Wednesday, April 6, 2005

Trout Love & Turkey Trot I had a hard time restraining myself from diving into a tank full of gorgeous redheads this morning. Videographer John McKay and I were at the Root River Steelhead Facility in Racine, taping a segment for Outdoor Wisconsin. A DNR crew was spawning Ganaraska and Chambers Creek strain steelhead to produce more steelhead for stocking in Lake Michigan. The spring steelhead run is in full swing, which means every mature steelhead of those two strains in the lake is heading up one river or another, looking for love in all the right places. Problem is, their passions won't bear much fruit because the water quality in Wisconsin streams in summer does not support the young fish. Adults spawn, but their eggs either do not hatch or the young die before they can reach the lake. Thus, the steelhead facility was built about 10 years ago, with a weir that redirects fish into a holding pen as they move upstream. Then fisheries crews literally herd them into a lift basket, hoist them into the air and dump them into a knock-out tank, which is laced with carbon dioxide to calm them down. The fish are then weighed, measured and identified via fin clips as either Chambers Creek (early spring spawners) or Ganaraska (late spring spawners) strain, and spawned. The spawn is kept separated and trucked to the Kettle Moraine Hatchery at Adell, where the eggs are hatched and the young steelhead raised to smoltdom. The smolts are then stocked in rivers and harbors up and down Lake Michigan to imprint them on a Home water. They swim out into the lake, where they grow big for 3 or 4 years, then return to one of those streams to spawn. The Root and Kewaunee rivers receive more fish than other streams, as these are the two brood streams. Fishermen know that, too, and they flock to both rivers each spring. When we were there today, the crew had collected something like 200,000 eggs already (They worked last Thursday, too.) from several hundred steelhead. The spawned-out fish were kept in a tank laced with oxygen to revive them, then put back in the river via a long tube full of water to continue their upstream migration. John also videoed either a beaver or otter swimming near the return-tube outlet.  He didn't get too good a look at it, but said its head was as big as a dog's, which rules out muskrat.  I'm betting otter, given the presence of all those stunned trout. The trout, anglers, biologists and otter all had a snoot full of trout love today, but all for different reasons. ****** More redheads this afternoon! On the way home, I stopped to check out the property I will be hunting with 13-year-old Mitch Heuple this Saturday in the Learn-To-Hunt program. I will be Mitch's mentor for his first-ever turkey hunt. I spotted a lone tom a couple hundred yards across a field. The bird saw me and walked slowly into the woods. As I was figuring where I might set up for him, I heard hens yelping, so I backtracked and went along a ridge overlooking the corner of another field. There, I saw several toms strutting for a number of hens. Some of the birds were jakes (I couldn't see any beards on them, and one had an obvious jake tail as he displayed.), but I did see one BIG gobbler trotting across the field, his thick beard swinging as he rolled from side to side. I think Mitch should have a good hunt Saturday morning!  We should at least see some birds. Later... 9:35:42 PM    comment []