(bright music) - [Bret] So Filet of Fish may have come outta Marsh Lake?

- [Curt] Marsh Lake.

- [Bret] On today's "Prairie Sportsman", we visit with Curt Piechowski and learn about his family business [Curt] it was just like a family reunion - we’d laugh & talk.

[Bret] and his effort to preserve its rich history.

[Curt] One time we caught over a million pounds on Marsh Lake.

- Next... - We look at the efforts being made to clean up Mille Lacs.

- [Joe] It's now illegal to place any kind of garbage on the ice.

- [Bret] Finally, We are in for with Nicole Zempel as she shares her love of black raspberries.

- This great burst of fruity juiciness.

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

We got a great show for you starting right now.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music fades) (gentle 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.

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

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org (gentle music fades) (gentle country music) - In a small town along the 45th parallel, there's a museum working to preserve the history of a family-run commercial fishing operation that began over a hundred years ago in Western Minnesota.

(gentle country music continues) We're with Curt Piechowski at the Lac qui Parle County Museum where he's showing us a few of the things he has gathered to tell the story of commercial fishing in Western Minnesota and preserve the history of the Piechowski Fish Company.

- This is my father and my uncle They're the ones that started the whole process on commercial fishing from Browns Valley.

There was six of them and they all worked together.

They each had their crew and we started outta Madison Browns Valley.

We went all over South Dakota, Minnesota.

- [Bret] So these are, these are all brothers?

- [Curt] They're all brothers, right.

- Six of them.

- Six of them.

- And they all did their own operation?

- But it was a family company.

They went in a war and then they come back out of the war, World War II, and then this Randall Brothers had it in Browns Valley in 1920.

So throughout that year, then they learned from him.

So then they figured, "Well there must be a few dollars in this, so we're gonna do this on our own."

So then they, all the brothers, got together and they started the company, Piechowski Fish Company - And that's where it started.

So what year is this then?

- This is about 1950.

(gentle music) We have a resort on Lake Traverse also, and that's what I used to manage when I was 12 years old.

My dad went to commercially fish and he said, "Son, we're gonna teach you the ropes, so you manage my resort while I fish."

And so we had boats, pontoons, and we sold minnows commercially.

(gentle music) They all loved it because they would talk fish 24 hours a day 'cause this is what their profession was.

They talked fish, they talked how we were gonna catch the fish, get rid of the fish.

But it was cold out there, but then they enjoyed it so much.

(gentle music) - So here's one of your nets or seines.

How old is this right here?

- This is built probably in 1950, '55.

- Oh wow.

- And then we'd get the webbing from Tennessee.

It come just as a great big box.

And then we, we'd have to stretch it out in a quonset or something and we'd have to put the corks on.

And also we'd have to put the pans on.

That would be the, that's what we call the lead lined where we, I call them pans.

But these are the weights.

This is the top of the seine.

This is the bottom of the seine.

So it'd be, it would be stretched out, and then we'd have to sew all this stuff on there, you know, stitch all these on there.

- How long would that take?

- About two, three months.

It was to do one seine, that's just a part of it.

We'd have over a mile long or 3/4 a mile.

That's just part of a seine.

- [Bret] So your net that you'd set out would be over a mile long?

- About three quarter mile.

- Oh my gosh.

Then you're gonna need to build an addition on.

- Well that's why I only brought part of the seine here.

- Wow.

- And then we had six or seven seines, different depths, you know, some would be 20 feet, 15 feet, three, like Marsh Lake was a three foot lake.

So we had to make a three foot seine for that lake.

When we made the seine, it was just like we was visiting a family reunion.

Just like you go fishing with your family, with the six brothers and myself, a couple of my uncles and cousins.

It would be just, we'd laugh, we'd talk.

(gentle music) One time we caught over a million pounds on Marsh Lake- - A million pounds.

- On one pull.

And soon as we got the front end of the seine in the fish started coming in, carp, sheepshead.

We caught sheepshead, buffalo fish, carp, but all the game fish we had to put back, because that's a game fish.

But it took us three days to get those out with dipping by hand.

(gentle music) - [Bret] So you've got fish piled up.

So you pull them out of the nets, you're piling them up, and then you're putting them in boxes, and then that's where you load them on trucks and start shipping them.

- Right, these seines that hold 500 boxes and these boxes are a hundred pounds of fish.

We'd have to weigh them, you know, for a hundred pounds.

And we'd load 500, 600 on these semis.

Now this million pounds we might have had 15, 20 semis coming a couple hours in.

You know, they'd come then we'd load them and we'd take them away.

(gentle music) 99% went down to Spirit Lake, Iowa.

There's a processing plant there They made fish patties, they made fertilizer out of them.

Fish sticks.

Then they made smoked carp out of them.

So it's a going business.

- Yeah, did those fish patties e in restaurants like McDonald's?

- McDonald's, restaurants, schools, colleges.

So we were eating, you know, we were eating fish patties.

So Filet of Fish may have come outta Marsh Lake.

- Marsh Lake, it (gentle music) When my dad died in '84, Richard and I, Piechowski, my cousin, we started smoking fish and we'd sell to Schwans, Sweigerts, and then we shipped to Red Owl stores.

Super Value, Hy-Vee.

Hy-Vee was a good store that I could sell to.

Down South they love catfish and carp.

I mean that's a delicacy down there.

And we used to ship Missouri, but Minnesota, they want walleyes, birch- - [Bret] Well there's less bones in those fish.

- That's a big thing, the bones in carp.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

(gentle music) (vocalizing) - [Curt] There's only four or five companies left out of Minnesota.

And I've talked to six of them in the last couple months.

And there's only about four companies left.

- [Bret] Are those family run operations too?

- They're family run.

In fact, in a couple weeks there's a company I just talked to, they're gonna pull down a Lac qui Parle, open water.

And the guy is 82-years-old and his son is 30, and his son took it over.

And he invited me to down there, we're gonna have coffee while his son does the operation on Lac qui Parle.

(gentle music) - [Bret] So when did your family get out of the business?

- It was 1998 when my cousin Richard passed away, and that's when everything folded up, we all kind of got done with it.

- [Bret] Are you sad a little bit that the company- - Well I am.

See this is why I love to do this 'cause my uncle started and my dad, and I just kind of wanted to show them what we did back in the day.

You know, I mean I don't I get teary jerky, but yeah, it's sad.

- I bet.

- It's sad.

- Well that's a lot of family history on these tables right here.

- Right.

(gentle music) - You know, you drive by these small town museums or these small county museums, and you always want to go, "Gosh, it'd be neat to go in there and check it out," and it's like, "Ah, I'm busy today," or "I don't have time," or "I'm on my way to work," or whatever.

But people really need to take the time to stop in, because every time I do, I appreciate what I see in there.

Because people now are gonna be able to come in here and see your family history with this commercial fishing business.

What are they gonna be able to in here?

- Maybe some ice chisels, then all these pictures will be on the wall.

And then they're also gonna put a TV in here with some of my films and stuff that they're doing here.

They're taping some of my films and they'll have that a TV so that they can sit down on a chair and the kids can just watch it on the TV there.

(gentle music) - The museum, this part of the museum, was built in the 1970s, but the Historical Society started way before that.

We have a lot of history that we're collecting and sharing with the people.

We do a lot of family research too.

So we have a lot of family history records.

So a lot of people come to find pictures of their family or family stories.

We change our displays quite often so people can see them.

And each township, I don't know if you've noticed, has their own booth out there.

So they like that.

We have the school building, the Robert Bly building.

Robert Bly was an author, the first poet laureate of Minnesota.

So we have his study out here because he lived right outside of town.

And we have a machine shed full of machines.

We have a schoolhouse, an old gas station, a log cabin that once was a schoolhouse.

It's a lot of interesting things outside.

(gentle music) We have a good collection coming in thanks to Curtis.

He's sharing his story and I think it's gonna be a really good story once we get it up.

The display is gonna be open on, we're having an open house on May 18th.

So if anybody wants to come and see the new displays, we're working on a couple different displays.

One on farming and then one on the fishing.

(gentle music) - Yeah, we're gonna have this whole wall here.

We're gonna put the seines up there, pans, corks, and then all the pictures that we've taken will be up on the wall here for people to come in and see.

- That's gotta be a neat feeling, to have- - Yeah.

- Your family history preserved in the museum.

(gentle music) - If some young kid can come in here and say, "Oh, look at this, this project these people did, maybe I want to go out fishing with my dad or my uncle or my brother or just go out fishing with them," give them a chance to get out and see the environment.

You know, go hunting, fishing, nothing against other stuff.

But then I think fishing is- - [Bret] Get them into the outdoors.

- [Curt] Get them out to the outdoors, yeah.

That's what I'm kind of trying to do here.

I guess it's a story that it's gonna be a lost thing in a few years because there's, as I say, there's only four or five left in in Minnesota that do this thing.

(gentle music fades) - A lot of resorts had their own way of picking up their trash.

We had what we used to call block parties.

- [Nicole] There's just nothing like it.

Like when you're harvesting them.

I eat as many as I harvest.

(upbeat music) - We're here in Garrison, Minnesota as the ice fishing season wraps up on legendary Mille Lacs Lake.

Now one quick little look around this area and you'll see a lot of trash that's accumulated over the winter months.

Well there's a big movement that's come to the area in recent years to help Keep It Clean.

(upbeat music) In recent years, anglers are spending more time on the ice, wheelhouses, float suits, and other ways to say warmer longer has allowed people to fish more.

This creates the potential for more trash being left on lakes.

After a few years of seeing this, it was clear something needed to be done.

Lake of the Woods tourism, the Minnesota DNR, Lake of the Woods Soil and Water District, Lake of the Woods County, and the friends of Zippel Bay State Park formed a committee that created the Keep It Clean campaign.

- It's now illegal to place any kind of trash, waste, human waste, any kind of garbage on the ice.

What you need to do now is you need to plan ahead.

You gotta keep it in your fish house, you keep it in your vehicle, or you keep it in an enclosed container, but we don't put it on the ice anymore.

And really what that's gonna do is it's just by happenstance, it's gonna keep tons of garbage off in Minnesota waterways.

- [Bret] The Keep It Clean movement continued across the state going to Upper Red Lake and then Mille Lacs.

- And so initially we thought maybe what we'd do is a spring cleanup day of some sort, organize, try to get participation and community engagement.

And I offered to do some research and went down the internet rabbit hole and very quickly found Joe Henry and Mike Hurst up at Lake of the Woods and said, "Hey, I understand you've got a program up there to address garbage on the ice.

Why don't we team up?"

We've heard from Upper Red Lake recently and we can have three of the largest walleye fisheries in the state working together.

I consulted with Eddy Lyback and a few other business owners around the lake and they said, "Yeah, do it.

We've got a problem and we need a solution."

- [Bret] While the Keep It Clean effort is relatively new.

Cleanup around Mille Lacs has been going on for years.

- I'd say 1982, '83, you know, we started things just a lot of resorts had their own way of picking up their trash.

We had what we used to call block parties, which at the end of the year customers would come up and a whole crew of people would go out in the lake, pick up whatever was out there as far as trash, plastic bags, fish house blocks that got missed, whatever they could see.

It evolved into a lake wide event for almost 10 years.

But it was hard to organize it because of the timing of the year when you had to be out there.

Then along when Ann came with this Keep It Clean idea, momentum picked up again.

- [Bret] Cleanup crews have found all sorts of trash.

- Some type of plastic, sometimes styrofoam things that get missed or blown or covered up with the snow.

- [Bret] While trash blown up along the shorelines has been a problem, what may be the biggest issue is anglers leaving behind human waste.

- Plan ahead, right?

Have your garbage bags know where you're gonna go to the bathroom and know where gonna bring your trash when you go off the ice.

- You know, not everybody's gonna be able to dump stuff.

So there's human waste and plastic bags, where's it gonna go?

Is there gonna be separate dumpsters for that or is it, because it's winter and frozen, included in the trash dumpster and ends up in the landfill?

- As a Keep It Clean effort grew here at Mille Lacs and even expanded out into the region, Ann was looking for new ways to keep Mille Lacs clean.

And she heard about a crew that had a special project out at Lake Tahoe.

(exciting music) - I kinda think in phases and one of the thoughts was, if we stop, if we stop the trash from going into the ice or help mitigate the amount that's going into the ice, what do we do about the garbage that's already in the lake?

What kind of impact does that have?

And specifically, what happens to garbage once it enters Mille Lacs?

Where, if anywhere, does it go?

So I had remembered reading about somebody, Colin West, who led a huge initiative with up to 300 volunteers scuba divers on a year long mission to go in and pull all the trash outta Lake Tahoe.

- Yeah, Tahoe was really, like I, you know, I was doing a beach cleanup one day and we pulled 40 pounds of trash from a beach where there were thousands of people present, you know, and felt good and was like, "Yay, that's nice."

But in fact, that same very day, a good friend of mine from where I grew up was hosting a scuba cleanup in a tiny, pristine looking, beautiful cove where if you're on your boat the it would just look like you're in the Caribbean.

Gorgeous granite rocks though might throw you off, but the waters are are gorgeous and you just don't see any issues.

But when you dive underneath it, it was trashed.

And they pulled out over 600 pounds of small litter items and we're talking about 600 pounds of things like aluminum cans and plastic and, like, clothing.

It's not like four chunks of metal.

- [Bret] After having a discussion with Ann, the two agreed on a pilot project where the group would come out and dive in Mille Lacs, but based on the landscape, the approach would have to be different than it was at Tahoe.

- The litter accumulation and distribution in that lake is very different than in Alpine lakes because in Alpine lakes, if you have these sheer walls that come down, you know, and you have stuff dropping in and wind blowing it, it kind of and it hits those walls and collects there.

- [Bret] After observing some blue-green algae, the crew employed a remote operated vehicle to search the floor of Mille Lacs.

After test results revealed just trace amounts of cyanobacteria that would be safe for divers.

The crew jumped in the lake.

- You know, we got there, and for our team, it was a completely different experience than diving Alpine lakes.

We could at least see the very significant amount of muscles and invasive species that were there, which I know is an issue that Mille Lac struggles with.

- And so a lot of the heavy litter items were really difficult to identify because they were so covered with zebra muscles, but they found cinder blocks, they found glass bottles, they found a Buick hubcap.

(somber music) - [Bret] Despite sifting through the muscles to find some of these large items, they didn't find as many as they thought they would.

- I was ready to pack huge lift bags and thinking we were gonna stack 15,000 pounds of litter or more in two weeks from what I heard.

But I think ultimately we only found a couple hundred pounds, and I think there's a few factor that could play into that.

- The trash that was gathered was sorted at these litter sorting events and put into one of 83 maritime categories and then weighed and documented.

- [Bret] Tracking what kind of litter it is and where they find it on the lake will help them track down where it's coming from.

- So that can help you better understand, is it construction debris?

Is it people drinking and partying and playing with their dogs?

Is that fishing equipment, et cetera.

So we can actually see, you know, the source of that litter.

And so that's kind of where everything goes is through that analysis process.

- So one of the conclusions clean up the lake came to was that the heavyweight litter seems to drop and kind of stay where it's at and often gets covered by zebra muscles.

The mid-weight litter is likely on the move.

We didn't find as many cell phones as we know are lost down there.

So those items probably are covered and uncovered and covered and uncovered.

- I think what we found over, you know, two weeks of working and diving out there is that a lot of the litter was more than likely actually blowing up onto shore.

So those beach cleanups that local communities were doing and local volunteers were actually recovering a lot of the litter that was making its way into the lake.

- [Bret] Cleaning up the lake is not only good for the environment, it helps you learn a little bit about the area's past.

What's the story behind the anchor?

- Well, back in the early zebra mussel years, we had one spring where we didn't have much of wind activity when the lake went off and the water was extremely clear.

Some of my daughter's friends were out running around on Wahkon Bay just looking at what all the stuff they could see and they found about this much of that anchor sticking out of the mud on a little small reef southeast of or southwest of Otto's Point.

I had contacted Joe Fellegy, who was a Mille Lacs historian, had him come and look at it, and he immediately dug through a lot of his old pictures.

And we pretty much determined because of the age of the anchor, and you can tell by the style of steel and how it's sort of stringy like this and rusting, that it obviously was very old.

More than likely, was an anchor on one of the lake steamers in Mille Lacs Lake.

There was a company back in the mid 1800s called the Mille Lacs Lake Steamship Company.

On every one of those boats was an anchor like that hanging off the bow.

(gentle music) - [Bret] Even though efforts to clean up have improved, there was still a need to create new legislation.

- If you've ice fish in Minnesota, you realize that the new law, right?

Last year we had with new law started, it's a great law.

- We looked at the language over litter in the lake during summer on open water and realized there wasn't anything comparable to frozen water.

So we drafted a bill that got picked up by Representative Andrew Meyers.

It was introduced during the January 2023 legislative session, signed into law in May by partisan support.

The law took effect July 1st, 2023, making it illegal to place garbage and waste on or under the ice on all of Minnesota's lakes and rivers.

- Being we have a rental business and rental fish houses, you know, we have service workers that go out, collect garbage bags, toilet bags, et cetera, provide more, pick up whatever they got, haul it in.

And in the past we used to have them set that toilet bag on the ice so it would freeze or in a snow bank next to the house.

And with the new laws to make it easier and prevent that, we hung galvanized garbage cans on the side of the house, built brackets and had them elevated off the ice and lined them, you know, with another liner and had them put them in there.

So everything was in one spot.

- [Bret] Everyone we spoke to agreed that these efforts are making a difference.

So what does the future hold for Keep It Clean at Mille Lacs?

- Yeah, we've got some more plans in the works and I think they'll lead to greater community engagement and even wider understanding on what's happening to garbage in the lake, what people are finding, and some things that they can do to help increase the health of the lake by small individual contributions.

- [Bret] Colin will have more from his Mille Lacs pilot research project at cleanupthelake.org, and the Mille Lacs trash tracker pilot program was recently funded, and its goal is to reduce the amount of trash and also track the trash and identify where it's coming from to stop the littering at its source.

This will also allow more users of the lake to feel as though they're making a difference in keeping it clean.

- It's not a good look for any lake and it's not good for tourism.

And these businesses work so hard to provide an ideal experience for the visitors on the lake.

It's up to everybody to do their part, to support those businesses in addition to the environment and the overall effects on the l (gentle music fades) (bright music) (upbeat music) - One of my absolute favorite summertime joy and delights is harvesting black caps or wild black raspberries.

I have never used the plant medicinally.

People do use the leaves.

I of course go for the berries.

There's just nothing like it.

Like, when you're harvesting them, I eat as many as I harvest and you get just this great burst of fruity juiciness.

If you've never harvested black raspberries before, my advice would be find a ripe one, close your eyes, and just savor that moment.

Some ID’ing characteristics, this is like a, a offshoot or a younger one.

So here's a stem.

It's got like the little thorns on there.

Easily identifiable characteristic is the leaves.

Usually three, can have up to five, and they all connect to the stem.

There's a word for it that of course I cannot pronounce, but the easiest way to say, it's kind of like the fingers on our hand.

Also, the underside of the leaves has, like, a whiter shade to it.

That's also another telltale sig that you're on to black raspberries.

(gentle music) Usually they start ripening anywhere, depending on weather, of course, but the third or fourth week of June, in my experience, that's a little early, but that did start happening this year.

Typically, I've seen maybe the second week of July where they're really becoming ripe.

So like commercial raspberries, they're bigger than this, but they're about this color when they're considered ripe.

A black raspberry or black cap turns black.

And so berries are just a super fun way to make some really delicious desserts.

You can make marinades for meats, a variety of sauces, you can make jam.

The easiest thing is if you have like one cup of wild black raspberries, add one cup cane sugar and a little dab of like half and half and just mash it up and pour it over some dessert cake, like angel food cake.

It's just an easy, simple way to enjoy it.

And also just something that I really enjoy.

You can make barbecue sauces and that's kind of fun as well.

So the wild black raspberry.

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

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

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org (bright music)