Stuart Carlton 0:00
A lot of scientists learned about the effect of ice on Midwest fish. Why is it important to have a fishing license anyway? And how exactly does a stingray get pregnant? To find out let's ask Dr. Fish

that's right is asked Dr. Fish from Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Wisconsin Sea Grant and your pals at Goby dog media. This is our every other month live stream in which we ask our doctors fish your fish questions, your science questions and your life questions. And so I'm so happy to welcome our doctors fish today. We'll start with Titus. Titus is the fisheries extension specialists or something along those lines and Wisconsin Sea Grant Titus? Are you eclipsing or what today?

Titus Seilheimer 0:52
Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna go outside and see what I can see if it's not cloudy. It's

Stuart Carlton 0:57
cloudy. Yes. The Midwest Curse of the Midwest. Eclipse. Katy O'Reilly Dr. Catfish with a secret aquatic invasive species outreach specialist. Looking cool. Are those glasses just your usual attire? Are

Katie O'Reilly 1:09
you? You can unmute I was gonna say I was so excited about the Eclipse. Yeah, just my usual everyday Monday attire. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 1:17
That's because your star eclipses us all. Katie? Exactly. So if you're on Facebook right now watching us or if you're on youtube.com. Right now watching us you can post your own fish questions, science questions or live questions into the chat. And if not, you can send us an email as Dr. fish@gmail.com. That works as well. And we'll give out our fish hotline later in the show. But we have some important news to get to the first one is the fact that it's only freezing most of the days right now. And I've only worn my winter coat three times in the last week must indicate that spring is coming. And with spraying things that are starting to change, ecologically speaking. So one of the things we talked about a lot is like ice and how there was lower Lake ice this year than in past years. And all that like ice has probably gone now that spring is nigh. So what exactly is going to be the effect? Scientists have studied this lately. Right, Titus? And what have they found about the effect of Lake ice or decreasing Lake ice on fish? Yeah,

Titus Seilheimer 2:20
so it's some new research out just in the last month or so showing that ice is coming off the lakes earlier than it used to be. So basically what we're seeing with winter Lake guys, it's going it's freezing up later, coming off earlier. And the concern here is that there might be kind of a mismatch for these hatching little fish. And yeah, so potential problems there.

Katie O'Reilly 2:48
What's interesting is, you know, now we're April, and we're way past the usual maximum ice level in the Great Lakes. And this year was just historically low, you know, since we began having kind of the most detailed records back in the 1970s, this has been a really, really rough year for ice lumpers for sure, in the Great Lakes region. You know, like Titus said, this obviously has impacts on fish ecology, but it also has impacts on you know, everything from the actual environment, like the physical environment. So things like the coast, how to dealing with erosion, but it also impacts kind of winter recreation in the Great Lakes to like fewer people able to ice fish or go skiing, snow, snowmobiling. So obviously fish is what we care about, because they're the best but there are a lot of other ecological and kind of social impacts that are resulting from this really historically low ice winter.

Titus Seilheimer 3:46
Yeah, and there's, you know, definitely some specific fish species that you know, there are these relationships with ice cover. So species like Cisco's like like white fish that are like fall spawners their, their eggs are kind of hanging out through the winter. And if you have that ice cover, it helps to protect them through the winter from things like waves. So you know, losing that ice cover, and maybe seeing less of it can be a concern for these species in the long run. And

Stuart Carlton 4:16
the social aspect too, though, as a social scientist, I feel compelled to mention it, you know, a lot of what goes into the Midwest identity has to do with the cold, because you know, we got cold corn and some other see that I can't think of off the top of my head here. And so seeing that disappear, I think can can be a bit challenging for something. But that's not the only reason that we want to talk about spring. The main reason we want to talk about spring is to get Titus all fired up. So Titus is as far as I can tell, based on revealed preferences, which is if you'll go back at the end of the year and look at how he spends most of his time. It's looking at Fish doing what they do in the springtime, if you will. So Titus who's spawning now?

Titus Seilheimer 4:53
Yeah, who's spawning? So what I actually

Stuart Carlton 4:58
we need like a we need our The title card, and it's I'm writing this down in a sound for who's spawning. Now this will be taking care

Titus Seilheimer 5:05
of maybe some thrashing. You know, splashing water sounds. Yeah, if you're watching live, we've got a video. We've got a video up of to northern pike that I actually saw on Saturday. So this is, you know, hot off the presses. You know, it's it's spring. So some of our first first species to spawn are the northern pike, they're, they're coming up into these flooded areas, right after the ice goes off. And, you know, this has been a really weird year to back in early March, our water was warming up it was, you know, it was like this is gonna be a super early spring, we actually started our suckers, monitoring, our sock responder spawning monitoring with Shedd Aquarium back in March, you know, like three weeks earlier than usual because the water was already up to about seven and a half degrees Celsius. And of course, then, you know, we got everything set up. We've been monitoring, and it got cold again. And now we're like the the water temperature this morning was about four and a half degrees. So it has not been a super early spring. We're like actually back on track now I think to where a normal spring would be, which is the interesting, you know, weather is interesting. And you know, it was super warm. Now it's kind of back to normal, I guess.

Katie O'Reilly 6:25
Yeah. And I'll say I have a spawning update to in part because I am Eclipse hunting. I'm visiting family in Toledo, Ohio, which is home to the Maumee River, where there is a annual celebration of all things walleye as they come in from Lake Erie into the tributary to spawn and it has a really big and popular fishing explosion, you know, to catch the spawners. So, similar thing, I remember hearing that back in March, everyone was worried that the walleye run was going to start way earlier than normal. We had a couple of weeks of cooler weather, the water levels were really low in the river. But now that we've gotten some warm water, we've also had a lot of rain in kind of Indiana, Ohio area. And so that's really got the the walleye run back on track. So just to echo what Titus says, sometimes we think something's gonna happen. And then weather just takes a turn. And somehow it all works out.

Stuart Carlton 7:22
What are fish looking for? When it comes to when it comes to knowing when to spa and right? Is it temperature? Is it photo period? Or is it amount of rain? What What, what, what are the signals? That,

Titus Seilheimer 7:35
you know, I'd have to say that it's probably all three. And it also depends on fish species, like some of what we're trying to learn with the sucker monitoring is, what are the cues to you know, trigger the spawning run? And, you know, it definitely seems like temperature is a cue for the actual spawning. But, you know, I think I think there's also this streamflow pulse that they're looking for because really until about a week ago, our water was super low was really clear, which was nice for looking for fish, although we weren't seeing any and then we had over an inch of rain and now the the streams back up. So I think it's always going to be a combination of those things. And actually with walleye light might be a part of that because you know, temperature is important ice out it is important, but you know, hard to know. Interesting.

Stuart Carlton 8:27
All right. Well enough on Lake guys. We've done enough Lake guys. Let's move on to perennial loser of the Leakey Awards, the lake sturgeon, and turns out lake sturgeon there might be trying to make it endangered or listed as endangered. Katie, what do you know about lake sturgeon? And should they be listed as endangered? Or what are the trade offs there?

Katie O'Reilly 8:47
Yeah, so this is a really interesting story that, you know, Lake Sturgeon are not considered, you know, either threatened or endangered officially by the US Federal Government. Now, different states can put in, you know, whether or not a species is threatened in their particular state. But the federal listing, you know, if you get on the endangered species list essentially opens up a lot of new opportunities and potentially challenges. So there's, you know, the, the concern here is that this year, the US government's going to make a ruling on whether or not lake sturgeon should be on the federal endangered species list. And some of the states in the Great Lakes region have some concerns because that basically introduces, you know, another kind of regulatory body into the management of lake sturgeon. One of the interesting things that I came across while looking at at this issue is that in some places, the states were basically saying the federal government was a little bit too late like there's been so much work and effort put into restoring over the lake sturgeon in their habitat already. So it's kind of like you know, closing the door after the horses left the barn And, but I think there's also some major benefits, you know, getting put on the endangered species list gives us species additional protections makes, really it a priority to for states and basically every kind of stakeholder to work in the best interest of the fish. So there's a little bit of conflict between, you know, obviously, I think everybody wants to see healthy populations of Lake Sturgeon back in the Great Lakes. But the way of going about that is kind of the sticking issue. Yeah,

Titus Seilheimer 10:32
and I have to add there. I mean, you know, being in Wisconsin, a state that has, you know, really long for a long time, you know, since the 70s. And even before that has really invested a lot of time and effort to maintain our lake sturgeon population. And really, you know, the, the Lake Winnebago system has the largest lake sturgeon population in the world. So, you know, really well managed supporting a big ice fishery that's, you know, regionally important and the populations doing really well. To then have you know, this, you know, you know, how would that work, like we have, what are really well managed big population be considered endangered, because it's endangered everywhere? Like, that's a big question that I think people have concerned also, you know, our Great Lakes populations are a lot lower than they were historically, like, you know, 1%, like, that's the number that I hear our current lake sturgeon population is like, 1%, where it was historically. And, you know, what would that mean for things like, you know, fishing for bycatch of commercial fisheries, who might encounter some of the sturgeon as well, if all of a sudden they're, you know, not just threatened or a special concern, but endangered federally like that could really kind of change how, how lakes are managed. So, definitely, you know, I think we all agree that we want to see more like surgeon in the in the world, but you know, how that happens. And, you know, that's the question moving forward, and what it means for us, kind of in the region as well,

Stuart Carlton 12:06
what would it mean for you as like a scientist, if it were to be declared endangered? My gut feeling is, then you have to do more permits? But I don't know how, what would the results of that be?

Katie O'Reilly 12:17
Yeah, so you're spot on? Stuart, basically, you know, we would need additional permits, if we're like, you know, specifically trying to, for example, catch some lake sturgeon to measure them in the field. There also might just be special permits for if you're doing field work. That's not centered on lake sturgeon. But there's the chance that you may, you know, potentially catch them as bycatch, as Titus said, so yeah, definitely increased checks and balances to, you know, make sure that the work that you're doing is going to minimize any harm or potential harm to sturgeon.

Titus Seilheimer 12:50
And I think we could throw in like a counterpoint there. On the beneficial side, I think having, you know, there's a lot of like grants and programs that are open to endangered species that would kind of allow us to, you know, then take advantage of those federal programs or federal grants, which could be a benefit to researchers. So, so that would, you know, it's, it's not all potentially bad, but, you know, lots of things can happen,

Katie O'Reilly 13:18
right? Yeah. Like neither. Yeah, it's definitely not an all good all bad situation. I think it's thinking about sort of those trade offs that are inherent in any kind of fisheries management, but especially for a fish that is as iconic and deserving of a Leakey as the lake sturgeon.

Carolyn Foley 13:36
I would like to thank you for that. So yeah, this is my annual plug, or I don't know, weekly plug for Lake Sturgeon are awesome. When I was going through undergraduate school at the University of Windsor, one of the discussions was about how being on the endangered species list also means there's more protections for habitat. I did find it really interesting that, you know, the point of like, look, we've been working on this for a really long time already. And we're seeing gains. So it may be too late. I found that,

Stuart Carlton 14:10
although it's interesting. I mean, it runs into quite well, if we go into the details now. But everyone, it brings up that question of what are we trying to restore to right, what if we're at 1% of where we were there, you know, it's not imaginable what having, I guess 100 times the salmon or not salmon sturgeon that we have now. All right, maybe you'd actually see one for example, if we had 100 times as many but we're what are the goalposts? I guess,

Titus Seilheimer 14:33
yeah, as a as a multiple year runner up for the best Titus of the Great Lakes Leakey. You know, I feel the Lake Sturgeon pain and you know, just being considered as is really the reward.

Carolyn Foley 14:49
And we'll note that the lake ease that we're talking about are the teach me about the Great Lakes Lake ease,

Stuart Carlton 14:54
possibly not the least prestigious podcast related Great Lakes

Carolyn Foley 14:57
awards. This is as Dr. Fish Show where our two Doctor fishes answer your fish questions, science questions and life questions. If you have a question for our doctors, you can put it into the chat right now, either at youtube or facebook if you're watching live, or you can use the Twitter hashtag ask Dr. Fish. And you can email us at ask Dr. fish@gmail.com. Onto our next questions. So there was a story and I'll share it to the screen in a second. About a state in Idaho. There was a tiger trout record. So first off, what's what's Tiger trout. And while I'm pulling things that tell us about what Tiger trout is, and records, and then the record was rescinded, because they were caught without a license, whoever wants to jump in on what is Tiger trout. Yeah, so

Katie O'Reilly 15:47
Tiger trout is not like a true species of fish, but it's a hybrid between I want to say brook trout and brown trout. Titus, you need to fact check me on that one.

Titus Seilheimer 16:04
But essentially, as I'm like, go look it up and you are correct. It is brown trout. And yes, brook trout. So a salvo and sell violinist crossover. Heck,

Katie O'Reilly 16:15
yes. Thank you Titus for the fact check. But essentially, Tiger trout are one of the hybrids sort of like splake, you may have heard of, that are oftentimes artificially raised specifically for angling opportunities, either because they, you know, grow faster than either the parent species, they maybe are hardier and can can live in different environments. So Katie,

Titus Seilheimer 16:39
how does how do they get their name, though? Like, what? I don't get it Tiger trout. What does that mean?

Katie O'Reilly 16:46
That's a really good question. My understanding is that tiger trout get it from the sort of appearance that they have, even though the one that is showing the tiger trout in that photo does not look very Tiger.

Stuart Carlton 16:56
It's more like a cloud leopard trout, we'd need to have a conversation about this. We need

Katie O'Reilly 17:01
to get their big cat straight here. But yeah, it's supposedly it's more of the coloration and appearance of spots that is sort of Tiger ish, ish, I guess. But when it comes to, you know, records and sort of getting records rescinded? That really is I think different places have different rules. Sometimes it's like, you know, based on, or I would say oftentimes it's based on fish. Wait, it kind of depends. And obviously, you know, if you don't have a license, you're kind of up a creek to use that phrase. It's a crime. I mean, you're you're breaking the law in many places, if you are not fishing with a license, depending on

Stuart Carlton 17:44
what's important, like why I mean, I mean, so they cost, you know, the amount of money cost depends on where you're going, I guess, but what is it important because it's revenue and they need revenue? Or is it for tracking people or what, why? Why should people want to get a fishing license?

Titus Seilheimer 17:57
Yeah, you know, so, the way a lot of our State Department's of natural resources or other agencies that manage wildlife and fish are generally funded mostly or completely by licensed sales. So it is really, you know, you buying a license is supporting the agency that then will kind of cover the costs of growing fish and hatcheries of running those hatcheries maintaining it of all the fish biologists and other biologists working around the state to manage these resources. So you know, the advantage here and then it also helps, you know, to understand how many people are, you know, out there chasing after these fish, I make sure that I I don't fish that much. I do like to buy a fishing license though, just so I wouldn't get into the the problem of of catching a 8.47 pound Tiger char trout in learning that. After all, I don't have the record because I was fishing illegally. So yeah, not not a great, not a great look for anybody there.

Carolyn Foley 19:09
Where can you get fishing licenses in the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, places like that?

Katie O'Reilly 19:17
Yeah, at least for Illinois. I know. You can get them online through the Illinois DNR website. And they also have a list of shops where you could buy one in person as well. And I would guess probably that's similar across many of the Great Lakes State is DNR will be your first bet and either you know, you can buy it directly from them or they they can recommend places to find them.

Titus Seilheimer 19:40
Yeah, definitely places like bait shops or tackle shops. If you're going into one of those you know they're probably going to sell you if they sell things like fishing poles they probably sell you a fishing license as well. So but you know, you can't beat the the ease of buying online so once you get get that set up. And, you know, also, you know, if you're like, Okay, I've got my Wisconsin fishing license, but I can't just, you know, say, Hey, I'm gonna go fishing anywhere now, you know, outside of the state, you do also need, you know, each state licenses, its fisheries. In some cases, like if you have a shared waterway like the Menomonee River, between Wisconsin and Michigan, they might have specific rules there that, that that line is just an imaginary line to the river. So you might have to have a, you know, a special license, maybe it's allowed that you can fish in both of those. So yeah, definitely, you know, out of state licenses are going to be something if you're traveling, you can, you can purchase those a lot of times can be different lengths of time, too. So, hey, if you're just going fishing for a day, they may have a single day out of state license that you can use and go out, catch your fish, and then you're you're all good and legal. So you know, lots lots of options. There's also things like stamps that will support specific species like here in Wisconsin, we have an inland brook trout like an inland trout stamp. So if you're gonna go trout fishing on a stream, you need to have that stamp, which is like $10. If you're gonna go out on on the Great Lakes and catch trout and salmon, you're gonna need a Great Lakes salmon stamp. And that money specifically goes to like the hatcheries and the management of the Great Lakes fishery. So that's the way they can kind of identify specific fisheries that might need an extra bit of management. And you can also track how many people are actually fishing there. Unless you're like me and you don't actually fish although I have started just kind of dragging a lower when I'm out paddling on Lake Michigan and my canoe yet to catch anything yet, but it is it makes me feel like oh, you know, I'm a fishery specialist. I'm fishing on the lake. Great Lakes. I've paid for my, my salmon stamp, so I'm getting my money's worth there. That's

Katie O'Reilly 21:58
cool. Basically, I'm legit. You're

Titus Seilheimer 22:02
sure I don't. Yeah, too legit to quit. Stuart's got it right. And maybe I should quit fishing because I never catch anything. But hey,

Stuart Carlton 22:11
that's a politician.

Carolyn Foley 22:12
This reminds me a little bit of when we used to sample on the western basin of Lake Erie. Katie was talking about the Maumee earlier. We used to drive around sampling before the mayflies hatched and we had to carry around because we were going into international waters. We had to carry around these little pieces of paper that were like, anyway, they were like basically like tissue paper and we pretty much all thought that if they'd flown off the boat, we would not have been able to show that like were held out to be you got like the pictures that like Kinkos or whatever. Anyway, we will reset right now. Thank you everyone for joining us. This has asked Dr. Fish a show where our two Doctor fishes answer your fifth question science question and life questions. If you have a question. The easiest thing is to put it into the chat right now probably. You can also email us at ask Dr. fist@gmail.com. We're going to run through a couple of different topics though in our overall thing. We were talking about a stingray Stewart, do you want to introduce this

Stuart Carlton 23:17
to this one is big, especially with it being the Easter season. Everybody's got Immaculate Conception on the mind. And so we have Charlotte the Stingray, I'm not honestly a huge Charlotte the stingray expert, but Charlotte got pregnant. And exactly how it was kind of a mystery minor issue. No other male stingrays in the aquarium. Titus, have you ever? Nope. Let me not ask that question. Titus. What can you tell us about stingrays? And is this parthenogenesis or random pregnancy or what? Yeah,

Titus Seilheimer 23:52
so, you know, Stingrays are an interesting group of species kind of more, you know, I guess primitive than some of our other more developed fish at least, you know, so they, potentially here parthenogenesis is the answer. So, you know, looking at some asexual reproduction happening with this female just kind of producing an egg and then somehow fertilizing it herself with, you know, some kind of DNA. Yeah, I mean, and I know Katie can explain this better than I can. Thanks,

Katie O'Reilly 24:31
todos. Well, I was gonna also say it's not. I would say I wasn't surprised when I heard about it, because we've observed this parthenogenesis in a lot of other sharks which are approached close relative of stingrays. So to me, it was kind of like, okay, you know, this is this is a species that's related to a species that we know does this. pathogenesis is not just in fish. It's been observed in other terrestrial or organisms such as different types of reptiles, and I think there's right now we don't have a great sense of why it happens. But it's possible, it could be sort of a stress response. It could be just, you know, a reproduction, like this asexual reproduction that is a strategy of species like just naturally that we don't, I think in some cases, we just haven't been looking for it. So it's not necessarily like that it's something new or strange. It's just something that maybe happens every now and then. But unless you're in a situation where you just have like a single female in a tank, and you're like, oh, there's babies where they come from, it's not something that's going to stand out. In nature. Yeah,

Titus Seilheimer 25:43
not Yeah. How would you even track that in, in the real world? You know, it's like, maybe they're doing this all the time, or sometimes just because, you know, they're isolated or something. And we it's hard to hard to know,

Stuart Carlton 25:55
if Titus isn't out there videoing it, that probably it doesn't happen. Yeah. Really, I know what you're trying to say. Katie is kind of lonely in the aquarium right. Only Stingray, looking for companionship, sometimes. You gotta parthenogenesis, I suppose. Right?

Katie O'Reilly 26:11
You're just like, I need a bunch of little mini movies. And well, it's funny. I mean, Charlotte was famous enough to make it to SNL. So I think it was a case of fish, fish breaking into the mainstream a little bit, breaking

Stuart Carlton 26:24
into the mainstream. That is excellent. All right. And then we also like to be topical, we're, if nothing, if not extremely topical, on ask Dr. Fish. And so the next news item is today is the day of the solar eclipse. As soon as we hang up the phone here, I'm going to drive down and sit in traffic on a local state road and watch the Eclipse happen over me as I get increasingly irate with the traffic and the children in the car. Or maybe it will not work out that way. But I have my suspicions. Anyway, that got me to thinking and it got the people at Game and Fish magazine to thinking do How will the Eclipse affect fish? We're talking about spawning and stuff like that, and they're looking to light for signals. Katie, what do you know about fish and solar eclipses?

Katie O'Reilly 27:11
Yeah, so we don't know a whole ton. There was some work done in one of the last solar eclipses back in 2017, where some people were making observations, not just a fish, but kind of animal behavior in general. And there is some sort of anecdotal angler reports that, you know, once the sky went totally dark. So if you're in that path of totality, that the fish bite was a little bit better. And that might be because some species like sort of the lower light conditions, like dusk, and so if you are out there fishing, sky goes dark. And even if it's just a few minutes, maybe it's enough for a fish to go after your lawyer. But the tough part is it's such a short period of time, like here in Toledo, at the edge of the band of totality, we're getting like, a minute and 30 seconds. So like, is that really enough to trigger any of those behaviors? Or is it more just like a big cloud passing by? I guess we'll see.

Titus Seilheimer 28:06
Yeah, or, you know, you imagine, like a really big thunderstorm, you know, one of those, you know, big storms when the street lights go on in the middle of the day. So, of course there you'd have, you know, like atmospheric pressure, and that could trigger things. And yeah, it's, you know, definitely one of these things I know, I've seen some other scientists, you know, they're gonna look at what are the honeybees doing during this. And, you know, I think it's just a kind of a great, great opportunity to maybe learn something new about the species, you know, like our sting rays becoming pregnant on their own. There's always things that we can learn, maybe we'll learn something new. Maybe I'll go out there and see if the suckers start swimming by because it's getting darker. But it's also only going to be at 6% here, I think so, really not going to notice a lot of it. So that's not enough to get those suckers. Wiggling isn't. That's right, they're not they're not interested.

Katie O'Reilly 28:59
So maybe if you're out watching the clips today, you know, take a few moments to not you know, look at the stare at the sun directly and see if there's weird stuff happening around you. That's

Stuart Carlton 29:09
where you're going with that.

Katie O'Reilly 29:10
That's where I was going with that advantage

Stuart Carlton 29:12
of the darkness. Four minutes.

Katie O'Reilly 29:15
You got four minutes, four minutes of darkness, do what you want with it.

Carolyn Foley 29:19
And what you want is to look at the little critters that are running around you

Katie O'Reilly 29:24
exactly

Carolyn Foley 29:28
so we have another topic 100,000 Live salmon spilled off a truck most landed in a creek and lived I know this is another thing you're excited about Stuart so

Stuart Carlton 29:37
what do you think? Well, the main reason I'm excited about this so first of all, they had pictures and the most important thing is everybody was fine. Right? So tanker was carrying young salmon but the main reason those were not fine. Those specifics. I was gonna say the most that's not most, how old are those? Look by looking at them. Titus, you're kind of a salmon guy, right?

Titus Seilheimer 29:57
I mean, do we know what are their Chinook small So, you know, generally you you would stalk a Chinook the following spring. So there are only, you know, six months old at sacking time.

Stuart Carlton 30:08
And how many new stock like I mean, so what a normal stocking be like, I mean, it's 1000s upon 1000s.

Titus Seilheimer 30:13
Right? Yeah, I mean 10s if not hundreds of 1000s. But that's actually not why I brought this story up. The

Stuart Carlton 30:18
third reason brought the story up is because I have my top five, top five ways of transporting fish salmon. Yes, but fish otherwise I've got a tough five here. We're going to pull this off with no problem. So all right, here we go presenting Stuart's top five ways of transporting fish all right, outside looking in is having a non fatal accident with a salmon transport truck in which they spill into the creek and most of them are fine that's outside looking in number five is the Seneca National Fish Hatchery official salmon El Camino sent me Carolyn, you'll see the El Camino down there. That is the number five way of transporting salmon. All right,

Titus Seilheimer 31:14
Stuart, that's got to be the number one way of transporting salmon in my book, I guess this is your list. So my list

Stuart Carlton 31:21
I've got four more on here. Although honestly looking at these it's probably number three. It should have been number three, but that is okay. The number four most number four way of transporting live fish milk cans on horses milk cans on horses. Who put this in? Ridiculous Alright, so this is what happened people there's the link right there trip the light fantastic. This is the number four this is the number four I am pasting it right now. Onto the youtube alright.

Carolyn Foley 32:02
I'm just going in the wrong order. Like we didn't discuss this before.

Stuart Carlton 32:07
discussed and the exact folders don't discuss this with me one minute before the show begins. So that's fine. There you go. Earlier All right. Anyway, number four if you scroll down this is among our top five top five lists already Alright, number three by train I hear fish by rail Titus this looks like something that you put on here. So the history of this how did how did fish common carp get introduced by trees? So I did actually this was a very tight assess Katie Titus age by train.

Katie O'Reilly 32:47
So I had to stick an invasive species in there, you know, just it's my brand. But essentially, you know, the common carp which is basically everywhere now actually was introduced via trains in like the late 1800s. across the US. There were some accounts of them basically just like dumping them out of trains as they would pass by on bridges and stuff. But this was really to help build, you know, even though they're non native, it was hoped that this would become a food source for Americans. But unfortunately, American you know, Americans at the time did not develop the taste for carp that the fisheries folks were hoping and now we have common carp everywhere.

Stuart Carlton 33:30
So common carpet no eating.

Katie O'Reilly 33:32
No eating.

Titus Seilheimer 33:33
Yeah, yeah. And you think about trains I mean, a train especially at the time was the fastest way to move things around. It was also a very smooth ride compared to you know, other ways of of transporting fish so horse Yeah, I mean, that's pretty bumpy. Those are bumpy rides. Fish don't like that. So yeah, trains and actually, if you go to Michigan, there is what is it? It's an ODIN Michigan at the Odin Fish Hatchery. They actually have one of those old Michigan train cars that was used in their their hatchery program so you can check that out. Cool. Next time you're driving over to like Traverse City up in that part of the Lower Peninsula.

Stuart Carlton 34:18
Alright, and that takes us to our number two way of transporting fish and that dropping them from a plane this is one of our classic videos and we like I think Carolyn may have even already shown it but it's in Utah. One way that they stock salmon is they fly a little plane and they just dropped the fish straight out the back into the river and I assume as with the truck, wreck method, most of them survive so that is excellent. And that takes us to the most important about number one way to transport fish the salmon, Canada Everybody loves a good Sanand Camen Sam is brand new Carolyn is she's totally She's depressed for years we have destroyed Carolyn spirit with one poorly executed top five list that's all it takes all it takes her resolve it's been unsealed

Titus Seilheimer 35:22
I mean story you know you we could have added numbers to the to the numbers I think really it was also

Stuart Carlton 35:27
one of the surprise of the but maybe surprise is not the way or we got a surprise I

Titus Seilheimer 35:33
think I think doing stuff live on air and surprises. They go really well together. And I you know, I know that everyone who tunes in for this live they enjoy the high jinks that we get tickets. What keeps them coming back from?

Stuart Carlton 35:46
Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yep. Well,

Carolyn Foley 35:48
maybe we apologize everybody. I apologize.

Stuart Carlton 35:52
Yes, that's classic Carolyn to apologizing for something that she did not do anyway.

Carolyn Foley 35:57
Okay, so we did have an ask Dr. Fish challenge. This past month it was to try a fish fry. I will admit that I did not try any local fish fries. However, I went down to Mammoth games. And my some family members tried long fish from a side of the road. things so I did have a question. I was like, is long fish because I think they were selling long fish and square fish. Do you think it just has to do with like, how they're, you know, is it a patty? Or is it like? I don't know. I see that Katie and Titus are both kind of like yeah, I don't know what long fishes I was like, it's probably one of those like, locally, it means something. But anyway, they really enjoyed it. So that's what I'm calling that the fish fry. If anybody from the audience participated in last week. Last month's challenge, feel free to share your comments. But Katie, were you able to enjoy any fish fries?

Katie O'Reilly 36:55
I was so I actually was up in Milwaukee last week to visit some family for the Easter holiday. And we went to Lakefront Brewery, which you know, has great fish but that wasn't the main draw of why we went there. We actually went there because they are home to the brew house Polka kings, the one who played live that's the brew house poker kings who played Live Poker music as we were eating our fish fry. I have to admit that really made the experience great fish, but even even better atmosphere.

Stuart Carlton 37:25
You were full on really

Katie O'Reilly 37:27
full on Midwest in Milwaukee with a polka band eating a fish fry. It doesn't get better than that.

Carolyn Foley 37:33
Right. Okay, Titus, I feel like you have probably killed all the fish fries in all the places in Wisconsin. You

Titus Seilheimer 37:42
know, Katie, what would be more Midwestern than to let your colleague Dr. Fish know that you are just down the road in Milwaukee having a fish fry but I know. Yeah, so I am actually I didn't have a single fish fry. But I am going to I'm going to take the the buttered white fish roll that I cooked up at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sport fishing show. My colleague and I Sharon Moen, she's our food fish outreach coordinator. We were invited to do a couple of cooking demos on their using or sausage sage, which is you know, hey, that's a great place to be I can put that out, you know, usage or sausage stage. That's gotta go right in my, my resume slash CV, specifically. So we actually did two days of demos. And we we wanted to highlight one of my things has been I want a you know, we've got lobster rolls, who cares? Lobster lobsters are everywhere, whatever. What about the white fish roll. So, you know, let's turn that into the Great Lakes sandwich of the summer. And so we had kind of competing white fish rolls I did a hot buttery white fish roll. That's kind of how I prefer my lobster rolls. And Sharon did a cold more of a white fish salad with cooked white fish and kind of spicy so you know, delicious little sandwiches and I'm going to I'm going to count that as a fish fry even though it wasn't well. Mine was fried in butter in a pan. So isn't that that's its pan fried fish. Let's call that a fish fry.

Carolyn Foley 39:26
That also sounds delicious. Stuart were you able to experience on

Stuart Carlton 39:31
the last episode of Ask Dr. Fish because I've been on some leave. I do not have a fish fry. But I've had a number of French fries. I will report back on the fish fry situation a little bit later in the summer. Cool.

Carolyn Foley 39:42
So Katie, do you want to pick her challenge for next month? Oh man, there's

Katie O'Reilly 39:46
some really good ones. But I think my suggestion for our challenge next month is to visit a new body of water or you know a body of water that's new to you and share a picture of your your adventures. to maybe get outside, I would love to see new bodies of water and new places around around the Great Lakes and around wherever you live.

Stuart Carlton 40:06
During the eclipse the voracious fish will likely nibble your tootsies

Titus Seilheimer 40:12
skeletonize you in less than four minutes it'll

Stuart Carlton 40:16
happen. It could happen.

Carolyn Foley 40:19
So, alright, so as everyone knows, we typically end with a game. And we don't have any comments today probably because we just messed up so many ways. Yep, we'll try

Stuart Carlton 40:31
to do better. We have a thumbs up so that's cool. Yeah.

Carolyn Foley 40:35
Okay, so if you guys have like a little piece of paper next to you, all three of you need to write down on different pieces of paper write down yellow perch, Round Goby, Musca lunge and emerald shiner. And while you all are writing that, because I didn't have time to prep beforehand.

Stuart Carlton 40:55
So we get rid of the third one on the listeners, right? Yes,

Carolyn Foley 40:58
get rid of the third one we'll just go with. We play games. And sometimes we do 20 questions, and sometimes we do various other things. And so today, sometimes we are influenced by what Carolyn has been watching on TV. If you have Peacock, and you've watched the typewriters, I have been watching way too much of the traitors. And this game is inspired by season one hosted by Alan coming, which is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen, but it's also fantastic. Okay, so the way this is gonna go, is we have four choices or choices again, our yellow perch, emerald shiner, round goby and Mosca lunch. These are four Great Lakes species around Gobi was invasive, but it's well established. So I'm going to call it a Great Lakes species. And I'm going to ask you a question. And you guys just answer with whatever. Katie and Titus, your goal is to get the same answer as Stuart. So I'm going to ask a question like, which one of these is the tastiest to eat? We'll do that as a test route. Okay, so like, which one of these is the tastiest seat?

Stuart Carlton 42:07
Okay, gotcha.

Carolyn Foley 42:08
So, hold up the paper. Don't show us yet. Just show us that you've picked your answer. Okay. So Titus, you have to show us that you have picked your answer. Okay, everybody, turn around and tell me what you had. It was round goby, yellow perch and yellow perch. So we could say Katie and Titus probably picked yellow perch because yellow parties actually tasty. But you have to be thinking about what Stuart is thinking which is that

Titus Seilheimer 42:34
round is the highest good. Yeah. All right. So

Carolyn Foley 42:38
we're gonna do three rounds. And then you know, whoever has the most points at the end out of Titus and Katy at once. All right. So question number one, which species would you not want to meet in a dark alley? All right, go ahead. Turn them around my dark

Stuart Carlton 43:00
shiny right and so then in the dark, it would no longer be dark.

Carolyn Foley 43:06
All right, and Katie, why did you think Mr. Lunch?

Katie O'Reilly 43:09
Because they've got quite a lot of teeth. And I don't I don't want to deal with that. Yeah,

Titus Seilheimer 43:13
I mean, even even for us like I like if someone threw a muskie at you in a dark alley and it hits you in the face you know, you can be covered in blood. They got a lot of teeth, right? I don't want yeah, okay, we got it. We got to Stuart. Okay. So take your first instinct and

Katie O'Reilly 43:30
throw it in the trash. Yeah.

Carolyn Foley 43:32
Question number two, which species would you like to have as a pet?

Stuart Carlton 43:37
Are you allowed to reuse once or once they're out? Yeah.

Carolyn Foley 43:43
Those are your choices so All right, go ahead reveal. Round Gopi Stewart Why would you like a yellow purchase

Stuart Carlton 43:52
because also serves as a seat right? You can just put yourself right there on the pet. So not only do you have a pet but you also have some nice living room furniture.

Carolyn Foley 44:01
And Katie and Titus Why did you pick yellow purchase a pet bull? Picked round.

Titus Seilheimer 44:07
He assumed Stuart would would go like his favorite fish and then he could also like go over there reach in grab a snack. I don't know.

Stuart Carlton 44:17
That's just the difference between the Carlton and tile Homer households is I don't need my pets. All right,

Carolyn Foley 44:23
final final question. Which of these four fish is the greatest Great Lakes fish?

Katie O'Reilly 44:31
Think like Stuart think like snowflake Seward. Greatest Great Lakes.

Titus Seilheimer 44:35
He's gonna show up with his own Britain a new one on there. Oh

Carolyn Foley 44:45
goodness gracious. Well, do I get that right? Title? Totally different.

Stuart Carlton 44:53
One, I wrote this one as the answer for the I figured there'd be a taste question. And so I'd written this one down. Be Because I'm ornery, but then the taste that wasn't

Carolyn Foley 45:03
Stewart breaks the rule. So Stuart is not the winner. So Katie Are you saying Titus? I think no, no, no, no. 60 seconds. 60 seconds go

Titus Seilheimer 45:17
out 60 seconds. I love it. Ah, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to encourage people to really jump in on our, our challenge for the coming month. You know, go check out a new water body, go to your favorite water body as well. Take some pictures, share them widely. Tell us why you love that water body. I go to the I go to Silver Creek five days a week to look for suckers. But you know, there's some new parts of Silver Creek that I can look at. And you know there. We look at Lake Michigan all the time. We love the Great Lakes but there's new new views. And really, what Lake is you know, they say about rivers that you never step in the same river. This more than once. It's always changed. So really show us your pictures, go see some new bodies of water and maybe go swimming.

Stuart Carlton 46:09
When you do that you'll be able to find out about it on. Dr. Fish as Dr. Fish is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Wisconsin Sea Grant Goby dog media on the show is produced and hosted by me Stuart Carlton, Carolyn Foley, Dr. Fish Katie O'Reilly and of course Dr. Fish time to style.

Carolyn Foley 46:33
The live broadcast is supported by Moti a goon br de the podcast version of the show is edited by Sandy Sobota the podcast artwork is by Ethan cosec and you can view his portfolio at Ethan cosec.com. If

Stuart Carlton 46:51
you have questions for one of our doctors fish, send an email to ask Dr. fish@gmail.com. Use the social media hashtag ask Dr. Fish or call our fish hotline 765-496-4474 Thanks for listening everybody. And now we'll see live on Facebook at 11am Eastern on usually the second Monday of every even month in between now. If you fish questions, you have science questions, you have life's questions, just ask Dr. Fish

Transcribed by https://otter.ai