Ask Dr. Fish

Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Carolyn Foley 0:00
Do lamprey tastes like chicken? Why are there dead fish watching up on the shore? Where do Great Lakes salmon go during that special time of year? To find out? Let's ask Dr. Fish

Stuart Carlton 0:24
That's right it's ask Dr. Fish, a brand new streaming show from Gobi dog media Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and Wisconsin Sea Grant. We're so happy to be here for this our very first episode. My name is Stuart Carlton, I apologize for my voice. I'm getting over a nine COVID cold and I forgot about getting sick, just plain old getting sick because it's been like two years. It stinks and then getting sick the weekend before your launch of your new life. So not ideal, but that's where we are. Anyway, my name is Sir Carlton with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant I want to introduce our two doctors fish. First of all we have Katie o Reilly Katie. How's it going?

Katie O'Reilly 1:01
It is going great Stuart. I am so excited to talk about all things fish today.

Stuart Carlton 1:06
I am also excited to talk about Katie O'Reilly. She is our aquatic invasive species specialist. We're very happy to announce at Illinois named cigar we also have Titus style. Hi, we're here. Titus, also a doctor fish. How's it going? Titus?

Titus Seilheimer 1:17
Good morning. It's great. Another great day talking about fish.

Stuart Carlton 1:22
Another great day talking about fish. And then finally last but certainly not least, we have the finest research coordinator in all the secret network Carolyn Foley. How's it going, Carolyn?

Carolyn Foley 1:31
I'm doing well. And thank you for that kind introduction. But I will clarify I am not a doctor fish.

Stuart Carlton 1:37
Not a doctor fish. That's okay. Neither am I. It's fine. We have two doctors fish, those will try to take us through the day. Great. So that's our very first episode is going to be a new live streaming episode that will be on the second Monday of every month at 11. You can join us here on YouTube, the link might change around for the first few weeks, we will figure out what it's going to look like and let you know. And then, you know, these first few times it's gonna be a little bit chatty. Right, this is a Goby dog media production, that means it's gonna be a little bit chalky. It's gonna be a little bit by the seat of the pants. And, you know, for people who like us, that's one thing they like about us. And for people who don't like it, well, there's a very limiting factor. And we're just dealing with that as far as we can. And so the idea is that, you know, we're gonna stream this live every month. And then what we'll do is we'll also release it as a podcast. And so you can go to ask Dr. fish.transistor.fm to subscribe to the podcast or just look in your podcast reader, feeder, feeder reader, podcast player. And that's where you'll see it. And you can also though, if you are joining us live good news, the you can either type into the chat box on YouTube or on Twitter, you can use the hashtag, ask Dr. Fish and we'll be monitoring that to take your live questions. So if you want to, you know completely derail the show, I highly recommend it and this is your chance to do it. Because you know, there's no fish question no science question, no live question that it's too hard for our doctors fish. So let's get going right away and this first, this first question, I think comes straight from Lake Michigan itself.

Carolyn Foley 3:07
So there's a new story about sending lamprey over to the UK because people liked to eat pies in the UK. So Michigan man is preparing to ship invasive blood sucking lamprey over to England because they enjoy it there. So question for the doctors fish. Have you eaten lamprey before?

Katie O'Reilly 3:27
I can jump in first. I have not eaten lamprey. But I would be interested to hear if Titus has because I do wonder if it tastes like chicken.

Titus Seilheimer 3:36
Yeah, unfortunately, I have not eaten Lampi either, but I definitely would be up for trying to eat some lamprey. I have. I've heard you know some rumors about preparation techniques in the Great Lakes that people do. But I have not had that opportunity yet.

Carolyn Foley 3:57
What type of preparation techniques have you heard about in the Great Lakes.

Titus Seilheimer 4:02
So this? This is from Lars red strim at Cornell University scientists there and he will I think you kind of parboil at first and then you can peel the skin off, because you don't want to eat that and then you can just chop it up into kind of chunks because it's a cartilaginous fish, so you don't have to worry about bones. And then you can kind of cook that in like a stew lampshades do. So yeah, popular popular in Portugal, I believe. It's how they eat him over there.

Carolyn Foley 4:36
Interesting. Okay, so we've talked a little bit about a couple of countries in Europe. So what's the deal with lampreys in the Great Lakes?

Katie O'Reilly 4:44
That is a multi layered question. So, first, kind of aspect is what kind of lampreys are you talking about? Because when we say like these blood sucking, you know, parasites, often people are talking about the non Native sea lamprey, which is obviously a big threat to the Great Lakes, it entered into the lakes, you know, via some of the canals that were built because it's native to the Atlantic coast. When it came to the Great Lakes, it caused a lot of problems because they obviously are parasitic, and they attach to some of the top predator fish, and can actually cause a lot of damage. They, you know, really did a number on the lake trout populations in the mid 20th century in the Great Lakes. But then we also have native lamprey species, which a lot of people don't know about. There's four other species of lamprey that are much smaller, but are native to the lakes and not all of them are parasitic. Some of them don't attach to other fish when they're adults. And so, you know, yes, sea lamprey, what's the deal of sea lamprey? Is there bad, they, you know, have had really negative effects on the Great Lakes ecosystems. But not all lampreys are sea lampreys.

Titus Seilheimer 6:07
Okay, yeah, I was gonna just, you know, talking about sea lampreys and the Great Lakes. They are, you know, really peak populations kind of hit the Great Lakes with sea lamprey in the mid 20th century. And Katie mentioned, you know, really big impacts on lake trout. And, you know, for Lake Michigan, by kind of the 1950s, mid 1950s, late 1950s, lake trout are extirpated there, they're basically locally extinct from Lake Michigan sea lamprey play a large role in that and, you know, at sort of peak, peak population levels of sea lamprey, it was hundreds of 1000s per lake. And the math you can do on that is one adult sea lamprey to get to kind of adult size, they will kill about 40 pounds of fish. So, you know, you can do the math, there are hundreds of 1000s. That was, you know, that's millions of pounds of fish, kind of being lost to sea lamprey predation around the Great Lakes and that that's, you know, big, ecological and economic impacts.

Carolyn Foley 7:15
So question about the lamprey that are being eaten in the Great Lakes and the ones are they eating the native species are the invasives or both?

Titus Seilheimer 7:27
Yeah, it's, it's definitely it is the sea lamprey, the invasive sea lamprey, and they have, you know, others have looked at actually could sea lamprey be an export from the Great Lakes because they, you know, historically have been very abundant. And so Europeans would like to eat them, we don't want them in the Great Lakes. And the challenge here is mercury levels, especially Lake Superior sea lamprey just have kind of bonkers levels of mercury, for whatever reason, I mean, they are top top predators, so they are feeding on the top predators. So, you know, just by accumulating a lot of mercury, which, you know, makes it a, you know, a challenge to export. Unless it's, like five land prey so that the king can have a lamp or a pie in some ceremonial way.

Stuart Carlton 8:20
Yeah, sure. There might be a use for that. So is it um, but they suck the blood, right? So it's like they're going straight to the source of the mercury, I suppose.

Katie O'Reilly 8:28
Yeah, it's kind of blood and associated tissues. It's like almost a slurry of fish that they get blood

Titus Seilheimer 8:37
and fluids and all the good stuff. Yeah, you just like it's like you stick a straw into a fish and then you just you know, suck out all the deliciousness bass ematic style

Katie O'Reilly 8:48
reminds me of like a Capri Sun. You just stick a stick a straw on a fish? Yep.

Carolyn Foley 8:53
All right, perfect. Let's move on to the next question.

Titus Seilheimer 8:57
We can't move on. We can't move on until we talked about King Henry the first died in 1135 at a surfeit of lamp arrays. So he really loved eating see lamp raise King Henry the first and then he died and that's the official cause of death. Too many lamprey

Katie O'Reilly 9:15
too many lamprey.

Carolyn Foley 9:17
Too many had had themselves a slurry and there's just a wealth of wonderful images right now. Okay, next question for her Dr. Fishes. So, in California bees bumblebees are considered fish under their Endangered Species Act. This was a recent ruling. So this from the article the CSA itself does not define fish but the law is part of the California Fish and Game code. The codes definition includes any mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate or amphibian. All those categories encompass terrestrial and aquatic species. And the state legislature has already approved the listing of at least one land based mollusk. So our B He's fish.

Titus Seilheimer 10:01
I'm gonna come down on the side of No, they're not fish. But, you know, certainly that case in particular, you know, they just need they need to change their their definition to include invertebrates of for listing, you know, it's sort of a short sighted thing you asked me,

Katie O'Reilly 10:20
I feel like this is a little bit beyond my paygrade as an ask Dr. Fish because I am not a lawyer and I am also not a philosopher. You know, what makes a fish a fish and legally this is a way for this this Bumblebee to try and get protection. But I feel like this is a place where science and law may have diverging opinions based on on language.

Stuart Carlton 10:47
But this is tricky, right. And so it sounds like they're using this as just a pathway to get the thing through. But there's a lamprey a fish.

Titus Seilheimer 10:54
Yes. Yeah. And you know, see lamp array. Yeah, they are fish. I consider them fish. Yeah. You know, if you look at the phylogenetic tree of lamp rays, I mean, they branched off before animals at jaws so they're really old. So before fish existed there were lamp ray. So you may be all all Fisher lamp right?

Katie O'Reilly 11:17
Are we all lamp? Right?

Carolyn Foley 11:18
I don't know. Yeah. And so it's not x s doctor knows about invertebrates. It's ask Dr. Fish. But I will say that bees are pretty highly evolved in vertebrate too. Right. So if you really got into some fun to use, you could you could get into

Katie O'Reilly 11:34
there pretty far.

Stuart Carlton 11:35
So our official position is is not a fish. Right? I would

Katie O'Reilly 11:39
say these are not a fish.

Titus Seilheimer 11:40
Yeah, I think we can agree on that. And you know, it's a funny definition to ladies do

Katie O'Reilly 11:45
not cite me in any California law case. In advance.

Titus Seilheimer 11:49
expert testimony offered are no, no, no.

Carolyn Foley 11:55
No, there are other people who can weigh in in that way. Okay. So does anyone else want to comment on what makes a fish fish? Katie already sort of said, I don't know. That's a philosophical question.

Titus Seilheimer 12:08
Yeah, I you know, I look for gills. I look for fins. lives in the water most of the time.

Katie O'Reilly 12:16
Yeah, some of the other other things, you know, that people think of with fish. You know, cold blooded. They have a backbone. But the fun part about fish and, you know, this is where we get into the rabbit hole is there are often exceptions to those rules because we say like, okay, all fish have a backbone. Well, hag fish don't technically have a backbone. They have with like a notochord. Which, if you're splitting hairs is not vertebrae. Then you talk about cold blooded there's some species of fish like tuna, that can actually warm their blood a bit. So even though we have these sort of hard and fast rules about what makes a fish a fish, you always have some weirdos who are the exceptions,

Stuart Carlton 13:05
okay, I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but how to to to warm their blood? What is the most ideal?

Katie O'Reilly 13:10
So basically, in order to get there really high swimming speeds, they have like a system of circulation that kind of warms their blood enough that they can maintain these really intense bursts of speed. So it's not true like warm blooded like us generating heat, but it's a system of like circulation within their blood

Titus Seilheimer 13:33
that's kind of kind of harvesting that heat from their own body. recirculating it so that they can keep keep that and maintain it.

Katie O'Reilly 13:42
But not about Great Lakes.

Stuart Carlton 13:44
No, no, that's where moving on. Moving on.

Carolyn Foley 13:47
That's okay, we can ask Dr. Fish about any fish. That's good. Okay, I do believe we have the video questions Stuart.

Unknown Speaker 14:00
Titus, we are up here at Arcadia. And there are a ton of people fish dead fish on the shore.

Titus Seilheimer 14:10
Yes, indeed. Member of the herring family there. So those are L wives. So typically, you know, we see dead l wives on the beach kind of every year. This 2022 is actually a bigger a bigger year at least in like Michigan. We saw like I've been I've been here for 10 years, and it's the most I've ever seen living in in Manitowoc. So they are non native to the Great Lakes similar to the sea lamprey story they, you know took advantage of those canals moved upstream just like lampreys did native to the North Atlantic and spread out through the Great Lakes and they come in to spawn near short and tributaries in the spring, early summer and just have this tendency to die off in the Great Lakes in Canada. numbers. So not an unusual sight. This year was particularly stinky though.

Katie O'Reilly 15:05
Yeah, and I'll just piggyback off what Titus said, you know, we haven't seen Big Al life die offs like this, you know, in recent memory but back in, like the 1960s 1970s when a wife numbers were a lot higher in the lakes, particularly in Lake Michigan, they're, you know, pictures and accounts of just piles of dead ale wife rolling up on beaches to the point of where in the Chicago area, some of the public beaches had to like have heavy machinery come in and lift up these piles of dead stinky rotting fish. So yes, this is a lot of fish, but it kind of pales into some of the numbers we've had in past decades.

Titus Seilheimer 15:50
Yeah, and the the, you know, to call back to the sea lamprey story and the lake trout story, you know, sealant or Elway's? Really were able to take advantage of that, you know, the extra, like losing lake trout in Lake Michigan like Trouts, that top predator also kind of overfishing and pollution impacted the Cisco's and the other kind of competitor fish, they would have the plank divorce, you know, really allowed alle wives to you know, just their populations exploded in the mid 20th century because no competition, not much predation. And, you know, our number we look at is like 90% of the fish biomass and like Michigan, was a wife. So that is, you know, that's just not a not a balanced ecosystem. And, you know, those numbers have declined over time. And part of that's, there was pretty intense commercial fishing for a couple decades, where they were harvesting ale wives and then turning them into things like fish meal, pet food, the oil was taken off and taken to Chicago where it was turned into paint. So if your cat really likes your, your old oil paint, maybe it's maybe it's ill wives, and then those numbers have declined as well because of salmon like to eat them. Trout like to eat them, too.

Carolyn Foley 17:20
Okay, so we're back on asking about questions about eating various animals eating fish, and there is a question from Sharon on the YouTube. The YouTube, what was the last fish you ate? Katie first.

Katie O'Reilly 17:40
It's been a little bit of time, but I think I had some smoked salmon. So that wasn't necessarily a local. I don't believe it was local salmon. Which, you know, is kind of a shameful admission for a Great Lakes scientist to say but yeah, smoked salmon, I'd say which was probably my last.

Carolyn Foley 17:59
This is as Dr. Fish fit. There are fish outside of the Great Lakes. Okay, over to Titus, what was the last fish you eat?

Titus Seilheimer 18:09
Well, and I actually this was Sharon. So it was it was Lake Superior whitefish from from Red, Red Cliff Fish Company in Red Cliff Wisconsin. And that was a delicious fish taco was incredible. And a a kind of smoked farm raised rainbow trout spread as well. So

Carolyn Foley 18:37
yeah, yeah. So so I can actually say that I'm pretty sure the last fish I ate was also the Lake Superior white fish or something like that because it was the mix that you had at Sea Grant week in Cleveland that I like snuck by your room and was eating some of it

Titus Seilheimer 18:58
Well, thank you thank you for stopping by and trying that yeah local I think that was probably like Michigan smoke white fish but

Katie O'Reilly 19:05
Titus doesn't travel anywhere without Great Lakes fish samples to give out always in your carry on.

Titus Seilheimer 19:11
Why not? You know let's eat fish.

Stuart Carlton 19:14
And I'm having trouble speaking because of my cold but canned tuna yesterday lunch. It was good.

Carolyn Foley 19:19
Nice. Okay, I think we may have another video question

Stuart Carlton 19:37
a look at this. This is from our friends at the Washington State DNR, which is a really fun twitter follow and they send us these cool videos of salmon running up and spawning here.

Titus Seilheimer 19:47
Yeah, that's, you know, that's, it's the picture of persistence. They're not a very big Creek.

Katie O'Reilly 19:54
Well, I was gonna say it's a great way to you know, Monday morning. I feel like that salmon trying to go upstream getting through my email inbox,

Stuart Carlton 20:01
that's your fault for checking email, you should never do that.

Katie O'Reilly 20:04
I was gonna say he's more successful going upstream, we'll just say.

Stuart Carlton 20:10
So, yeah, so So I have a question, what do we know about salmon spawning? First of all, in general, right? I mean, you see the video of them jumping up and getting by the bears and all that. But what I remember as a kid is maybe they weren't really sure how salmon made it up to the stream, where they were born, what's the latest on that, because I was a kid, you know, a bit ago, at this point,

Titus Seilheimer 20:30
well smell, you know, they follow their nose, at least for the last part of their journey. And, you know, they, like in the oceans, you know, just these huge, huge migrations, you know, 1000s of kilometers, going out in the ocean, but they find their way back, and then they follow their nose, back to where they came from.

Katie O'Reilly 20:51
Yeah. And so they kind of use a bunch of different senses. Like Titus said, the nose is a big one, they sort of imprint on the center of the stream, where they're born to help guide them back. But, you know, when you're out in the ocean, it can be tough to like know, a single stream sent. And so there's also been evidence in like, the last decade or so that they actually kind of use the Earth's magnetic field to help orient them to similar to migrating birds, to at least help get them close enough to where the scent, like Titus said, can then help them get up to that first stream?

Stuart Carlton 21:31
How do they how do they sense the magnetic field? You know, is that like, a lateral line thing? Or what do they what are they used to, since that?

Katie O'Reilly 21:38
I think the evidence was that it was a lateral line thing. But I wouldn't say I know 100%

Titus Seilheimer 21:46
Yeah, you know, it's really cool. Like, when you look at, you know, a fish coming out of like Washington state. So that fish is going out, it's going north, and it actually goes up the Pacific coast, goes, you know, along the Aleutian Islands, you know, circles out into the ocean. And this is like a multi year thing. It's not like these baby fish know where they're going, like, they haven't done this before they do it like one time. And it's this multi year big loop. And then they, you know, they end up back where they're supposed to be usually at the right time, and then they kind of know, it's time to go upstream. And that's my stream right there.

Carolyn Foley 22:23
So do salmon in the Great Lakes do this as well. And where, if they do it?

Katie O'Reilly 22:29
So yeah, so even though you know, Pacific salmon are not native to the Great Lakes. They were introduced back again, mid 20th century, with a lot of things were happening, as we've talked about, but they do, in many cases, returned to streams, either that they were planted in from being raised in hatcheries. There is some wild reproduction.

Titus Seilheimer 22:54
Quite a bit of wild reproduction, I would say,

Katie O'Reilly 22:57
yeah, quite a bit of wild reproduction that started happening. You know, that started. And so we often have tributaries to the Great Lakes, even very small streams, that salmon make their way up. And I'm sure Titus, you know, you've got streams in Wisconsin, that you probably have some salmon coming up. I know we have a lot in Michigan.

Titus Seilheimer 23:17
Yeah, definitely. Michigan is, you know, for for us in Lake Michigan, you know, so we have the stocked fish. And what a lot of our fishing clubs do now is they'll they'll put out these net pens. So instead of stocking directly into the rivers, they'll stack these little trout into these pens, and then and then let them sit there for two or three weeks with, with the idea they can get a little bigger, they can release them at a good time, and they can imprint a bit more on on their stocking location because for us in Wisconsin, you know, we really want to look for those fish to come back in fall because right now, we've got salmon coming in and I've gone to kind of a fairly small stream just right in right in town here and you know, saw some salmon swimming under the bridge saw some stamped salmon jumping out of the water, and that's that's a small small tributary, but because we have a lot of agriculture, not a lot of you know, our water quality isn't great. Or spawning habitat isn't great. In this part of Wisconsin, a lot of the natural reproduce fish are coming from kind of Northern Michigan, the Canadian side of Lake Huron as well. Just, you know, if you have lots of forests, clear water, cold water, lots of gravel, that's a nice place for a salmon to go.

Katie O'Reilly 24:39
And speaking of which, Titus, that was a great segue to Tim's question I see up here on the screen. You know, speaking of salmon, can we talk about the differences between salmon that spawn in Wisconsin tributaries to Lake Michigan versus Michigan's tributaries? And why are some places successful and not others? And I feel like Titus, you know, really answered a lot of that that They have habitats that help them, you know, be a little bit more successful in their spawning. And the other thing is not only the habitat itself being nice, quote unquote, but having a like cold water, a gravel bottom, but also can the fish access that habitat, some habitats are some streams are blocked by date, like low head dams, they're blocked by culverts. And so fish may not be able to access habitat, even if it is good habitat upstream. So that is a difference too. And I know there's I don't know the exact distribution of all the dams. But I know a lot of the Great Lakes tributaries have these low head dams and culverts that can prevent fish from getting to habitat.

Carolyn Foley 25:47
Yeah, I was gonna say, can you talk a little bit about different projects that are going on around the Great Lakes or in other parts of the world, if you if you know of any sort of help, help fish get by anyway? Or things like that? Can you guys share a couple of those?

Titus Seilheimer 26:04
Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of work, you know, for things like culverts, like, you know, especially with infrastructure, like we've had a lot of infrastructure structure issues right now, there's also a lot of funding for infrastructure. So, you know, I think a lot of groups are identifying where the culverts are, a lot of them are too small. So if your covered is too small, the water goes through it too quickly. And that can be a barrier for fish passage. So identifying those and then replacing them with a better a better type of culvert that's more suited to the stream. You know, it's also a challenge. It's a trade off, like we can improve fish passage for desirable species. But you also don't want to open up the habitat for things like round gobies that like to move upstream for the sea lamprey that we've talked about. You know, they they like similar habitats, too. So it's definitely it's a balance between, you know, what we're protecting. And because you've seen those pictures of salmon jumping, like a low head dam, that could block lamprey is usually not a barrier for a trout, or a salmon, they can just jump right over that.

Katie O'Reilly 27:19
Right. And for some of the bigger dams, in some places, you know, if they're older dams there's talk of, you know, is this worthwhile to remove. But in other cases, if a dam still functioning, not as much in the Great Lakes, there's a few places but like I'm thinking on the west coast, the building of fish ladders that help salmon get past these higher dams, they can't jump over. And even for other species, I was just reading about the other day up in Titus, his neck of the woods, that there's a elevator to help lake sturgeon past dams in I want to say the Menomonee River, but and then, so I just I love the visual also of a elevator for sturgeon to help them get to habitat above a dam. So there are ways that for dams that can't be removed, to help fish pass.

Titus Seilheimer 28:12
And Katie, if you they swim up, they swim up to the door, and they actually have to hit it with their snout. No, hit the up button. No, that's not true. No, it's not true, Stuart, but it would be it would be fun.

Katie O'Reilly 28:23
Yeah, there's an attendant in the elevator that asked, you know which floor? Yeah,

Titus Seilheimer 28:28
yeah, yeah. And like, and that that is a cool example. And those are like those are functioning like power generating dams. So not something we're going to remove, but how can we get those sturgeon to, you know, habitat upstream, and they they will actually truck them in trucks, they put them into these trucks and take them up past a another dam to so that opens up more habitat. But with dams, especially, there's a lot of really old dams that just aren't used anymore. And you know, some of these, it's like, well, you can spend a million dollars to like repair it for a dam that hasn't been used as like a mill dam for over 100 years, or you can remove it for half that. So some interesting discussions there. For say, if you live on one of these ponds, you like the pond, but who wants to pay for that?

Stuart Carlton 29:19
What was the name of that? River?

Titus Seilheimer 29:22
It's the Menomonee River. Doo doo doo doo doo.

Carolyn Foley 29:27
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. Anyway, okay, so this is this is really cool. And I really enjoyed thinking about who would be the attendant and things like that. And

Titus Seilheimer 29:39
I think it would be it would be a white. It would be a white soccer. Attendance, I think.

Carolyn Foley 29:46
Perfect. Okay, so let's switch to a different question because there is a question on YouTube. And we also had, there's a huge story in the news right now that there was a cheating scandal in a walleye tournament. where some people were actually putting weights into their fish?

Stuart Carlton 30:06
And this was video that we cannot play?

Carolyn Foley 30:10
Yes. So, um, there's a question in here that I'm a little bit I'm not going to read, but why do people cheat at fishing tournaments?

Titus Seilheimer 30:20
Big money? Big money?

Katie O'Reilly 30:23
Yeah, it's actually, for someone who's not like in the professional fishing world, which probably not too many of us are. But like, there is a it's surprising. There's a lot of money involved. There's the ability like winning boats. There's sponsorship deals. So there is a lot at stake in a lot of these competitions. So you can you can see why it'd be attractive to win.

Carolyn Foley 30:51
Okay, so they cheated by adding lead weights? How many lead weights? Or? I mean, I don't know if you guys know the weight of lead. But how much weight would you need to add to make a difference and put you over the top? Do you think?

Stuart Carlton 31:06
Because I'm thinking like, when I went fishing with my dad, we put like, quarter round sled weights was like this big. It's I don't know, for these needs some big suckers in there.

Titus Seilheimer 31:14
Yeah, I mean, usually it's, you know, it's a total weight, you know, for like, you got your five fish and you know, the highest weight wins. So, you know, the more weight you can add the kind of bumps you over that, but you also don't want to be too obvious about it. Right? You got to be, you know, it's got to seem plausible.

Stuart Carlton 31:32
My question, but I will, and I apologize again, for my voice. Let's say hypothetically, I knew somebody who wanted to enter a fishing tournament and win it by cheating. And you know, when $300,000 of boats and prizes and everything, purely hypothetically, what would be a better way to do this so that I or whomever wouldn't get caught? Using your fish knowledge,

Katie O'Reilly 31:55
using secret fish knowledge? Well, I would say at least in in other competitions, what some things that come up as common cheating strategies are typically like fishing outside the bounds of the tournament. So maybe you catch a fish from a lake that's outside the bounds of the tournament where the fish typically grow bigger. That's one way of doing it. Another way is sort of having a plant so you might have like a friend in another boat, hold hand over a larger fish that they caught earlier, like, outside of the time limits of the thing. So ones that don't necessarily involve changing your fish catch, but, uh, but changing it by adding weight is what I mean.

Titus Seilheimer 32:40
Yeah, what I what I would do is, a lot of this is inspired by Carl Hiaasen book Double whammy, which is actually about cheating and bass fishing in Florida, which is a fun book if you like Carl Hiaasen. But what I would do, I would take, I would get, you know, some, some, the biggest wall, I can find, I might grow them a bit in an indoor aquaculture situation, really grow them out, really get them fat. And then I would, you know, plant them on the bottom, and then I would either use an arm, some kind of ROV to release them, or I would get a scuba diver to hook them up to my, my fluor. And again, this is not a We're not advocating for this. This is just hypothetically, something you could do.

Carolyn Foley 33:31
Because we're very intelligent people. Alright, so now I have so many questions. So how long would the person need to stay down there to let your walleye go?

Katie O'Reilly 33:41
Yeah, you got to you got to coordinate this thing ahead of time, you got to you know, make sure you and your your dive buddy are on the same page. Right, and

Titus Seilheimer 33:48
you can't catch all your fish in the same place. You couldn't just like pull up five fish from the same location, you'd have to have kind of multiple areas. And maybe this scuba diver would have to head over and you would want to have a rebreather system because you don't want to have the telltale bubbles coming up. So you really you got to have this you know, it's got to be pretty, pretty subtle. And you also don't want you know, with the technology of fish finders today, I assume that if somebody else was fishing there, they would see this you know, the image would pop up of like this scuba diver swimming underneath this competitors boats, so you would have to avoid that as well. And maybe you would Oh, you could actually drop something down so that they could tow the diver to another place.

Stuart Carlton 34:36
See now we're starting to get somewhere now we're starting to get somewhere

Carolyn Foley 34:39
that's yeah, that's yeah. And and you'd probably have to split a bunch of your when with this person or these rifle. Right. Okay. So I do have one other for while

Titus Seilheimer 34:49
$50,000 from the $300 $300,000 prize. It seems like it's just a smart investment. not advocating

Carolyn Foley 34:59
though. No, not advocating for $50,000 is not to. Yeah. So, one other question about walleye specifically, if you wanted to grow them, you know, say you wanted to grow walleye locally. What would you do to make them grow really big, really fat really fast?

Titus Seilheimer 35:17
Well, I, you know, I can I can actually just, I'll throw this up to some of our research we're funding because we're actually funding some research from the northern aquaculture demonstration facility up in Bayfield, Wisconsin, who they're actually looking at indoor production in recirculating systems of walleye. So, you know, you, you would dial in the right temperature, and there's like an optimal temperature where things will grow and continue to grow, you could probably manipulate the daylight so that you could keep them growing. So they wouldn't have that kind of winter photo. And you like it? Exactly, exactly. And then you just pump them in with enough food and they would just balloon up to be like the largest, the largest walleye anyone's ever seen, which is also a risk. You don't want to do that. Because you know, you could, if you caught this world record, walleye, people are going to start scrutinizing it and, you know, probably pull tissue samples or, you know, you could actually tell that it's been fed fish feed probably

Stuart Carlton 36:21
needs to send your best polygraph right. And these students both got, they both got a weapon, I guess we'll say,

Katie O'Reilly 36:28
oh, yeah, it was, the audience was not happy to say the least

Stuart Carlton 36:32
30 to $40,000.

Carolyn Foley 36:34
I suppose that I suppose that's fair, though. And I will say, you know, we're kind of wrapping things back together. Because if you're talking about changing the daylight, then you're back to how do you stop things from moving around and stuff like that, but okay, so unfortunately, we are nearing the end of our hour. This has been a love leech jet. And we've gotten to ask some questions, and we hope to do this again in the future. But to wrap up, I think we were going to play 20 questions, is

Stuart Carlton 37:02
that right? Yeah, we're gonna play 20 questions. And really, a lot of people would say that it's kind of like a mano a mano get together, you know, like one against another. I think. Wouldn't they?

Carolyn Foley 37:14
Yes, they would. Yes, people do say that. Yes, yeah.

We will be doing our 20 questions. I am going I'm gonna give Titus in a second. We are going to continue. Yes. And then I am going to flip a coin to see who will go first. I will be back with a coin in just a moment.

Titus Seilheimer 38:01
Better be a loony. So my

Carolyn Foley 38:02
kids normally have a bunch of money around but Okay, so here we go. This is actually going to be I'm going to flip this button. If the lake comes up. Then Titus will go first. If the pin comes up, then Katie will go first. Alright. Okay. It if it was the pin was the pin. Yes. Oh, Katie. Actually, no, you get the choice. Katie, do you want to go first or second?

Katie O'Reilly 38:28
Actually, you know, I'll go second. I'll let Titus go.

Carolyn Foley 38:30
I have a fish. You have a fish.

Stuart Carlton 38:33
And we'll go we'll go Carolyn. Katie Stuart care. And then if anybody chimes in with a question from the live audience, we will chime in with that.

Carolyn Foley 38:42
Does it have a backbone? Yes.

Katie O'Reilly 38:45
Does it live in all? Oh, five of the Great Lakes?

Titus Seilheimer 38:49
Yes. Probably high high certainty of that

Stuart Carlton 38:55
high certainty if that's good enough for me. Does it didn't have it the benthos

Titus Seilheimer 39:02
not exclusively, but it could be found there.

Carolyn Foley 39:09
Do people like to fish for it and eat it? No.

Katie O'Reilly 39:15
Does it eat other fish?

Titus Seilheimer 39:18
It does not.

Stuart Carlton 39:19
Could somebody find it and eat it like on a hot dog bun?

Titus Seilheimer 39:28
It is possible but I've highly unlikely

Carolyn Foley 39:33
Is it a fish that other fish eat and it's important to them?

Titus Seilheimer 39:38
Yes.

Katie O'Reilly 39:41
Is it native to the Great Lakes?

Titus Seilheimer 39:44
Yes, it is.

Stuart Carlton 39:46
Is it bigger than a hotdog bun.

Titus Seilheimer 39:49
It is smaller than a hotdog one.

Carolyn Foley 39:53
So how many more questions do we have?

Stuart Carlton 39:54
You know, I've honestly lost count. I think we're at nine. So I think we have 11 more questions.

Titus Seilheimer 40:00
I will give you a size, maximum size, or sort of an average size would be two inches long. A total. Total length, and maximum would be about three and a half. That would be the largest on the largest. And we'll count that

Stuart Carlton 40:19
as a question. Thank you. Alright, so now we're 10

Carolyn Foley 40:22
Does it live in like the coastal areas and go up streams and stuff like that?

Titus Seilheimer 40:30
Yeah, you'd you'd probably find it coastally or in small streams?

Katie O'Reilly 40:38
Do people harvest it for bait?

Titus Seilheimer 40:40
They well? Not really.

Katie O'Reilly 40:43
Not really. Okay.

Titus Seilheimer 40:45
Yeah, it's not what I would call a yeah, you wouldn't see it in a bait shop.

Katie O'Reilly 40:49
You're not gonna see an eBay shop. Okay, cool.

Unknown Speaker 40:51
No. It has. Does it have teeth?

Titus Seilheimer 40:56
It does have teeth. I think most most fish do though.

Stuart Carlton 41:03
Well, you can hold a bass by the thumb, right?

Titus Seilheimer 41:05
Yeah, but it's got teeth in there. Oh, just not really. It does not have big sharp teeth.

Stuart Carlton 41:10
So could I hold it by my thumb, I guess would be that. Yeah.

Titus Seilheimer 41:13
Yes. Although it would be hard to

Katie O'Reilly 41:16
say it's really tiny. All right.

Titus Seilheimer 41:21
I will I will give you another hand. It is not a minnow or shiner that

Stuart Carlton 41:26
another question that comes to the question. We got six left.

Carolyn Foley 41:30
I was gonna ask something about it being a shiner. So you I'll skip to you, Katie.

Katie O'Reilly 41:36
Does it typically have stripes?

Titus Seilheimer 41:39
I'm not really modeled a model coloration not it can be it can be darker during spawning. spawning time for the males

Stuart Carlton 41:51
doesn't have a seasonal migration pattern. Not really. Write down the four questions.

Titus Seilheimer 41:58
Another another. It does if you were to pick this up or if you if you were a predator. There are some it does have some methods of deterring predation. Pointy, pointy man.

Carolyn Foley 42:15
Is that a stickleback?

Titus Seilheimer 42:17
Oh it is a stickleback which stickleback Oh, we

Stuart Carlton 42:20
got three guesses. All right.

Carolyn Foley 42:22
I was gonna say that was a strategic question.

Titus Seilheimer 42:26
And I've already one of my answers. Will has already eliminated too so.

Stuart Carlton 42:32
Oh, all right. Now hold on. So if you have a guess we have the drumroll situation. I think let me just Riverdance All right, or do you have a guess? Katie?

Katie O'Reilly 42:43
I think so.

Stuart Carlton 42:45
All right. Here we go after the drum roll.

Katie O'Reilly 42:51
Is it the nine spined stickleback?

Titus Seilheimer 42:54
So close Katie so close, but incorrect. Wah wah wah.

Stuart Carlton 43:00
All right. What's another stickleback 80

Is that the four spine for spine stickleback?

Titus Seilheimer 43:12
It is not that is incorrect. That is an invasive. Oh man, you've got one native tickle back. One more.

Katie O'Reilly 43:26
Is it the brook stickleback?

Stuart Carlton 43:31
You gotta put stickleback. Wonderful. All right. Thanks, Katie. For Katie. Good.

Katie O'Reilly 43:40
All right now rough one. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 43:42
we got it wasn't rough. We got it. Alright, tight. It's your turn. Or don't Katie think of one Titus lead us off? Well, so

Katie O'Reilly 43:49
yeah, so I'm thinking of it. So.

Carolyn Foley 43:52
Okay, so to keep it fair, we'll go Carolyn Titus Stewart for questions. Carolyn tony stewart so that we don't our inadequacies don't cause you guys problems. Okay. Does it have a backbone?

Unknown Speaker 44:09
Yes, it does.

Titus Seilheimer 44:12
Does it have a adipose fin? No.

Stuart Carlton 44:17
Is it bigger than a hotdog bun?

Katie O'Reilly 44:22
Yes. As an adult, but yeah, yeah.

Carolyn Foley 44:26
Does it live in all five of the Great Lakes?

Katie O'Reilly 44:31
I believe so. Yes.

Titus Seilheimer 44:35
Is it native to the Great Lakes? Yes.

Stuart Carlton 44:39
Is it a relatively fast swimmer?

Katie O'Reilly 44:43
In short bursts

Stuart Carlton 44:46
it's a tuna I know it. Great Lakes tuna.

Carolyn Foley 44:51
Do people like to eat it and fish for it?

Katie O'Reilly 44:57
Fish for it. Yes.

Titus Seilheimer 45:00
but they don't eat it.

Stuart Carlton 45:03
Careless talk to questions in those interesting

Katie O'Reilly 45:05
not not typically.

Titus Seilheimer 45:08
Does it have any barbels?

Katie O'Reilly 45:10
No, it does not.

Stuart Carlton 45:11
Is it have? Is it brightly colored?

Katie O'Reilly 45:18
I wouldn't say really? No.

Carolyn Foley 45:21
Is it a type of bass?

Katie O'Reilly 45:24
Yes.

Stuart Carlton 45:25
Oh. Alright, I feel like I feel like we could get this with 10 questions left. Let me know that you guys are

Titus Seilheimer 45:35
coloration in the eyes. Does it ever read shy?

Katie O'Reilly 45:41
Not really. Yes. No.

Stuart Carlton 45:44
Okay. Does it have a series of black horizontal stripes down the side?

Katie O'Reilly 45:52
Not really. Not really a series? Oh, maybe slightly depending on collection?

Carolyn Foley 45:57
can get really awkward if you run your finger. Did you catch it?

Katie O'Reilly 46:06
Probably yes. Yes.

Titus Seilheimer 46:09
Does the does the jaw reach behind the eye? Or in front of the eye?

Katie O'Reilly 46:16
Oh, behind

Stuart Carlton 46:17
the eye, behind the eye. Alright. I think I

Katie O'Reilly 46:21
think I think you guys might know it.

Stuart Carlton 46:23
I think it's I think it's been a minute, but it was my turn

is it a large mouth mass? It is indeed. Oh, there's

a few things from last time we did this. Or maybe

Katie O'Reilly 46:53
you got a large mouth bass.

Carolyn Foley 46:56
I think rather. So my suggestion rather than do a run off is we just keep a running tally throughout the length of this. So right now it's 111.

Stuart Carlton 47:05
But then we run into problems for the big finish where people are supposed to they get 30 seconds of soapbox time to promote whatever fish related thing they want to. So since we got Katie's in fewer guesses then we got Tituss. That means Titus, you get the soapbox. 30 seconds once I get you set up into the solo view, take away Titus.

Titus Seilheimer 47:29
All right, hey, everybody, it is fall. That means it is spawning time for a lot of trout and salmon, a lot of other species in the Great Lakes go out, find your local stream and go check out some spawning fish, you can watch them swimming, it's really cool. You can get up close and see them find a dam that's close to the lake, you probably see some salmon there. Excellent.

Carolyn Foley 47:52
So we're gonna do this again in in December. So please watch social media. We're going to be reaching out to a couple of different groups to see if we can ask other questions. But doctors fish, thank you so much for joining us today. We had a great time asking you questions and picking your brains.

Titus Seilheimer 48:12
that was a lot of thanks for having us.

Stuart Carlton 48:13
Yeah. All right. Carolyn, do you want to read the credits?

Carolyn Foley 48:16
I sure can. I ask Dr. Fish is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, Wisconsin Sea Grant and Goby dog media. This show is produced and hosted by Stuart Carlton, Carolyn Foley, Dr. Fish Katie O'Reilly and Dr. Fish Titus. The podcast version of the show is edited by the awesome Quinn rose, and we encourage you to check her workout at aspiring robot.com the live version of the show is joyously unedited, and we hope we didn't screw anything up. If you have questions for the doctors, fish, fishes, send an email. I can argue that one send an email to ask Dr. fish@gmail.com use the Twitter hashtag hashtag ask ask Dr. Fish, or call our hotline at 765496 I S Thanks for listening. And we'll see you live on YouTube and Facebook at 11am Eastern 10am Central on the second Monday of every 11 So the next time is the 12th month of 2020 in between now and then if you have this fish question science questions or life questions, just ask Dr. Fish