We talked to Genevieve Furtner, who Govenor Tim Walz called the “Queen of Walleye,” about all things fish: the DNR hatchery in Saint Paul, the State Fair fish pond, where baby walleye come from, what a “tiger muskie” is, why we stock lakes, and how much of an impact anglers have on the state economy.
Links
- Egg harvesting demonstration video
- Walleye biology
- The almighty Muskellunge
- DNR State Hatcheries
- Saint Paul Hatchery
Attributions
Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.
This episode was produced, edited, and transcribed by Stina Neel, and was engineered by Ian R Buck. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Transcript
[00:00:00] Genevieve: It is a fish eat fish world out there.
[00:00:05] Ian: Welcome to the streets.mn podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Coming to you from beautiful uptown Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am your host, Ian R. Buck. Anyone who enjoys fishing in Minnesota has the DNR fisheries to thank for restocking our lakes. But it’s a service that usually doesn’t get much attention. Our producer, Stina Neel became interested in the subject while she watched the “fish cannon” restocking the pond behind her office. And she got to sit down with the manager of one of our state’s hatcheries. Let’s listen in.
[00:00:43] Genevieve: My name is Genevieve Furtner. I am the St. Paul State Fish Hatchery Supervisor for the Minnesota DNR.
[00:00:51] Stina: And my first question is how did you get started in this field? Have you always been in ichthyology?
[00:00:57] Genevieve: A lot of us didn’t really go to school for aquaculture specifically. It usually ended up being something where with, you know, like some temporary or summer job that we all had for a short period of time. And then we kind of found that we liked it, you know, for various reasons. It is actually quite different from fisheries management. They are aquaculture and fisheries management are two very distinct fields. And there are some differences that pull people more towards hatchery work. So yeah, this is kind of like a lot of a sort of accident into working in hatcheries. I did get my undergraduate and graduate degrees in fisheries and fisheries management. But then I had a summer job was actually an eight month job where I was working in a hatchery. And I was like, I actually kind of like this a little bit more. So that kind of turned me on to the hatchery work. You know, I’m hoping that, you know, in the future we can see that kind of change a little bit because people are talking a lot more about hatcheries. It’s a topic that people are more aware of. It’s more in the public zeitgeist. Now they’re talking about sustainable farming into the future. And now schools are starting to offer aquaculture degrees. So hopefully we’ll start to see more young adults that are coming in with the specific intent of wanting to work in hatcheries.
[00:02:10] Stina: So kind of a couple key terms that jumped out hatchery versus fishery. What do those mean?
[00:02:16] Genevieve: Usually when we are talking about a fishery in fisheries is a fishery is a specific location where the fisheries management group, the state or a tribal council or the federal government are managing that location for a specific purpose, usually fishing. So a fishery might be like a lake or it might be like a chain of lakes, a watershed, kind of something like that. But a hatchery is a place usually, you know, a building, sometimes a building and some outdoor ponds where fish are being raised.
[00:02:57] Stina: And so wehave 15 hatcheries in Minnesota and some are cold water versus warm water. So what kind do you manage and what’s kind of the difference between those two?
[00:03:12] Genevieve: Calling a hatchery cold water or cool water or warm water is the distinction is what species are raised there and what kinds of water temperatures those species like. So I actually operate what’s technically a cool water hatchery. And so I raise primarily muskie, walleye and tiger muskie, which are what we call cool water fish, because they’re not exactly like cold water fish. That would be like you’re thinking of things like trout is the cold water fish that we’re raising in Minnesota. It would also be like salmon as well. We don’t do any salmon rearing with the DNR. And then a warm water fish is something kind of more like a sunfish or a bass. So if you think about the preferred temperature ranges for walleye and muskie, they’re kind of more in the middle of those two. They don’t like those really, really hot waters that some fish and bass are looking for. No, they’re like those cold waters that you find trout in. So we call it a cool water hatchery.
[00:04:03] Stina: So the office, as it were, your lab is in St. Paul. It’s the first state run hatchery. Like, what can you can you describe what the lab like? What is it?
[00:04:13] Genevieve: Yeah. So I don’t know if I’d necessarily use the word lab specifically. Hatchery is very much quite the correct word. It’s so this the hatchery that is here, you are correct in saying it is the oldest run hatchery owned by the state. So we started in the late 1860s, early 1870s. The building that we’re in now isn’t quite that old, but it was built in the early 1940s. So it’s coming up on over 80 years old now. The portion of this building that is now hatchery is kind of just a much smaller portion on the lower level of this site. When this building was built, it was built specifically for aquaculture, for raising fish. So in the 1940s, when this building was built, the entire lower level was used for raising fish. And then the upper level was the shop, mechanic area, and then offices as well. As the needs of the DNR have shifted and changed over time, the space used for aquaculture has decreased. And now we’re just kind of in a smaller portion of that lower level. In terms of what it looks like specifically, there’s a lot of sensory overload when you get down there. Because if you don’t know exactly what’s going on, it can be quite overwhelming. We’ve got all sorts of machinery, pipes, tanks, weird-looking jar structures where there’s just a bunch of plastic jars all on a shelf and you don’t exactly know what it might be for. But if you came and visited, I would explain it to you. So we’ve got all sorts of stuff like that everywhere down there. It’s either a machine paradise or a machine dungeon, depending on your perspective on machinery.
[00:05:58] Stina: Has that machinery and technology changed a ton? You said it was built in the 1940s. I would think that the tech would change quite a bit.
[00:06:08] Genevieve: Technology as a whole for aquaculture has changed quite dramatically, especially in the past 30 years. Really fancy state-of-the-art hatcheries can do a lot of stuff with integrative technology. Probably some are even starting to dabble into AI, although that’s very much like cutting edge stuff that would be happening. We’ve got a lot of stuff where you can control a lot of parts of hatcheries automatically. You can get data that’s being input automatically to computers, run automatic feeding schedules and things like that. That’d be a very state-of-the-art hatchery. My hatchery in and of itself is quite a bit older. Fortunately, not quite 1940s old, but the last major renovations to my hatchery took place in the late 80s, early mid-90s. So I do have a lot of equipment back there that is older than I am as the hatchery manager. Not all of it. We do have some newer pieces, but that has been one of the major parts of my push trying to promote awareness of the hatchery within the DNR and then within the legislature to try to bring the St. Paul hatchery into the 21st century.
[00:07:21] Stina: Yeah, that was kind of like an important part of the article that I read from NPR was saying that the lower level of that facility is in need of a facelift essentially.
[00:07:34] Genevieve: Yes, definitely.
[00:07:38] Stina: Is that dependent on state or federal funding? Is that something that in this legislative term could happen?
[00:07:45] Genevieve: Yeah, so the funding that would be used to give the hatchery that facelift, so to say, would come from the legislature. All of that money is like single issue, single payment. I don’t know all of the exact jargon, but that single payment payout from the legislature is where that funding would come from if we are given the funding to do an upgrade. We’re still kind of in the much earlier steps of that right now though because we’ve just gotten to the point where we’re starting to assess what our needs are and what we could do in the future.
[00:08:20] Stina: So how long has Minnesota DNR been, Is the term breeding fish or rearing fish? Rearing is very common. I mean ever since that first hatchery here on this site, it was referred to as the Willow Brook hatchery when it originated and then was later renamed to the St. Paul hatchery. So ever since, you know, it’s funny, I always tell people late 1860s, early 1870s because I have seen conflicting dates for when this hatchery was founded. The earliest one that I’ve seen it is 1868 and then the latest one is like 1875-ish. So, you do the math, whatever, 150 years or so. The state has been rearing fish.
[00:09:05] Stina: And did that start as a response to folks fishing and just like commercial fishing industry or I guess like how did DNRs anywhere start? Like where did the original idea come from?
[00:09:20] Genevieve: Right. Yeah. So most of it does start from a known demand by the public for fish. You know, this was relatively early on in the life of Minnesota as an American state. And so this was, you know, kind of when those colonial ideas were being brought west and settled in what was, you know, then the west, you know, now the very, very middle of our country. There was a lot of demand for some peoples to, you know, be able to target more of a fish that we found here or in those early days, a lot of the rearing that we did was raising fish that weren’t native to this area because, you know, well in part we didn’t understand the ecological ramifications of introducing non-native fishes to a specific region, but also just because the settlers who were here wanted those specific fish. And so, you know, the young state at the time was like, sure, yeah, let’s bring them in. And so, you know, my hatchery when it was in those very early years of the 1800s, we were raising like Atlantic salmon, things like that, which is not native to Minnesota and is not raised by the state anymore. Right.
[00:10:42] Stina: I’m so glad we learned.
[00:10:44] Genevieve: It took us a little while, but we’ve gotten there. Yeah.
[00:10:46] Stina: an we talk about the process? So I think most of us have seen the episode of the Magic School Bus where they talk about fish spawning. That one’s a pretty good one. The kids get turned into eggs. It gets wild.
[00:11:02] Genevieve: I recall it, yes.
[00:11:05] Stina: So what happens before you get what you get and then what do you do at the hatchery?
[00:11:10] Genevieve: So every, you know, my specific, I can talk about the experiences or the routine at my particular hatchery. Things will be variable depending on hatcheries even within Minnesota. You go to a different state. They’re going to have all different procedures, stuff like that. But in general, you know, usually for a hatchery, it starts with getting the eggs. However, that is exactly going to happen is dependent on a bunch of different factors. Like in Minnesota, we keep a captive brood stock of all of our trout in the cold water hatcheries. And these are adults that we will keep up to the age of five. And then we can spawn them in house and then have the eggs already there on site. Now for the rest of our species, we actually do a lot of wild collection. So what that entails is, you know, for most, for the way that the Minnesota DNR does it, this largely happens entirely kind of in those early spring months, late winter months, when things are starting to unfreeze just the beginnings of the greenification of Minnesota is usually when the fishes that we want eggs for are starting to spawn. And so during those early days, and even a little bit before we think spawn is going to happen, there’s a lot of area fisheries managers who are going out and they are they are checking water temperatures, they are tracking fish movements, they are checking ice out and things like that. And a lot of these people have been doing this for many years. So they kind of have a good idea of when the fish are going to be ready to spawn. And then when they’re about to be ready, we will drop traps or nets to be able to pen those fish. And then we will take those wild fish and we will hand spawn them sometimes on a dock, sometimes on like a gangway, sometimes we have agreements with landowners and we just do it in their backyard. But regardless of where it is done and where the traps are laid, we collect the eggs, they are fertilized on site where they are spawned, and then they are transported to the hatcheries. And that’s where the hatcheries work begins. So then I have to, you know, incubate the eggs and then they hatch. Some of my fish will leave very shortly after hatching within 48 hours. Some of them I will keep for longer to grow out to a larger size. There’s a progression of different tanks that they will move through as they get bigger, because when they’re really small, they can’t be in the big tanks because they can’t withstand the large currents. And they also don’t like big tanks, it’ll be very low densities and you got to hit the right density to get the fish to eat. So you do a lot of progressions through different tanks, different sizes. And then once they are that desired size for me to send them out, I contact the fisheries management units again, tell them their fish are ready, and then they will come and pick them up. And then they are out of my hair.
[00:14:11] Stina: So when they hatch, but they’re still teeny tiny, those are called fry?
[00:14:15] Genevieve: Yes.
[00:14:17] Stina: Okay. I guess I don’t know what fish fry in this context look like.
[00:14:20] Genevieve: Oh, they are incredibly tiny. So I can send you guys some media if you want some scales too. I don’t know that helps you or you can share that at all. I can happily send that to you. But so I do muskie, tiger muskie, and walleye. The tiger muskie and the muskie actually look basically identical at those really small sizes. And if you think of a muskie, you know, most people when they think of a muskie are imagining these like really large monster fish, 50 plus inches in size, they start out at it’s probably about a centimeter, maybe, maybe 12 millimeters in length. So incredibly small. The eggs that they come in look like they’re slightly larger than the head of like a tacking pin, you know, for sewing those ones with the little bulbous heads that you’re using to actually like in there, the eggs that they, that they spawn are basically just slightly larger than that. So, you know, you can imagine the ores of magnitudes of size increase that a muskie will go through in order to reach its maximum size. It’s, it’s quite amazing how much bigger they can get in the walleye when they hatch or even smaller than that.
[00:15:30] Stina: So. And then there’s fingerlings. So what does that mean?
[00:15:33] Genevieve: So fingerlings kind of the, these exact distinctions of where like fry is from the size to the size and the fingerling is the size to the size, that distinction doesn’t really exist. It’s kind of like a sort of nebulous, like this is the distinction, but the name fingerling comes from, you know, the old way of measuring was you would just like take your index finger, hey, you know, if a fish is about the size of your index finger, now it’s a fingerling. Index finger size may vary. We also do use the term, not to make it more confusing, fryling, which is how we describe one of those fish that’s like, you’re a little too big to be a fry, but you’re not quite a fingerling yet. You know, all of those terms kind of exist in the same sphere, but it just kind of gives you, it’s more better used as a descriptor kind of, of like general size and actual size.
[00:16:24] Stina: And then like a yearling is more of a term of how old they are, right? It’s a year.
[00:16:31] Genevieve: Yes. Yeah, yearling size will vary dependent on species. It is definitely much more like, yeah, this is, this fish is about a year old, you know, for a, for a muskie, that could be, you know, 14 inches or so for a walleye, probably like closer to eight, something like that, 10 maybe.
[00:16:50] Stina: For the older fish, so the ones that, so the fry go directly to their home, or do they go somewhere intermediate before they?
[00:16:59] Genevieve: Yeah. The way that I do it or that we do it in the state, let me break it down a little bit. So for the walleye, those are the fish that I have in my hatchery that will leave almost right after they hatch. So on the bellies of most species of fish, when they hatch is a structure called a yolk sac. I’ll point it out in whatever imagery I give to you guys. This yolk sac is their nutrition for the first few days of life and how fast a fish absorbs that yolk sac is kind of species dependent. So the walleye have about 48 hours from hatch until that yolk sac is fully absorbed. When the yolk sac is fully absorbed is when that organism needs to start wild feeding. So within 48 hours of a walleye hatching, they have to be out, or they have to be basically in a place where they can be eating because we don’t feed them at all. And you know, the people who have made the decisions that that’s how we raise fish, you run a lot of numbers, there’s a lot of math involved, but basically it’s it burns it boils down to a cost-benefit analysis. And we can hatch enough walleye without making substantial dents in wild populations that it makes sense for us to put them right back out into the wild when they’re really small, even though that dramatically decreases their chance of survival to one year of age, two years of age. So that is how we do it for all of the walleye. Now they usually won’t go straight into, you know, Mille Lacs or something like that. They’re going to go to an intermediary pond or rearing pond is another term that we sometimes use. And these are ponds which are kind of scattered throughout the state. Different areas have different numbers of these rearing ponds. And they’re just usually kind of like wild ponds that an area manager has determined has a really high chance of these walleye surviving. So they’re going to be ponds that aren’t too too large. Usually they’re going to be almost hopefully entirely void of things like sunfish, green sunfish and blue gills are major predators for small walleye and small fish in general, especially small walleye. And it is kind of like a guessing game. It is a gambling bit every year, you know, because one lake might be really, really good one year and produce a lot of walleye. But if, you know, for some whatever reason, some sunfish make their way into that lake the next year, it’s not going to produce nearly as well as it did. So they aren’t usually going straight out into whatever their target, their end game lake will be for the muskie. Some of them will go out at that small size that basically fry size, but I do keep a lot of them until they’re about two to two and a half inches. And then they will go into that into a rearing pond or an intermediary pond to grow out until the fall or they’ll overwinter in that pond until the spring and then go back into the wild somewhere.
[00:20:16] Stina: How do you find out how many fish we need per year? So there’s all this data collection and then they call you and say, hey, here’s our fish order for the season.
[00:20:26] Genevieve: So they don’t call me actually, thankfully. That would be quite a lot to do. We have a woman who works for the DNR, who is our fish production manager. And even though I get my eggs in usually mid April, the whole process begins much earlier than that. Usually in late December or early January, Paula, who is the fish production coordinator, is reaching out and staying in communication with all of the area offices in the state. Because those area managers know which lakes they want to stock with what species they want to stock those lakes and the number of fishes they’ll need to be stocking successfully. So Paula’s talking to all of the area managers and she gets all of that information together. And then she’s got like just really, I’m assuming just a massive sheet of like all of this information. And then she makes the call based on how many fingerlings we want, how many eggs will need, because we know approximately what percentage of eggs will survive to fingerling size. And so then Paula will take all the data, look at all of the hatcheries that are available to do X species. And she’ll also take into consideration how far these hatcheries are from the areas that have requested fish, because it’s more optimal if the closest hatchery to a specific area gets their quota. And then she basically just makes a master sheet and usually it’s February or March when I’m finding out what I’m going to exactly be raising in a given year. We’ll also have discussions because she will propose a quota and then I know my facility best. So she will reach out to me and be like, Hey, does this seem reasonable for you? Can you do more? Do you have to do less? What’s going on? And so we’ll have discussions like that. And so with all of these moving parts coming together, eventually we can come up with basically a master quota. And then I will know that I need this many walleye, this many muskie and this many tiger muskie at the end of it.
[00:22:35] Stina: Yeah, just the levels of communication and like Paula is really the spreadsheet queen for the state. There’s different hatcheries all around the state. How far could a fish travel? Like a fish that you hatch, what’s the farthest that yours travel?
[00:22:54] Genevieve: I mean, it could theoretically be anywhere. We do tend to try to keep it local. So usually I’m kind of supplying for the metro area up towards Hinkley, over towards like Little Falls, places like that. But we have had instances in some years where, you know, something happens at a hatchery and they can’t meet their quota. But there’s another hatchery that did well enough that they are going to be able to go a little over their own. And so maybe the quotas will get shifted around. Maybe we’ll change them all and everyone will get a little bit less, but we can spread them out more evenly throughout the state. So, you know, I know that in my, you know, four seasons so far of working the hatchery manager here, I’ve given fish to, you know, like up north by Duluth, down in the Southwest and kind of everywhere in between as well.
[00:23:45] Stina: Yeah, because I was thinking like, I get pretty antsy on a car ride up to Duluth. I would hope that, you know, teeny tiny fish can manage that trip too.
[00:23:53] Genevieve:But they largely do do well. It’s not uncommon to get some mortality during the trip. But I mean, if you have a tank full of several thousand fish and one or two die, that’s pretty inconsequential in terms of just fisheries numbers
[00:24:13] Stina: And so the St. Paul hatchery is a seasonal hatchery and you kind of alluded to that.So you get the order in April?
[00:24:19] Genevieve: That’s usually when I’m getting the eggs. So I’ll hopefully know what I am going to be targeting. What my quota is, hopefully by mid-March.
[00:24:28] Stina: Okay.
[00:24:32] Genevieve: And then when exactly we get eggs is always dependent on mother nature. She, you know, she’s the she’s the controller of all things. You know, there’ve been years where we’ve gotten the fish as early as mid-March and we’ve gotten them as late as early May. So, you know, there’s kind of really like a six week window of possibility where these fish could be spawning. Right. But once, you know, I get those eggs, the hatchery is online. It’s operational. And then the fish that I have for the longest tenure are the muskie because I’m growing them out to that larger size and they will usually be leaving my hatchery early to mid-July.
[00:25:15] Stina: And then so what happens in between July?
[00:25:23] Genevieve: Yeah, what am I doing for the rest of the year? Who knows? So once the hatchery is once I’m done and all of the the last of the fish have driven away in the transport trucks, I’m immediately switching gears to the State Fair. So I am actually also the person who runs the fish exhibits at the fair. If you’ve ever been, you see that the DNR building, at least for the past four years, I have been, I am the the major shadow worker behind the scenes in getting them there and trying to make sure that they stay happy and healthy during their tenure at the at the fairgrounds. It’s the the fair is never something that just starts overnight. It does take a lot of planning and coordination to get that going. So my year kind of looks very much like from March to September is very, very busy crunch time for me. You know, very full days during the time when the hatchery is running and when the fair is ongoing, I am on call 24/7. And then the off season, which is like September to March is usually the time where I can kind of exhale. I will in terms of work, you know, this is a good time for me to be catching up on any aquaculture news that I have had to put off to the side during the busy season. I attend conferences. I make I do I do like my my summary reports for how the season went. I start making plans for how we can improve the hatchery because there’s always little things, especially with a hatchery of my advanced age, there’s always little things that need to be fixed or maintained, repaired, otherwise changed in order to keep them operational. So we’re making those plans and we’re executing those plans. So certainly it’s, you know, not just like I have fish for four months and then I just lean back in my chair for the rest of the year. There’s still quite a bit going on. And of course, during this time is usually when I am spending a lot of the much accrued vacation that I have not been able to use for the past few months.
[00:27:33] Stina: I have so many questions that these ones aren’t even written down. Like when you are on call, is it essentially like it could be 2 a.m. and they’re like, you got to get over here. The fish need you.
[00:27:46] Genevieve: It’s like it’s a rite of passage. It happens every single year. They call in the middle of the night.
[00:27:51] Stina: Yeah, like at this point, they should they should really set you up like a little apartment at the facility.
[00:28:01] Genevieve: It’s not uncommon, especially at year round facilities for the hatchery, at least the hatchery manager, but very often all of the permanent hatchery staff to live on site.
[00:28:06] Stina: It’s kind of fun, though,like a little fish summer camp.
[00:28:13] Genevieve: A double-edged sword because on one hand, free housing. But on the other hand, you cannot escape work, live at work.
[00:28:20] Stina: Yep. So I have questions about the state fair pond because I love it. That’s every every time we go. I’m like, I want to watch the Lumberjack show and I want to see those fish. And that’s it. Those are my two top priorities.And so where do those fish come from?
[00:28:39] Genevieve: Yeah. So there we have a holding pond in the metro where they live for the other 50 weeks of the year. There’s nothing really special about the pond. It just looks like a regular old pond. The one thing that is special about it is we can manipulate the water level in the pond, which is important because when we are going to bring the fish to the fair, we spend the week prior slowly lowering the water level in that pond. And then on the day we move the fish, you can actually walk through it. And we take a really big, it’s 100 foot long net. It’s called a Seine net. And you just walk through and you trap all of the fish in the middle. And then once they’re in the middle of the big Seine net, you can take smaller hand size or dip nets and then get the fish, scoop them up, and get them out of the trucks and make the drive over to the state fair.
[00:29:32] Stina: I did not know that there was like a secret fish hotel in the metro.
[00:29:37] Genevieve: It’s very much like you wouldn’t, there’s nothing special about it. No bells, no whistles. They’re just hanging out in there doing whatever fish things because actually a lot of those fish are recurring visitors. That’s the reason we keep them in this holding pond is because after the fair, they go back into the pond and certainly not every fish is going to persist, is going to survive to the next year. We leave them alone for basically the entire year. It’s kind of their payment. Fish don’t particularly love being handled, but some fish are living. So that usually means there are other fish that are dying at the hands of the fish that are living because it is a fish eat fish world out there. But it’s not uncommon and I do recognize some fish actually year over year when I see them.
[00:30:28] Stina: And that’s why they’re so huge when you get to this day. You’re like, that is a big fish.
[00:30:33] Genevieve: Some of them. Yep. There is one of the ones that I do see regularly at the fair. There is a muskie of substantial size. It’s really hard to tell if it’s just like a generic fish. But one of the ways that I can always distinguish if it’s a fish that I’ve seen before is they might have some scarring, some kind of malformity that makes them quite distinct. And this musky that I do recognize year over year does have some pretty distinct scarring around its fins. It must have gone to that size somehow. So it’s coming back. So it is I would put money on it’s eating when it is in there.
[00:31:14] Stina: Yeah, like, so I posted a question on our BlueSky and I just asked if anyone had any DNR fish and hatchery hatchery related questions. And someone did. KC asked, how do you keep the state fair pond fish from eating each other at the state fair?
[00:31:30] Genevieve: Oh, a classic question. So the work that I do at the fair, a little primer before I answer this question, is not outreach related at all. So I and a team of wonderful volunteers who work for me at the fair are just responsible for keeping the fish alive, for removing any fish that are no longer alive and just generally monitoring the machinery and the systems for the tanks and the pond. But I do also help with outreach. If you’ve been to the state fair, you know that every day during the daytime hours there are pond talks. And so I will usually take one day of the pond talks. And that is my day to have a captive audience to answer all of the questions that I get asked over and over again. And that is one that is very frequently asked. So I love being able to dispel any myths or rumors. And the answer is that I don’t keep them from eating each other. There are some species of fish that are trainable, but it’s not every species and it is not easy even for the species that are trainable. And so I don’t know how you could ever possibly try to train a fish. Don’t eat for two weeks exactly right now specifically. We do, there are a couple of things factors that help to reduce predation in that pond. So the water is well water. It comes straight out of the ground 300 feet below the surface. And so it is fairly cold. It is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The fish are okay and that temperature they’re not like, you know, upset about it or anything. They experience that temperature all the time and even colder. We call it winter in Minnesota. The water gets quite cold then. So every fish, you know, who lives in this, you know, exist in the state of Minnesota is familiar with cold water. But the cold temperature has the benefit of slowing down their metabolic processes. So they tend to just need to eat a little less. They tend to be less active. The exception to this is that of the trout species that are in there. Because like I said earlier, trout are cold water fish. They love 50 degrees. That’s kind of like right in their optimal range. And so when you’re also at the pond, and you see jumping or splashing, that’s usually a trout that’s doing it because they’re the ones that are moving around the most. And so if you go to the fair either right at the start or about halfway through, you’ll also notice that there tend to be a lot of minnows in the pond. We do bring in a shipment of bait fish once right before the fair begins and then halfway through the fair. And that’s kind of like our offering, especially to the trout to hey, eat these please and not some of the other fish in here. But of course, a really small fish like a minnow is not going to entertain the sites of something larger like a pike or a muskie. And so I’ve seen it happen every single year so far, multiple times even some years where a pike especially because they are they’re more aggressive will have a medium, small to medium size trout or walleye or perch or sunfish in their mouths.
[00:34:51] Stina: Kind of in general, why do we stock lakes and streams?
[00:34:59] Genevieve: that’s a great question it’s kind of getting into more of the philosophy of hatcheries, which is a very important part of fish rearing to always be investigating and interrogating. A lot of the reason that in Minnesota we have decided to stock fish as a state is to create, promote and perpetuate fishing opportunities, angling opportunities for all citizens. Some of the fisheries, we create a new so we will stock a lake with a species that it didn’t naturally have. And that is in order to make that specific lake a place where individuals can go and fish for a specific species. And that, you know, usually isn’t just something that we decided to do randomly. The genesis for those ideas often comes from feedback that we get from the public. If there are enough people in a community saying we want to be able to fish for this and we want to be able to do it close to home, we start to we’re we listen, we hear those things and then we’ll start to say, okay, how can we create this opportunity for people because like down, especially in the metro, we have a lot of people who love to go fishing, but they might not have the time, money or equipment resources to be able to drive all the way up north to catch big walleye every weekend. And so we make, you know, we establish and perpetuate walleye fisheries closer to home so that those people have the ability to go and angle for those fish close by in creating some of these new fisheries. We also help to spread the burden across more sites. So if we only had natural lakes available for walleye fishing, then those lakes would see a lot more pressure for targeting walleye in that specific lake. And we could damage severely and irreparably natural populations if we didn’t work to naturally try to mitigate that pressure by spreading it more evenly across the landscape. Stina: Because I saw that in, I think it was the 2024 lake stocking reports, I used to work in Carver County and the government lake right behind there is trout. So I got to meet some rainbow and brown trout that were being delivered. So fun. But I saw that I think some of your fish walleye and muskie in the chain of lakes here in Minneapolis. And that made me think, do you ever go out to the lakes? And do you ever see some fish that you’re like, Oh, I wonder if that wonder if that was one of mine? Sometimes I do. There are definitely some lakes in the metro, especially the ones where we do tiger muskie, where I’m much more like those started at my hatchery because tiger, they’re a fish that we stock largely just in the metro, you know, for a variety of reasons, they are a great catch and they grow really fast. They can get not quite as big as a muskie, but bigger than a pike and they’re aggressive like a pike and they get to that size much quicker. They’re also sterile. So we don’t have to worry about their populations going out of control. I am the only hatchery that does the tiger muskie rearing. So I knew all of those fish definitely come for me. But depending on, you know, when, you know, even if I were to catch a walleye from like a chain of like depending on how old that fish is could determine whether or not it’s from a hatchery, most likely it could be just because I usually get the West Metro quota every year since they are, I am the closest hatchery to the western part of the Twin Cities. But certainly there have been other years where it could have come from some other parts of the state. So tiger muskies are, they’re sterile. Yes. But you get them somehow. So maybe, yes, what is a tiger muskie and how is it different?
[00:39:04] Genevieve:Absolutely. A tiger muskie is a cross between a female muskie and a male pike. Okay. So this hybridization can occur naturally in the wild. It is extremely rare because usually they the spawning seasons for muskie and pike don’t overlap enough, nor do their geographies overlap enough that this is a frequent occurrence. But on rare occasions it can happen. However, we can artificially induce that fertilization through, you know, basically fisheries management work and hatchery work working together.
[00:39:48] Stina: Sounds like this is a new type of fish I don’t know about.
[00:39:50] Genevieve: It’s a hybrid.
[00:39:53] Stina: Ah, so it’s kind of like a mule essentially.
[00:39:56] Genevieve: Yes, it is basically a mule, but a fish mule.
[00:39:59] Stina: So fishing is, is big business, right? Like, do we know? Because like, if you are, you have to have a fishing license and you get the little fish stamp, do we know like how much money does the state get from the fishing industry?
[00:40:15] Genevieve: I don’t know exactly how much money the state gets specifically, but I do know that, you know, last, I think the last report I saw was 2021 angling as an industry in Minnesota accounted for like four billion, like 4.2 billion dollars of economic activity in the state. And that’s not just the license purchases or the special sticker purchases. That’s things like, you know, people coming in from out of state, you know, like renting cabins, hotels, the buying of bait and tackle and other equipment. So it is very much a very significant part of the economic activity in Minnesota. We are still a destination fishing spot. I can also say that a significant portion of the DNR budget does come from licensed sales. And I don’t know exactly what percent. And when I say licensed sales, I’m not just meaning fish licenses, but also like game tags, you know, for hunting seasons and stuff like that, that does make up a very significant portion of our budget. We do also get a lot of federal money from the Dingle Johnson Act, things that are happening, you know, not just in the state level effect, the DNR’s budget, but also the national level as well.
[00:41:42] Stina: What is the Dingle Johnson Act?
[00:41:50] Genevieve: Wikipedia quickly says that it is the act from 1950 that authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to provide financial assistance for state fish restoration and management plans and projects.
[00:41:59] Stina: Oh, okay. In general, how are our fish doing statewide? I saw an estimate that Minnesota anglers catch about 3.5 million walleye each year. And I mean, we wouldn’t let people catch that many of our population couldn’t support that. But like, yeah, how are fish doing?
[00:42:16] Genevieve: Definitely, we wouldn’t. It’s one of the things that I always try to educate people about when thinking about fisheries is, you know, sometimes you hear people, you know, and they’re upset like, oh, the bag limit’s so low or maybe they think it’s too high or something. And this is, you know, it’s never done with mal intent by the people who work in the state. But I always try to impress upon people that when we are making rules, we are using data from the past to make rules in the present that we are hoping will have a positive effect on a fishery in the future. And so it’s a lot of moving parts. We’re using data. We’re using historical practices. We also do take into account angler opinions on rules and stuff like that. That’s why there’s always an open commentary period for rule changes. You know, it’s something that is a very important part, the rulemaking process within the DNR. It’s also something that, you know, we are facing down, you know, at the at a future where there’s going to there is now and will continue to be significant changes in climate, you know, the science supports that the data supports that and it shows that it will continue into the future. And so how fish populations will fare going forward is something that, again, we’re trying to do our best to support and promote and perpetuate fish as well as we can, but it’s also, again, a guessing game. We’re using data from the past, even if it was collected a week ago, it’s still the past to, you know, try to make these management practices going forwards that will hopefully help us to keep strong fisheries populations into the future. So as far as I know, they’re doing well now. But again, even if I have data right now, it’s not coming out of like instantaneous to my hands.
[00:44:22] Stina: Do you know off offhand how many fish you hatched this year?
[00:44:29] Genevieve: Yes, this year actually was a low year for me. I only hatched six million walleye, which is much lower than I think was last year was 40 million. And then, but I did have the highest number of muskie this year, which I think was 41,000 muskie, which just feel like quite different numbers. But again, with the cost budget analysis, the way that we do the walleye and raise the walleye is much different than the way we raise the muskie. The muskie we’ve done, ran the numbers and decided that keeping them until they’re a larger size is actually a better use of our dollars. Whereas for walleye, we can just ship them out at high numbers, but with low input from the hatcheries and still get the output that we desire.
[00:45:16] Stina: Was there just less demand this year for walleye?
[00:45:21] Genevieve: No. So actually, it just ended up being that Paula shifted a lot of the quota to some other hatcheries. She shifted the quota to some other hatcheries that were a little bit closer to the area offices that were going to be picking up fish.
[00:45:33] Stina: What’s the best part about your job?
[00:45:39] Genevieve: What is the best part about my job? I think that honestly, in a lot of ways, getting to do outreach things like this is one of the best part of my job. And especially, like if people can come into the hatchery, I absolutely love when I can have kids come into the hatchery, when there’s something to see, when there’s fish swimming about or eggs swirling around in their jars and their pure wonder and pure amazement at something that is so routine to me does help me to re-contextualize and re-appreciate that I am raising fish. I get this job where I’m not creating life, but I’m fostering life and it is amazing and it is cool. And so bringing the kids in and getting to get them up close with the eggs or the fish and having them see that is awesome. And it’s actually one of the biggest reasons that I’m trying to push for improvements to the hatchery because it is fairly lacking in its outreach capabilities as it stands now. And so I would love to see that change for the better.
[00:46:50] Stina: So we should start looking at our calendars for late spring and so we can come do a field trip.
[00:46:57] Genevieve: Absolutely. I always tell people, again, because it’s quite variable on when I get eggs that coming in May, especially like later May, right around Memorial Day or early June, I can usually guarantee with almost 100% certainty that I will have something in the hatchery at that time.
[00:47:15] Stina: How early out do you start booking groups to come visit?
[00:47:22] Genevieve: I mean, people will start contacting me. They’ll contact me year round. A lot of those people don’t realize that I’m a seasonal hatchery. So, you know, if somebody reaches out to me now, of course, I will tell them, like, you’re welcome to come visit. If you’re not going to be seeing anything swimming about, you know, if you would like to come when the fish are in, that’s when I give my spiel, like come in May, like that’s my kind of guarantee things are going around. A lot of the frequency of requests usually will start to increase kind of in March.
[00:47:50] Stina: So question from Ian is hand spawn. What does that mean?
[00:47:57] Genevieve: Yeah, that is a great question. It’s actually quite fun to spawn fish. It’s the exact, you know, methodologies, you know, down to the minutiae in the steps will be dependent on where you’re spawning, with whom you’re spawning kind of deal. But in general, if you’re spawning a fish, what you do is they are collected in one way or another with a net, a pen, a weir, which is a type of like fish collection funnel ladder sort of deal. But anyway, all the fish are collected in one spot, and then you sort them by sex. And then on the day you’re spawning, you will sort them by whether or not they are ripe or ready to spawn. So if a fish is is ready to spawn, they are called ripe fish. And if they’re not ready to spawn, they are called green. So kind of like, I think it’s like almost apple based terminology, in a way. The ripe fish are usually they’re separated from the green fish. You’ll usually end up with a lot of males that are ripe, because the the animal kingdom was kind of very consistent and usually giving males a wide window of readiness, so that whenever the females are it is their time, the males are ready to go.
[00:49:29] Stina: Dear listener, while Ian and I got a pretty excellent demonstration during our interview about how the eggs are collected from the fish, I highly recommend that you go into the show notes and click the link for the walleye egg collection at Brookville Reservoir. That’s from Indiana DNR. There’s some really, really great footage of how the eggs and milt are collected.
[00:49:53] Genevieve: And then once the eggs and the milt are together in that vestibule, whatever it is, you add water. You don’t add water before the step. And that’s very important because during natural fertilization, when the eggs in the sperm hit the water, several things are happening on the eggs. Sorry, this is getting very technical, but I think it’s very fascinating. On the eggs, there is a tiny hole called a micro pile. And that is the hole that the sperm can enter to fertilize the egg. However, once the egg hits the water, that micro pile will start to close. The sperm is also immobile until it hits water. So in natural fertilization, these are both expulsed into water. On top of each other, usually there are different strategies for spawning that different fish exhibit, but usually they come together in the water column. And so it’s not particularly a problem. That micro pile takes maybe about 60 seconds to fully close up. So these two things do need to be very close together, the egg and the sperm, to make sure that a sperm is able to find its way into the egg before that micro pile closes. So if when we were artificially spawning, we spawned the eggs into water and then took longer than 30 seconds to get the milt into that same container, well, all the micro piles might be closed and you might have just lost a whole batch of eggs for no reason. So you actually do spawn them dry. And then it’s like those just add water sponges. So you combine them both, add the water, and then you will let them set for a while, usually at least an hour, sometimes up to four hours, because the eggs will start to toughen up a little bit. They start to harden. And then once they get to a certain hardness, they are much safer to transport.
[00:51:52] Stina: And so that’s when they make the car ride to your office?
[00:51:56] Genevieve: Yes. Yep. Yep. So
[00:51:59] Stina: I would love to go out and watch a spawning day.
[00:52:09] Genevieve: You probably can. We’ve got all these egg takes across the state. I always tell people if you’re interested in volunteering or getting involved, just reach out to your local area office and see how you can help out.
[00:52:20] Stina: Right. So when you’re talking about the millions of fry, you’re not counting individual ones, that’s weight based. No, there are many different ways to quantify both eggs and fish in the hatchery. They are actually different ways, but they are all based on some basic principles of math and physics that you can use to your advantage.
[00:52:45] Stina: Right? There’s no escaping math. I tell that to kids all the time. You will always do math in every single field you go into. Ian also wants to know, how does it smell? What does it smell like in the hatchery?
[00:52:58] Genevieve: Oh, it’s a very strong smell. It’s funny because it’s a smell that I have gotten used to, not in the way that I don’t smell it anymore, but in the way that it doesn’t really bother me anymore. And it’s also a very interesting thing talking about the smell of a hatchery, because a lot of people don’t realize that when you work in a hatchery, you do actually use all of your senses when you’re in there. Before I worked at this hatchery in Minnesota, I was working at a hatchery in Idaho, and I distinctly remember one day coming in smelling the air in the hatchery and saying something is wrong. And so I, and it turned out it ended up being that there was a group of fish that were sick. So I could smell that something was awry before I actually put my eyes to it. And so that does happen in the hatchery sometimes where you will, you’ll just walk by something and maybe you only caught it out of the corner of your eye or maybe it was a weird sound. But it’s really important to be attuned to those senses to know the baseline of what your hatchery is supposed to exist as so that when there’s an anomaly, you can figure out what’s happening.
[00:54:13] Stina: And then so I have last question, just a two-parter. So what can listeners do if they want to be stronger supporters of our hatcheries and fish management in Minnesota in general?
[00:54:29] Genevieve: That’s a great question. I love when people ask me that because it is something where the public is really important actually in getting support for the hatcheries. The best way for anyone to support us is to reach out to especially state-level lawmakers and tell them that this is something that interests you, that you support. Again, because like I mentioned earlier, a lot of the funding that would come for hopeful future improvements to not just this hatchery, but any hatchery in the state comes from that single issue legislative funding. And so making it known to legislators that this is something you care about is will in turn make it something that they care about. And then that is how we push those things through. You can also, if you ever just want to show your appreciation in general, feel free to reach out to the DNR, to your local area office, to your local hatchery, and just leave them a voicemail and say, hey, I really like what you’re doing. Thanks so much. We get all those and we hear all those and we appreciate every single one.
[00:55:42] Stina: And then where can folks learn more?
[00:55:47] Genevieve: In general, if you want to learn more about hatcheries, I recommend you feel free to reach out to me. I might not be the closest hatchery to any one person. There are hatcheries within the DNR that are scattered throughout the state. So find your local hatchery, see if you can schedule a tour. They’re usually pretty open to having people come and explore firsthand and learn more about it.
[00:56:11] Stina: Well, thank you, Genevieve. This has been delightful.
[00:56:17] Genevieve: I’m glad that I could. Thanks for listening to me ramble on for an hour and some change.
[00:56:22] Ian: And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Streets.mn Podcast. The show is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, non-derivative license. So feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it and you are not profiting from it. The music in this episode is by Eric Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet. This episode was produced, edited and transcribed by Stina Neel and was engineered by me, Ian R. Buck. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the Streets.mn Podcast, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [[email protected]]. Streets.mn is a community blog and podcast and relies on contributions from audience members like you. If you can make a one-time or recurring donation, you can find more information about doing so at [https://streets.mn/donate]. Find other listeners and discuss this episode on your favorite social media platform using the hashtag #StreetsMNPodcast. Until next time, take care.