In this episode of NDO Podcast we’re onsite at Lake Sakakawea’s Douglas Bay for walleye spawning. Ron Wilson, Department North Dakota Outdoors editor, steps in as co-host to learn more about the significance of collecting walleye eggs from Russ Kinzler, Department Missouri River System fisheries management supervisor, a 33-year veteran of this annual spring operation.
Cayla: Welcome to episode 99 of the NDO podcast, knocking on the door of 100 episodes. On this episode, we are sitting on coolers. Am I allowed to say where we are?
Russ: Sure.
Cayla: Okay. We're at Douglas Bay on Lake Sakakawea spawning walleyes. We is generous I guess I'm not doing anything. And we've got Russ Kinzler with us, Missouri River system fisheries supervisor. And Casey couldn't make it so Ron Wilson ND Outdoors editor is stepping in as co-host on these super comfortable coolers. What goes in these, Russ?
Russ: Well, we're spawning the walleyes. Once we collect the eggs, they go in these coolers.
Cayla: And then into the lake?
Russ: No. Hopefully not. But I'm not going to say that hasn't happened. It has happened. So no, the coolers will be used to transport the eggs back to Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery.
Cayla: All right. Yeah, I guess just backing up even like I feel like now I'm well versed with Missouri River system, but even like, what do we say? What are we talking about when we say Missouri river system? And then yeah, what are your, what's your kind of job as fisheries supervisor?
Russ: So the Missouri River system technically runs from Montana to South Dakota, where the Missouri River runs through North Dakota, that's the Yellowstone River above Williston, the Missouri River above Lake Sakakawea, Lake Sakakawea the Missouri River below Garrison Dam, which we call the Garrison Reach, then Lake Oahe. So technically I supervise the whole thing, but in reality it's broken up a little bit. The fishery supervisor, Aaron Slominski up at Williston, handles the Yellowstone River, the paddlefish stuff on that. And then he also helps out on upper Lake Sakakawea as far as some of the netting. And then below Garrison Dam, Paul Bailey, the south-central district supervisor, he handles the netting and any activities on Lake Oahe and then the lower portion of the river. The Riverdale office, where I work, handles down to about Washburn as far as the sampling on the river but below that Paul handles that. It's just logistics and travel time and stuff like that it's easier to break it up. When I first started, we covered from border to border. And since then, we've broken it up and it's just a lot easier on everybody.
Ron: You know there's a pile of water between here and Montana border, why this spot? Why do you guys keep coming back here?
Russ: So when I first started, we didn't come to Douglas Bay. When I first started, this is my 33rd spawn, we spawned at White Earth Bay. We spawned at Parshall Bay, and then we spawned at the lower end, Steinke Bay, West Totten Trail, those were the three spots that we went to. Since then, along with some tagging studies, we started, we tried Deep Water Bay and we caught fish there and we were able to spawn them, but it's a long bay and it tends to warm up really fast in the back and we can get into that later, but it gets too warm. We've also tried Garrison Bay and it's the same problem. It warms up too fast in the back and it actually gets too warm. Douglas Bay for whatever reason, it's also a long bay, but it's got colder water close to the back and it's almost kind of ideal. And like I said, we never used to do it and it turns out it's probably one of our best, probably our best spot on Lake Sakakawea, especially at these lower lake elevations. When the lake's fuller, it's hard to beat Parshall Bay, I mean Parshall Bay has just been tried and true the place to go. And White Earth Bay is really good too. You just tend to run into a few more species and have to dip a few non-target species. We're spawning, we're targeting walleyes, you end up with more carp and bigmouth buffalo and catfish and stuff like that. So it's just less other stuff you have to dip. And when you're spawning for a week or two weeks, all them extra pounds start adding up.
Ron: What's your goal here? I mean, how many eggs do you need? How many quarts?
Russ: So we figure by quarts so we're our goal is 420 quarts. A quart of eggs has about 120,000 eggs in it so that's just a little bit over 50 million eggs, that's our statewide goal. We're not only spawning here, they're also spawning walleyes up at Devils Lake. So whoever gets there first gets there first. It's you know, the sooner we can get done, the better.
Ron: You've been at this how long? How many days have you guys been out here?
Russ: So this year the ice came off earlier. And we've learned over time that it's always the last week of April and the first week of May when they're spawning really gets going. We've spawned as early as April 17th on Sakakawea, so that always makes us a little nervous. This year the ice came off early. It got really warm, so we didn't want to miss it. So we threw some nets out and we've been out here actually for a little over a week already. But as it works out, it's the last week of April and the walleye are spawning. So we got out here earlier than we probably would have, you know, knowing what we know. You know, if we get our nets in around the 23rd, 24th, that's when we should be in. This year, I think we put them out the 18th.
Cayla: And then yeah, you guys are checking nets and looking for what? You guys have that little teams channel where you're like green, running.
Russ: So we're looking for walleyes. And when we.
Cayla: Really?
Cayla: I'm not that bad, Russ.
Russ: All right. So anyway, when we pull the nets up and when we dip the walleyes out, we're checking to see how ripe they are, how ready to spawn they are. So we're sorting them by the males obviously. They're always ready to go in the spring. But the females when you pick one up and everybody's like how do you know? It's like, well, you just squeeze them a little bit and if eggs come out, they're ready. If they're not coming out and you know, it's a fat fish, they're not coming out we call them green or they're just not ripe yet. So they need more time for those eggs to loosen up and be able to spawn. And then we always get some that are it's like, oh, it's, it's not a male and it's got a thin belly. Oh, it's spawned out. It already spawned out in the lake on its own.
Ron: You told us why you're here because the fish are here, but why do the fish come to this spot? Why do they like it?
Russ: My guess is it's a bigger bay on the lake, and it has some inflow and it's that current that's bringing them in. Now, this year there's not a lot of inflow. So there might also be some homing where they just they always come back here. And we kind of see that with our tagging when we've done that is that when the fish we tag at White Earth, we tend to recatch at White Earth. The fish we tag at Douglas, we tend to recatch at Douglas. I mean, not all of them, some of them stray and go out and you see that, you know, in nature where that's how they spread out. But the vast majority get caught back where we tag them. So, you know, when we do our tagging in the spring, we do it along with the spawning. So we see those kind of distinct populations and they just come back to the same spots.
Ron: How is the natural reproduction in this area?
Russ: So I suspect the walleye are spawning on their own. We typically come fall when we check to see how the reproduction actually was. If we don't stock the lake, we don't see many young-of-the-year here. And it's probably got something to do with the colder water and maybe a food when the eggs hatch, that there's just not the right ingredients there for them to survive and reach that, you know, maturity.
Cayla: So will they get stocked back in Douglas in several areas, not in Douglas when Jerry comes back around, where will the fry get stocked?
Russ: So the eggs we're collecting now, some of them will go back to Lake Sakakawea. Some are also going to all the other lakes in the state. The ones that come back to Sakakawea. Yes, there will be some coming back to Douglas Bay to this very ramp, but they're also going to other ramps. We're going to spread them out basically from Van Hook to the lower end. Last year we've seen, and in a lot of years, we see natural reproduction on the upper end. We've seen really good natural reproduction last year. We stocked Lake Sakakawea so we can't say for sure it's 100% natural reproduction. But the bulk of the fish we've seen were above Van Hook, and the farthest up we stocked was Deep Water and then the Little Missouri arm below that. Some of those could have been stocked fish, but the fact that there were so many of them up there, odds are they were natural reproduction but we can't say for sure. There are years like 2020, we didn't stock at all and we saw fish up in that stretch also. So we know there is natural reproduction on the upper end. Could there be some on this end? Yes. But it's not near what there is in the upper end.
Ron: Right now, or at the end of April. Like you say, this is a good time to start or early May. Are there fish, the majority of them ready?
Russ: They're just getting started. So we had that warm stretch last week and that got them going. And then it cooled off this last weekend and that kind of shut them down. So walleye spawn it's based on temperature and also daylength photoperiod. And like I said, the last week of April, first week of May, that's our photo period window. But the temperature, like I said, it started warming up so they started going and then it cooled off and it just shut things down. So now that it's starting to warm up again, I'm guessing this coming weekend and the beginning of next week, we should be into the heart of the spawn.
Ron: So you guys don't shut’er down on a Saturday or Sunday, if you need to be out here, you're out here?
Russ: Yeah, yeah. Saturday wasn't fun at all. It was a 40 mile an hour winds and 26 degrees. And, you know, we get all the time. It's like, oh, I love your job. It's like, oh, you're not with on Saturday.
Cayla: Were you just like checking nets on Saturday or did you do any spawning?
Russ: We were just checking nets.
Cayla: Okay.
Russ: Had we had ripe fish, we would have spawned, but it wouldn't have been any fun.
Cayla: Yeah. Obviously, we're kind of doing this backwards because I just got here and we're recording this before I kind of see much of it, but like, yeah, so what is the process? What does that look like? You check nets. They’re running. I was trying to think of the right term. Yeah. What happens then?
Russ: Yes. They check the nets and then they bring back the fish that are ripe, the runners. And they also bring back males and they're put in the tanks that we have down on the boat ramp. We're just spawning right on the ramp. We use the dock kind of as a table to rinse the eggs off. So the fish get put in the tanks beside the spawning bench, males on one side, females on the other. And we just alternate. We do a male, we do a female, we do a male and a female. So we try to do 1 to 1. We always end with a male, so it ends up being one more male than females. When we're putting the eggs in the bowls, we use what's called a wet method. So there's water in the bowl. A lot of places don't do that because they think or they say you don't get as good a eye up or egg quality out of it. And what happens is when you're putting the males in there, the sperm or milt is only active for seconds to maybe a minute. So if you're not spawning fast enough milt is basically dying before it can fertilize the eggs. So the other method is a dry method where you don't use any water at all. And you add the eggs and the milt. And then when that's in there, then you add water afterwards. So everything's active at the same time. That's not always the easiest to do out in these conditions because you've got I mean, you're dealing with fish. They're wet. So you got to basically dry them off and do all that. And it also slows the process down. So we use the wet method. We just spawn a few extra fish to make up for that, you know, a little less egg quality. And it works out for us. So you got the females on one side, the males on the other. You grab a male, put the milt in the bowl, grab the eggs, basically massage the eggs out of the fish or squeeze the fish. We're called fish squeezers. That's why. So you squeeze the fish to get the eggs out. And then you have someone there stirring the eggs. So the eggs are sticky naturally and in the wild when they spawn, they're spawning on a gravel rocky substrate and the eggs would attach then to those rocks. Well, we're taking them to the hatchery we don't want them to be stuck together. So we have somebody stirring them. And then once you get an appropriate amount in the bowl, you know, or the bowl's full, it gets handed off to someone who will continue stirring them a little bit until we're sure they're fertilized, as good as they're going to do. And then we add a clay to it. We're using Fuller's Earth this year. We've literally used the clay off the shoreline before, but Fuller's Earth has been shown to be a little better egg quality when you use that. So we're using that this year. And basically, what it does is it coats the eggs in that real fine clay so they're no longer stick together. Once that's done, we put them in the jars and rinse that clay off, the excess clay gets rinsed off, and then they get put in the coolers that we're sitting on.
Ron: And you stir them with a feather.
Russ: We stir them with a feather. Yeah.
Ron: Why not a wooden spoon or spatula?
Russ: Feathers are just softer. You know, you don't want to, you know, if you're trying to be gentle to an egg, you wouldn't use an egg beater. You know, so you it's just a gentle, slow stirring motion. And feathers are soft.
Cayla: And then after you squeeze the fish, they just go, you just dump them right back in.
Russ: Yeah. We just release them back.
Cayla: Yeah.
Russ: And we know from our tagging there again, we've seen the same fish year after year after year come back to the spawn and we spawn them and release them again.
Ron: So if you're collecting a fish today and it pops up and you're getting ready to relieve it of its milt or its eggs or whatever, and you see a tag in it, you're recording that too?
Russ: We're actually doing that out in the boat before we bring them in. As they're sorting the fish out of the net, we're getting that information right away. Anyhow, so once the eggs are in the cooler, they go to the hatchery, and then the hatchery puts them in basically the same kind of jars that we're rinsing them here. And they will roll, they're called upwelling jars, so it rolls the eggs, keeps them moving and basically keeping them oxygenated.
Ron: How long will they be in the jars before they're taken outside and put in the ponds?
Russ: It depends on the temperature. So they can adjust that. If they heat up the water in the hatchery, they can have them hatch off early or faster. If they want them slow it down they can just keep them on colder water and it'll take longer. But a week, you know, six, seven days, you know, ten days to hatch them off and get them out into the ponds.
Cayla: So I think this might be a Jerry question, which he'll be on like the episode before this. So they'll get a lot about hatchery and stocking. But you said the goal is 50 million eggs, but then I think we usually stock like 10 million walleyes. So is there just some loss there or is it gifting to other states or some of both?
Russ: Both. So when we have our egg requests, we're figuring about 50% survival from egg to fry. Actually, from egg to eye up, you know so once the eggs start seeing little eyes in them. And then, you know, even when they're in the hatchery, you lose some, you get some prematures and stuff so there's, there's losses all along the way.
Ron: 50% sounds pretty good. Is that good?
Cayla: That's what Ron got in school. Yeah.
Ron: Yeah. I'm sitting here. Yeah.
Russ: So, I mean, states that are using the dry method, you know, brag about 80, 90%. So if you look at that, 50% is not great, but it's about what average for, you know, for Sak. Actually, I think Sak is actually about 60%. And like now when we're spawning and we have the cold water, we actually see higher eye ups from the colder water. So it's not entirely the method that we're doing it's also temperature of the water that the fish are in. When we're in these cold waters, we've seen, I want to say we've seen upper 70s to almost 80%. The one year we were spawning, there's basically ice floating around. It was a late ice off. And, you know, there's been years where we didn't spawn until May. Well, as soon as the ice is off, the fish are going because the photo period is there. And those eggs tend to be really good when we start reaching temperatures into the mid-50s that eye up just crashes. And a lot of that's probably the sperm motility is just they're just dying I mean, it's just too warm. So even though the fish are still spawning out in the lake, if it's, you know, 55, 60 degrees, the odds of them eggs surviving is pretty small.
Ron: Yeah. When we first got here, they brought some walleyes in and I went down and took a look at them. Some look to me like darn nice fish. But you said that maybe we haven't seen the best fish yet.
Russ: So yeah, when we first start our spawning run, the males tend to show up first. So it's like, oh, it's a lot of small fish. And then as the run goes on, then the females show up and you know, you start seeing them bigger females. I was only here to pull the nets on the first day but looking at the second day they went and they spawned the number of eggs that we got per female, the average size was obviously up for the fish. I mean, we averaged about 100,000 eggs per female and that's pretty good.
Ron: You look at the area that we're at you know, somebody like me, I just go out there and throw a net hope for the best. But what are you looking for in terms of this is the spot. Points? What are you looking for to put the net?
Russ: In reality it's not so much the spot it's having the right depth for the net. And we've seen that, we can take a net out here and we've I mean the nets are six feet high and eight feet wide. And if we put that six feet high net in 11ft of water, we're not going to catch anything. It's too deep. So having that net set in that perfect depth, it just works. And yeah, you know, the back curve of a bay or out on the points. They're both good. And it's really funny how one day this net will catch fish and the next day this net will catch fish. I mean, there's kind of no rhyme or reason. It's just how they're swimming up into the bay. Douglas Bay with the creek channel, we're just we're really trying to just cut off part of that channel and catch the fish as they're coming in, and we have nets that are actually fairly close together and they will all be full. So they're not all swimming into the first one. They're not all, I mean, some are making it all the way to the back of the bay. And some fish we never see. I mean, we don't ever see them all. And it's amazing what we've learned from the tagging is that we catch the fish and we tag them, we throw them out, and it's like we can throw them out right next to the net. And we don't hardly ever catch any of those back that year. So even though we tagged 300 fish, we might catch one the next day. I mean, there's just, there's just way more fish in this lake than people realize. And as it turns out, even for us, they're not that easy to catch.
Cayla: How long have you guys been doing this? Since before you started. Or like, yeah, when?
Russ: I couldn't even tell you. Yeah, it's definitely before my time.
Cayla: Okay, for sure at Sakakawea?
Russ: Yes.
Cayla: Okay.
Russ: Yeah, yeah. Emil Berard is the biologist that hired me. And I mean, he was here for 20 or 30 years before me, and I think they were spawning that whole time. So I couldn't guess. I mean, it had to be in the 70s for sure.
Ron: You say this is your 33rd. How many more you got in you?
Russ: This might be my last.
Cayla: Long pause. Should I cut the pause or just. Yeah, that's the magic number where you don't want to do this anymore.
Ron: It's physically taxing.
Russ: Yeah. It's not easy. I mean, I actually figured it out last year. How many thousands of pounds of fish that we lifted out of these nets. And then you're not just lifting them once, so you lift them out of the nets. And like the females, if they're not ripe, we put them in holding cribs. So now you're lifting that fish a second time. And then the cribs we have will check them twice and then we throw the fish back. If they're not ready at that point, we just throw them back. It's just we don't want to stress them any more than that. So you could dip that fish out of the net, put it in the crib, dip it out of the crib, put it in the crib again, dip it out of that crib again, bring it up here to the spawning and lift it again. So you might lift that fish four times.
Ron: And you're not just lifting one fish at a time either. There's a whole net full.
Russ: Right. Yeah. So and you're not just lifting walleyes. I mean, you got pike and bigmouth buffalo and catfish and white suckers. I mean, there's I mean, not even that, black crappie, a few yellow perch, burbot. There are lots of species that are in these nets that we're lifting out and they, it's all poundage and it adds up.
Ron: 33 years worth.
Cayla: 33 times 33. And he's.
Russ: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the only thing I can think of that might be even more strenuous is the salmon spawn, because you're really handling them a bunch of times.
Ron: You got one more of those left in you right?
Russ: Yeah. One more.
Cayla: At least. Yeah. You got some good stories over the years. I don't know. Yeah. Like miserable conditions or weird fish or I don't know.
Russ: So the miserable conditions comes more with the northern pike spawning.
Cayla: Okay. Yeah.
Russ: Yeah. Yeah. I've got a great story for that.
Cayla: Go ahead. Yeah.
Russ: So we were spawning down at Rice Lake. It was, it was cold. It was kind of sleety rainy. And they brought the fish in and I grabbed the first fish to spawn and it slipped out of my hands, you know, pike are slippery and bit me in the cheek, and the blood only made it to my chin before it froze.
Cayla: Oh.
Russ: I mean, there's pictures of us. We got our float coats on, and they're covered in ice and the water coming out of the jars as it's moving is freezing. It's just miserable.
Ron: Well, anglers have got to appreciate that. They have to appreciate your efforts. I do.
Russ: You know, and but then you get really nice days and it's just when the wind's not blowing and it's 50 degrees out, it just it doesn't get any better than that.
Cayla: Yeah. And really like, I mean, I know we kind of talked about it, but just to like, like what, what you guys are doing today really supports like the statewide fishing and other states fishing. Sounds like all of Wyoming's walleyes and.
Russ: Yeah, yeah, there's eggs that go to Wyoming. I know there's most years there's some that go to Idaho, some years, some go to South Dakota. So yeah, they go to multiple different states. A lot of times we're trading for some other species for that, you know, so it's not like we're just giving eggs away, we're getting something back.
Ron: Well, when you got 100 plus or whatever it is, or right around 100 newish prairie walleye fisheries I mean, that's a lot of fish to be stocked.
Russ: Yeah, yeah. I don't know the total number of lakes that they're going to this year. But yeah, when you take 10 million fish and you spread them around and, you know, 20,000 here, 30,000 here, 50,000 here, you know, it takes a lot of lakes to use up that 10 million. Like this year on Lake Sakakawea, we requested a million fish. That's actually not a lot. I mean, we've stocked a lot more in Lake Sakakawea, but our walleye population is doing really well in the lake. But as you can see, the lake levels are down. The forecast doesn't have us rising much, so we're still going to stock, but we're going to be a little conservative. We don't want to put too many mouths out there, you know.
Ron: So if you're taking all the eggs from Sak here and you mentioned about, you know, dumping the fish back here too, after they've grown up to fry, will you release all 1 million here or you move around the lake when you're stocking them.
Russ: So they get moved around the lake? Yeah. I want to say there was like ten, well, a million fish, but I've been doing it kind of making it easy for the haulers. So about 100,000 in each bay, you know, each boat ramp and each bay. We're not getting all the eggs from Douglas. I mean, we did collect some at White Earth the other day. And the plan is to go back to White Earth again tomorrow and if we have enough fish there to spawn we will. We have some nets at Parshall too. This current lake elevation is making it very difficult to net at Parshall. The creek channel goes from basically too shallow to too deep as the bay is silting in, it's just this is a bad elevation. Like I said, when the lake is full, Parshall Bay is awesome. We can get, that's way up in the back, we're protected from the wind.
Cayla: Unlike now.
Ron: Yeah, yeah, we can hear it. What? Just a guess, when do you think you'll be done?
Russ: Spawning wise, if the weather holds like this sometime next week would be my guess. I haven't looked at the forecast, if it cools off again. I kind of said that to my boss, I said when it warmed up, it's like, oh, they're going to start spawning, it's going to cool off and it's going to just drag out. You know, so it's got that potential. But if the water keeps warming up it'll happen fast.
Ron: So we're looking at 70s this weekend.
Cayla: I think this weekend looks nice. Yeah. 70s. Sunny.
Russ: So like I said, then we run into 70s, like with this elevation of lake, the back of the bay warms up really fast. So we could get to the point where we're still into a lot of spawning fish, but that egg quality is just going to drop. So now we're collecting more eggs than we really need because we know our egg quality is not going to be there.
Ron: When you guys are doing this, if you say you come across a, you know, you're tagging those trophy pike. If you get one of those in your net, are you putting a tag on them at this time or not?
Russ: No we're not. The last year we did that study was 20.
Cayla: 21 I think they wrapped it up.
Russ: 2021-2022. See I'm getting old I can't remember that stuff.
Ron: Yeah, exactly.
Russ: But no, we haven't done the pike for a while. And we stopped the walleye in 2022 was the last year of that. We found that if you continue to do that, you kind of get angler burnout where, you know, oh, it's just another tag fish, you know, and we don't want that. So we don't do it every year. We usually put a break in there just to, you know, keep it interesting. Lake Sakakawea is not quite so bad for angler burnout because the fish can travel so far. It's not like it's a little lake where it's like, oh, it was tagged in this lake I caught it in this lake. Here, I mean, like I said, you could, you could catch a fish in Douglas Bay that was tagged at White Earth. It's not impossible. So they move and it might have been a fish that was tagged at White Earth, caught here and then caught back in White Earth again. I mean, you know, we do see that. And you did an article, you know, some of the really interesting ones not that long ago.
Ron: Because you had some fish that travel from Sak all the way up to Fort Peck.
Russ: Yep, yep. Yeah. We had a few and that's not the norm. I mean, those are the outliers. But yes, it happens.
Ron: Are you still doing the otolith thing too?
Russ: Yep. Yeah. We're using otolith to age the fish.
Ron: Otolith is what again.
Russ: It's basically the ear bone, the ear bone of the fish. And it has rings on it similar to a tree where we basically break it in half and burn it over a candle or there's a couple different ways you can do it. We use a candle to burn it and then put it under a microscope and it just shows the rings just like a tree would have. And you just count those.
Ron: I remember doing something with you on that too, some time ago, and I was I was shocked at how old some of these walleye can get.
Russ: Yeah. So the oldest one we've documented by aging was 27 years old.
Cayla: Woah. I didn't know that.
Russ: Fish.
Cayla: Seems so old.
Russ: Yeah. And the oldest fish aren't always the biggest fish either. You know, the males, once they, you know, hit that 20, maybe 24in, they pretty much stop growing. I mean, there's no advantage to a male being really big. I mean, they have all the milt they need even as a small fish. Whereas a female, the bigger you are, the more eggs you have. So evolutionary, you know, it pays to be bigger. You're passing on more genes by having more eggs. So the females tend to be the bigger fish. But they're not always the older fish. And then a lot of the fish you see that are growing really fast. I mean, they grow fast and they die young. It's the slower growing fish that get to be that old age.
Ron: Of course, anglers want to know that, especially the walleye anglers, they want to have you tell us about some of the big ones you got out of here. Some of the big females, like how much some of those weigh?
Russ: We've had at least two I know that were 16 pounds. And both of them, well, the one at the time would have been the state record and we released it because it hadn't been broken. It wasn't that big yet. The other one was just a touch over 16, and the state record had just broke it like a couple of months before that.
Ron: Is the fish going to get bigger in this environment or the river environment?
Russ: It all depends on where the what's got the best food. They both have the same potential. I mean, they have potential to raise big fish. Right now, the river and Lake Oahe with their forage situation, they're producing a lot of really big fish. Lake Sakakawea, the smelt population is doing really good right now too so we also have that potential, but the population of the river being more based off smelt in the river also Cisco, they've had really good Cisco hatches down there, not lately, but more in the distant past and so those big fish are not young fish. You know, they're also somewhat older fish. So you need to have that forage over a lifetime, you know. So between the Cisco, the smelt and then the shad in Lake Oahe, they're producing a lot of really nice fish. Lake Sakakawea has got the Cisco and the smelt. Those two somewhat compete with each other. So we don't see real good Cisco year classes every year. In fact, about every five years is what we see. And we've seen one of those not too long ago, and we've seen that really show up in the salmon. I mean, a shorter-lived species where that forage really plays a role and you can see it happen quicker. You know, where we had that increase in salmon size that also helps the walleye, you know, but them being a little bit slower growing than the salmon, you don't see it as immediate, you know.
Ron: Will the lower lake elevation have anything, you know, influence the smelt spawn at all or not?
Russ: So at this elevation we should be fine. We're still into some gravel cobble substrate. If we get a little bit lower than this. And then we start transitioning to where the shoreline is more silt, and then that gets to be a problem. So we don't want to really drop much lower than we are now where we could start seeing some problems with smelt. This year Lake Sakakawea is favored for a rise. They alternate Fort Peck and Lake Oahe one year and Lake Sakakawea the other year for a spring rise. They try to do all of them every year, but if the runoff conditions aren't there, then whoever's favored gets it. And this year it's Lake Sakakawea. So hopefully we get that rise. And that rise is important because our smelt spawn really shallow. So if the lake is dropping, it's just leaving the eggs high and dry. Or if we have a big wind event, it leaves them dry. So that rising elevation really helps the smelt. And then the smelt are the primary food for our walleyes, our salmon, our pike, you know.
Ron: So the smelt are going to spawn after the walleye, like when does that happen?
Russ: Actually, about the same time or just a little bit before. So on the up, I mean they spawn, they can spawn throughout the lake. We really see the runs happen in the upper reservoir that Lund's Landing, Whitetail Bay, Little Knife, even I got a report of lots of birds being in Shell Creek. And that's a sign that there's fish spawning there. And probably, you know, the smelt are probably running up Shell right now spawning.
Cayla: I'm sure Mike already asked you this in the fishing previews, but since this could be a different crowd, what's Russ's forecast for fishing this summer on Sakakawea?
Russ: It should be good, but they call it fishing for reason. My wife, anymore she just wants to go catching.
Cayla: Yeah, same.
Russ: But yeah, I mean, it should be good. There's plenty of fish out there and there's some really nice fish out there, so it should be good.
Ron: We've had a run of a handful of good years. I mean just it's dang good up here.
Russ: It's actually been really good, especially up in that Van Hook. Last year was kind of anomaly it wasn't. Why that was exactly I don't really know. I mean, the population is down a little bit up there. It's still really strong on this lower end. And that's why we're stocking a little bit more up there this year is to, you know, to bring that back up. Like I said, we had that natural reproduction also up there so between the two, the population is looking really good. So as long as the weather cooperates and that can be a big influence out here, you get a bunch of wind and that can really shut things down.
Cayla: Yeah. Or if you get, I feel like we have, well, we've kind of been in a season of it right now, but if you get like a summer where just like the crappy weather falls on the weekends, then I feel like it's like, oh, fishing sucked. But it's just like if for those of us that are primarily operating on a Saturday, Sunday, it just yeah.
Russ: Yeah. My experience the best fishing day is Sunday afternoon. You all go home.
Cayla: Yeah. Must be nice. Well, pretty soon you'll have all your fishing days. You can go whenever. It's nice.
Russ: Yeah. I won't fish on weekends.
Ron: And who will you call when you want to moan and groan about their not stocking enough fish or not doing this right. Who do you call?
Russ: Well I won't have to chew my own butt. I've had to do that a couple times. Where I went out fishing was just terrible for me and I was like who am I going to? I guess I got to chew myself out.
Ron: Oh, good.
Cayla: All right. Well, yeah, let's get to it. Put us to work. Thanks for being on.
Ron: It was fun.
Russ: Anytime.
Cayla: I'll just do the department dropping solo without Casey here, but June is prairie month, so be sure to get out. There's some events going on by a different partner organizations, but yeah, just a month to raise awareness about prairies. Also a reminder as you hit these lakes to clean, drain, dry. So just helping reduce aquatic nuisance species spread. Make sure to do all those good things. Can't believe I'm even saying this already, but 4th of July weekend, our wardens will be a part of Operation Dry Water. So just some extra enforcement out there on boating under the influence and just making sure everyone gets home safely. So make sure to avoid that and also just have life jackets on board for everyone and just be safe that weekend and every weekend. And then Fish Challenge is now open through August 15th. So we're still offering all the other previous challenges, but the new one this year is to just catch 100 fish. Think you can do it, Russ? Doesn't matter what species. It doesn't matter what size. Catch 100 fish by August 15th.
Russ: By August 15th.
Cayla: Yeah. Well he's got today so however many.
Russ: Yeah, we just did that in about five minutes.
Cayla: I don't know if I can do it. All right. I'm not going to steal Casey's tagline. So you know what to do.