million fish each truck. And there's your map, there's your lake, and you got your 15 lakes.
Cayla: Do they all ask, are we there yet?
Casey: Yeah. Right. Are we there yet? As there sloshing around in there. Oh, yeah.
Jerry: But I mean, it's, I it's interesting. It just you just You really have a good feeling. I mean, it's not like a farmer and his, you know, his crop is worth so much money for us the month of June there's so many people out fishing. And believe me, they they're not bitching at you because you're tying up the boat ramp.
Casey: Right.
Jerry: They make.
Casey: Make way for the fish. Put them in.
Jerry: Oh my God, the fish truck's here. Yeah, I know it's you just really feel good that.
Casey: You are kind of like the ice cream man when you show up. Yeah.
Cayla: Yeah, you got to get a little.
Casey: Little bell on their…
Cayla: Music or whatever.
Jerry: Always offer. I said, hey, I got limits for everybody today. But they don't, they don't take their little one-inch walleye.
Cayla: What's your go-to fish hauling snack?
Jerry: I eat a lot of Planters peanuts because you can get two packs for a buck. Okay, they went up. Now they're like a buck 15.
Casey: You're not a sun seed guy and your tongue goes numb by the time the day's over.
Jerry: No, planters, peanuts and peanut butter sandwich I ate. Probably approaching millions of peanut butter sandwiches.
Casey: Too many, too many PBJs.
Jerry: There's a lot of days they are dinner and supper. Not just dinner.
Cayla: Nice. Well, when you're out fishing this spring, you have Jerry and many other people to thank for getting those fish in there.
Jerry: It's a very rewarding job; I can tell you. It just Yeah. I mean, we all feel like, you know, you want to have purpose in what you're doing. And man, in the fishing world in North Dakota, like we started this out and what it was like when I first started. And, you know, obviously we enjoyed it. We thought it was great, but we don't know how good it is right now. And, you know, and I tell people I said, they say, well, we're in the golden years or the, you know, the best, best of fishing. I said, it might still be coming, maybe it's getting better.
Casey: So we've been.
Jerry: It’s been getting better since the 90s.
Casey: Yeah.
Jerry: So it might still get better yet.
Casey: Since 95, I think we've been saying that.
Jerry: Well.
Cayla: Yeah. Well, thanks for being on.
Jerry: Absolutely. Anytime. Other than the month of April, May, June
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: We could do a ride along episode. All right, we'll get into the department droppings. So deer lottery deadline is June 3rd. It should be open when this airs or roughly around this time. So.
Casey: Yeah. And just another reminder that we're coming into spring, and there's going to be a lot of baby animals out there. And just the best thing to do is just leave them alone. They're probably trying to hide from you when you find them.
Cayla: Also, a reminder to be mindful of fire conditions this spring when you're out and about, whether you're camping, hiking, hunting whatever you're up to. Just check all the restrictions at ND Response and just make good decisions.
Casey: Yeah. And then we're coming up on the first big camping recreation weekend, Memorial Day weekend, and camping restrictions will be lifted on WMAs for that weekend.
Cayla: And then we are bringing back Fish Challenge again for the fifth time in a row, so you can participate in any of the other fish challenges that have been offered. So the classic the sport fish, the rough fish challenge, the total catch challenge was last year and then new this year is the 100 fish challenge.
Casey: So you want them to send in 100 pictures?
Cayla: No, they just need to send in one. But I do want the breakdown of what you caught. But yeah, just catch 100 fish of any species or kind. Yeah, just try to get to 100 by August 15th is the new one.
Jerry: Boy, you could do money on that with bullheads.
Casey: Yeah. Right.
Cayla: Yeah. Jackie and Jay are going to be first in line on that.
Casey: 100 bullheads.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: All right. Well, now that we've dropped the droppings, you can get off the pot and get outdoors.