(bright music) (quirky idle music) - [Bret] On today's "Prairie Sportsman," we join 2021 National Walleye Tour Angler of the Year, Drake Herd, to do some late-season ice fishing near Alexandria.

Ooh, look at that one.

- Look at that one.

That's a big one.

- You wanna trade?

- Yeah, sure.

(both chuckle) - [Bret] And Barry Thoele welcomes us to his farm, where he is raising native minnows, and doing all he can to save the live bait industry in Minnesota.

- If we do not look at sustainability in the bait industry, then the bait industry in 10 years is going to be gone.

- Welcome to "Prairie Sportsman," I'm Bret Amundson.

We got another great show, starting right now.

(idle music turns enticing) (quirky idle music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Sportsman" is provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, as recommended by the Legislative Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources.

by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, on behalf of Shalom Hill Farm, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota, on the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

By the Friends of "Prairie Sportsman."

To become a friend of "Prairie Sportsman," visit pioneer.org/prairiesportsman.

Stories about aquatic invasive species are brought to you by the Aquatic Invasive Species Task Forces of Meeker, Yellow Medicine, Lac Qui Parle, Swift and Big Stone Counties.

(upbeat adventurous music) - We're in Alexandria, on one of the area's 300 lakes.

Today we're gonna target crappies with National Walleye Tour pro Drake Herd from Fin Gear, a local company that's making big waves in the fishing industry.

It is late March, so the walleye season is closed, but that doesn't mean you can't go ice fishing.

Now, the ice may look a little sketchy, and it was a little bit by the shoreline, but there's a lot of ice out here in the middle of the lake, and Drake actually fished here just a day or two ago, so we knew we were coming out on some safe ice.

But, there's a couple of things you wanna make sure of if you're gonna come out here this late.

I got my picks with, you could bring cleats with, since there's no snow on the ice, make it a little bit safer walking around.

And of course, bring a spud bar with you if you're going out there for the first time on your own, make sure that you do have enough ice to support your weight out there.

But other than that, it's usually pretty warm, the sun is warm, the weather's nice, and we have the lake to ourselves.

Let's catch some fish.

(upbeat rock music) Are you from Alexandria?

- Yeah, born and raised.

I was very fortunate, my parents kind of grew up on the west side of Carlos, on the Chain, so me and my brother got spoiled that way.

We got a little 14-foot with a 9.9 that we got to cruise around basically and learn how to fish.

Oh this is a sunny.

I wonder if these repent, we gotta maybe keep moving.

(upbeat rock music continues) - That one's gonna cost you While we've been covered up in fish here, you know, there is generally a good rule when you're chasing crappies or panfish around, sometimes you'd have to chase them around, so that's what Drake's doing, he's popped a bunch of holes, and he's found a school, moved over here the first few seconds after dropping down, he ended up hooking up with a fish.

I'm a little bit more stubborn, I don't like to move around just quite as much as that.

But after he did move over there, the entire school that I was sitting on has moved off just a little bit, so I'm probably gonna have to get up and drill another hole.

Did you catch another one?

(chuckles) (Drake chuckles) (bright upbeat ambient music) There we go.

- Got 'em.

Imagine, you have a pull.

- I just needed to come to fish outta your hole, apparently.

That's be a nice crappie.

- Nice crappie.

- Yep, oh yeah.

It's a beaute Clark.

- That's not bad at all.

We're just kind of bouncing around and finding nice crappies.

We're keeping some of these, I'll I probably put that one in a frying pan.

So that's what makes it real important to bring a LiveScope pole with you, (Drake chuckles) which I conveniently forgot to bring mine today when I got all packed up here this morning.

So you got your pole with, and that's helped you actually scan around, follow this school, which crappies, a lot of times people are popping holes chasing fish like that.

So that's really kind of given you the advantage, 'cause I can't really do that.

Tell me about your pole.

- Yeah, I mean we just, we call it our XL pole, it extends anywhere up to, you know, 60 inches if we get that thick of ice.

- Oh wow.

- But yeah, I mean it's all HDP parts and aluminum, and we can go to town, you can beat it up and throw it in a sled and go to your next spot, or carry it on the ice, whatever you gotta do.

So, it's been a good accessory for us, and seems to be working today.

- Fishing outta your hole here, it's allowed me to also see the shuttle that you got going on here.

Tell me about this shuttle.

- We went all aluminum, just wanted something a little more heavy duty that you could beat up.

I mean, again, you're traveling across a lake in middle of winter, it's cold temperatures, you know, stuff can break, so we wanted something that you could just beat up and if it fell down it would be perfectly fine, so, that's where we ended up going.

And obviously it's kind of evolved to where you have master switches now, USB ports, lights, you know, everything's on these shuttles, so you're just trying to stay with the game and kind of go from there.

Obviously we came out with the shuttle bag, which has been a big hit for customers.

So they like their protection and they can shove a 12-inch screen, hide it in there when they're traveling if they want, and go from there.

- How long ago did you start making, like this product right here?

- Ooh, that was probably four or five years ago, I'd say, is when we really got into the shuttle game.

The Fin Gear brand is, I think we're on year eight or nine.

So, you know, it kind of started as we wanted rod holders, and then we went to tracks and graft mounts and everything for boats.

Well, then LiveScope came out, and that changed everything.

Guys needed poles for winter, they wanted a portable version for winter stuff, and so we kind of went from there, and this is what we kind of came up with, and evolved from there.

Just hold it.

- Tapped it.

- You missed it.

- Yeah.

- He missed it.

- Oh my gosh.

All right, so.

- You can stay in there.

- (chuckles) Okay.

There we go.

All right, now the pressure's really on, 'cause he got cocky.

- Yep.

Oh, that's a big bluegill.

- Yep.

Well, I figured that's why I was missing a lot of these fish, just small pan fish.

But, pretty neat.

You got one too?

Hey.

(Drake chuckles) All right.

Doubling up, same hole.

- Same hole.

Oops.

Sorry, bud.

Ooh, look at at that one.

- Look at the size of that.

That's a big one.

- You wanna trade?

- Yeah, sure.

(both chuckle) - Nice.

- There you go, I'm gonna put mine back.

But that's a nice crappie right there.

- Yeah.

I could tell, when you drop down, I saw one kind of screaming in from the side there, so.

- Sure, I mean that's kind of the beauty of having these types of electronics, to be able to pick through the fish a little bit.

But why don't we put that one back and then go see the shop?

- That sounds good.

(intense ambient music) - All right, Drake, obviously we did some fishing today, you're known in the fishing world, but you're nine to five, if you want to call it that, Your business obviously encompasses a lot of fishing stuff, but it's bigger than that.

- It kind of started out, it was a crazy thing, I started doing fishing lures.

First I was just tying hair jigs for a company.

Then they needed me to do some lead work, so we got the lead equipment.

And then they needed some soft plastic stuff, so we started doing plastic injection.

And it just kind of grew into what it is today, which, I never thought it would've got there.

- So you started with hair jigs?

- Yes, literally with hair jigs.

- And this is where you are now.

- Yeah.

And you could see, my parents will kinda laugh about it, I started in their basement, like literally just started making these, and then I bought my own house, I did it in my garage, and then I bought this shop, you know, to where it is today, I've got nine employees now, and it's kind of crazy.

Started with the fishing lures, then, obviously we started up Fin Gear, which is tracks, rod holders, graft mounts, any kind of accessory really that you need for your boat to help you while you're out fishing.

You know, that was one of the things that myself, Robert Cardenas and Paul Ruda kind of started, we wanted something else that we thought we could offer for customers.

We ended up purchasing Rig-Rite, and he makes cargo nets.

Any of the nets, storage nets that you see on the side of boats, he was producing.

He had grommets to hide wires off of graph mounts, he had transducer plates.

So, it kind of fit well, because it was everything that Fin Gear wasn't doing, he was kind of doing, so it worked out really well.

(idle curious music) This is where it kind of all happened, it started out literally as a rod holder.

Robert kind of had the idea as he was riding down to his river on his bike, and he always wanted a rod holder for his bike.

- That's awesome.

- And then it developed into, we need rod holders for boats, then we went to graph mounts, and then, you know, LiveScope obviously has changed a lot of how we fish in today's world, and so we ended up designing a pole, and that's just evolving into so many other things, you know?

At first we were starting with two-by-fours and wood and all this stuff to try to get to where we are today, and this is where we've come out, with a pretty solid mount.

I mean, this thing basically can slide into a track, or you can mount it permanently to your boat, but you can rotate it anywhere you want, and then all you have to simply do while you're fishing.

And then when you wanna move spots, you just simply pull that pin, pull it out of the water, twist it, and you're running down the lake.

(tranquil music) - I didn't realize how big of a part of your business was making lures for people.

- Yeah, that's a whole nother avenue.

You know, it's one of those things that I started tying hair jigs, and now you'll see as we come in here, we're working on a lot of lead products.

Just really done that, soft plastic injection, some pouring of baits, a lot of tying of baits.

You know, it's one of those animals that you don't realize in a store how much goes into it until you start making it.

(upbeat music) These guys are actually working on some lead inserts that go inside of baits.

So you'll just see a lot of the hook hangers and stuff that come outta lures, well, a lot of those have lead or certain inserts on 'em to weigh the bait right.

You know, you don't want it to be rolling, or too head-heavy or too tail heavy.

So these guys are making those inserts, we can go take a look.

I have a great crew here right now, and I love every day of it, you know?

I have all the faith in the world in them and what we're doing here, and I think they do the same with me, you know?

So pretty happy, obviously, but honestly, hope we expand a little more.

You know, I'm sure we'll find another avenue, this right now is awesome, it's more than I could ever dream of, but we'll just keep expanding.

I'm sure the fishing industry, it's a constantly evolving machine, as you know, and so I'm sure something new and great will come out, and we'll kind of just go with the flow of things, you know?

It's been an awesome journey so far, and we'll kind of always keep inventing something else and kind of keep rolling.

(tranquil music) (spry elegant music) - There probably isn't a more tried and true method for catching walleyes in Minnesota than a jig and a minnow.

But, there is a growing concern across the state about the supply of live bait, and what the future of fishing may look like.

Hi, today we're just outside Staples, Minnesota, where Barry's Cherries is working hard to save the bait industry.

(elegant turns serious) What is Barry's cherries?

- It's a hydroponic, aquaponic farm.

We started out as a fish farm.

I have 13 ponds on the property, and we raise bait fish.

I was a fishing guide for 12 and a half years.

I went into the bait business because I couldn't get the bait I wanted from the wholesalers I was dealing with.

My predominant bait that I used in the guide service was redtail chubs.

I learned over the years that probably anywhere from 60% to 70% of the harvest takes place while this fish is on the spawning beds.

You can't do that with any species and expect it to be sustainable.

And if you look around the state right now, red-tailed chubs are $20 a dozen in the bait shops.

The reason they're at $20 a dozen is because they're almost wiped out.

In '92 I saw this coming, that's a long time ago.

I decided that at that point I was gonna spend some time figuring out the species, how to spawn it, how to raise it in captivity.

I started digging ponds, there were no ponds on the property when I got here, now I have 13 on the property, and one raceway system for spawning redtail chubs.

(deep ambient music) - What are we looking at here?

- This is a raceway system, an artificial river developed for spawning river minnows.

You can spawn redtail chubs or hornyhead chubs, common shiners, creek chubs.

Right now you can see down here, we've got common shiners here that are moving along the shoreline.

Down below you can see the redtail chubs or the horny head chubs.

- Essentially, you try to create river conditions here.

- Yeah.

This is an artificial river, is basically what it is, it's lined with gravel.

You can see on the bottom, it's got 3/4 gravel, that's what redtails use to build a nest in the river.

The male redtail builds a nest that is essentially a flow-through hatchery for the eggs, the eggs have to be aerated.

The common shiner, the male common shiner, he'll cohabit the nest with the redtail, and he will keep all marauding minnows from eating the eggs, he'll protect it.

Plus, he spawns on the nest at the same time.

- So you need both of them to make this work.

- Yeah, to get it successful.

You'll get redtails spawning by themselves, but you get more redtail successful spawning with when you have both of them together.

(deep ambient music) The ideal would be to put this under a greenhouse.

I could probably spawn those fish in May, or maybe even April, because of getting- - Because of the water temperature.

- Higher water temperatures.

- [Bret] There's a lot swimming around down here, how many are in here?

- I'm estimating between one and a half and two and a half million.

- Oh wow.

- Total.

They're this thick all the way around the raceway.

And then there's probably another, maybe a million that have already gone out into the pond.

So this raceway, we pump from the pond here behind the trees, it pumps in, comes over by the paddle wheel here, rhe paddle wheel keeps the current moving.

- So the minnows will spawn in the raceway, and then they move into this pond, and then that pond is done essentially, you keep 'em here until next spring.

When they're ready to go to market then, what's the next step here?

- We drop traps in, bait the traps, I check 'em once a day.

We run those fish through a bar grader that gives them the size, the small ones go back in the pond, the large ones stay on top of the grader, those get put onto my truck and then moved up to a tank inside the shop.

(calm cheerful music) This pond is pond one, it's part of a research project with Sea Grant, the University of Minnesota, and DNR, Minnesota DNR, to raise golden shiners.

So this pond, three years ago, we stocked golden shiner fry in it in June, and let them go for a year, and now I'm taking about 20 to 25 gallons of golden shiners out of it a year.

They reproduce in the pond itself, so I don't have to do anything.

The original intent when I dug it was to be able to put a greenhouse dome over the top of it.

Minnesota's failing is that we have a short growing season in the water, you need water temperatures above 55 degrees in order to get growth out of your fish.

If you put it under a greenhouse dome just like this one, I could extend the growing season in the water by 60 to 90 days.

You can see young of the year from last year, these smaller fish that are swimming across it, those are last year's hatch.

This pond cost me about $700 to excavate it.

It's about eight feet deep total in its deepest spot.

This is a groundwater pond, so this is the water table where it is right now.

So those are this year's, they're about three-eighths to a half an inch long now.

- I know this would be counterproductive as a business model, but it'd be kind of fun to just throw large mouth in there and just watch 'em go to town.

(both chuckle) - See how fast you can grow 'em?

- Yeah.

- Actually there's probably people that are looking at doing this.

DNR is actually raising golden shiners and feeding 'em to their muskies.

- [Bret] Oh sure.

- The New London Hatchery, Jeff Tellock down there has been working with the research project that we've been doing, and he's got fish that they're actually moving out into ponds and spawning them there, so that they can either feed them to their muskies or trade them for fathead minnows.

And golden shiners are worth four times what fathead minnows are on the wholesale market.

We could benefit DNR, we could benefit the bait industry, keep it going, and there's opportunity there.

(uplifting music) Originally there was 38,000, so there's about 37,000 golden shiners in here right now.

There are two different batches that were put in here in order to assess whether they're compatible, and they are, the golden shiners aren't eating each other.

(tranquil music) We do wetland restoration.

We just got done with a research paper that was done with Minnesota DNR and the USGS, and that was restoring freshwater shrimp, or Gammarus lacustris, back across the range in Minnesota.

It's been touted as one of the reasons why we lost the birds on this flyway, the waterfowl on this flyway.

We've lost a lot of the food sources for these birds, and without those food sources, those birds aren't gonna come back to this flyway.

This tank is growing ivy-leaved duckweed, star-leaved duckweed, biological name is Lemna trisulca.

This is a weed that we use for wetland restoration in the wintertime, when we stock in most lacustris for waterfowl, we stock this in at the same time, and it's easy to grow.

This is being actually grown on nutrient from my lettuce house, we use our spent nutrient and pump it into this tank.

We have a pretty ready market for it.

The problem with it in the wild is that it's very susceptible to herbicide infiltration from fields, it wipes it out and it won't reseed itself, it doesn't turn into a flower, it won't move from pond to pond.

Ivy-leaved duckweed will double in size every 24 hours, so it's a pretty prolific plant.

One of the things that we find in our natural ponds now is the swan population, which has rebounded in recent years.

This is a favored food of them, so they will clean this out, literally clean it out of ponds where they can reach it.

We found one of the common features in what they call super wetlands that have high populations of freshwater shrimp, is the presence of that ivy-leaved duckweed.

I know that you can raise it in captivity, so we will be selling that along with the Gammarus this year for stocking.

Most of the research has been done on the scaup.

Those birds rely heavily on Gammarus lacustris as a food source.

Between the Gulf of Mexico and Canada where they brood, there's no food source left, we've eliminated it through our agricultural practices.

I think we can restore that in a great number of wetlands in Minnesota.

We've had Ducks Unlimited, Minnesota Waterfowl, DNR, US Fish and Wildlife have bought up lands and gotten deeded lands that now can be restored back to their pristine nature.

(sober music) - [Bret] So do you feel that what you're doing here could save the bait industry?

- I know it can save the bait industry.

We have a way to produce these in captivity, in manmade facilities, produce them in large numbers.

It can be done without investing a million dollars.

The raceway that we demonstrated here costs me about $600 to put in.

The pond that goes with it, you're probably gonna be another $700 to $1,200.

I published the information back in '98 on how to do this.

The industry isn't interested in doing it that way as long as they can get 'em out of the wild.

- And is that because of the cost and the work, they think it's just easier to go get 'em naturally?

- No.

Unfortunately, the industry in general has an attitude of, grandpa did it this way, dad did it this way, why am I the one who has to change?

The resource is changing, we're losing more and more waters to zebra mussels.

Zebra mussel waters, once zebra mussels gets into a river, it closes that river as of May 26th every year, and doesn't open again until October 16th.

So basically, the time of year where redtails are popular, you can't get them, because that water's closed, you can't go in and you can't harvest them.

Unfortunately, the attitude with bait dealers is, it's not an unending supply.

They're all learning really fast that this is not true.

People raising these fish can raise them to the point where you can export them.

They're valuable, not just in Minnesota, redtail chubs, common shiners, golden shiners, are marketed all over the country.

It's an opportunity for growth in an industry that's being overlooked, and has been overlooked forever.

If we do not look at sustainability in the bait industry, then the bait industry in 10 years is going to be gone.

(sober music turns uplifting and subsides) (bouncy upbeat music) - [Narrator] We can stop aquatic hitchhikers from infesting more lakes and streams by cleaning up everything we pull out of the water.

It's a simple drill, Clean in, clean out.

Before leaving a water access, clean your boat and water equipment.

Remove and dispose of all plants and aquatic species in the trash.

Drain water from your boat, ballast tanks, motor, live well and bait container.

Remove drain plugs, and keep drain plugs out while transporting equipment.

Dispose of unwanted bait in the trash.

To keep live bait, drain the water and refill the bait container with bottled or tap water.

And if you have been in infested waters, also spray your boat with high pressure water, rinse with very hot water, dry for at least five days.

Stop the spread of AIS.

(bouncy upbeat music) (quirky idle music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Sportsman" is provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, as recommended by the Legislative Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources.

By Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, on behalf of Shalom Hill Farm, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

By the Friends of "Prairie Sportsman."

To become a friend of "Prairie Sportsman," visit pioneer.org/prairiesportsman.

Stories about aquatic invasive species are brought to you by the Aquatic Invasive Species Task Forces of Meeker, Yellow Medicine, Lac Qui Parle, Swift and Big Stone Counties.

(bright music)