The Lake Superior Fishery in Wisconsin Waters

Captain Ross Lind welcomes people onto the DNR research vessel, the Hack Noyes. According to the DNR website, “The R/V Hack Noyes was built in 1946 by Burger Boat Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin and purchased by a commercial fisherman for use on Lake Michigan. The original name of the vessel was Helen Jean. It was used on Lake Michigan until 1951 when it was sold to the Wisconsin DNR and renamed Hack Noyes for use on Lake Superior in the Apostle Islands as a law enforcement vessel. The vessel was named after the late Haskell P. Noyes, head of the Wisconsin Conservation Commission from 1931-1933. In 1970, it was transferred to the Wisconsin DNR fisheries management department in Bayfield.” Find out more at https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/Fishing/lakesuperior/HackNoyes.

The boat engine rumbled and machinery whirred as a gillnet rose from the depths of Lake Superior. Captain Ross Lind managed the throttle so that the 55-foot-long gillnet-tug-turned-research-vessel named Hack Noyes moved toward the net at the same speed the net lifter reeled it in.

A group of interested adults on this Museum-sponsored field trip gathered around the equipment. We were mesmerized by the clicking of the metal teeth on the spinning drum as they gripped and then released the line, and by the lengths of delicate nylon net attached to the line. Capable hands guided the net down a long, stainless-steel worktable and into the storage tub. (Check out the Museum’s Reels on Instagram and Facebook if you want to see a video of this operation.)

The invention of net lifters (upper right) enabled fishing tugs to become enclosed, which makes for a safer and more comfortable job during the winter. DNR Fisheries Biologist Dray Carl (far left) explains this to participants on a Museum-organized field trip. Photo by Emily Stone.

Gillnets look like a long tennis net, anchored by weights along the lake bottom and held vertical by floats. Small fish swim right through, but bigger fish get caught. Whether a DNR biologist or a commercial fisherman is setting the net, they can choose the fish they target by the size of the mesh and the depth of set.

A flash of silver rounded the drum. The fish landed on the worktable and Dray Carl, Fisheries Biologist for the Wisconsin DNR, freed it from the filaments. Another fish, and then another and another landed on the table. They all looked about the same to my untrained eye, but after lining them up, Dray began to teach us about the different species we’d caught.

DNR Fisheries Biologist Dray Carl (left) teaches about fish species to program participants. Photo by Emily Stone.

There was one adult whitefish. At 17.7” long it was of legal size, and Dray put it on ice to take to Bodin Fisheries processing plant, which was the next stop for all of us on the field trip. The DNR tries not to waste the fish they catch as part of their research and monitoring efforts, and their catch is factored into the fishing quotas. Quotas are negotiated between the state, the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and the Bad River Tribe, and these entities manage the fishery cooperatively.

Three young whitefish remained on the table, next to two cisco. Other than being slightly different shades of silver, I couldn’t tell them apart. These two nearshore fish species are in the same genus, and hang out in 50-250 feet of water. Whitefish, though, feed on the bottom of the lake, nibbling on insects and snails with their down-turned mouth. Cisco feed throughout the water column on zooplankton and other critters right in front of their forward-facing mouth. Dray held them up, and now even I could see the difference.

Whitefish (top) and cisco (left) are closely related, but the downturned mouth of the whitefish fits their bottom feeding lifestyle, while the forward-facing mouth of the cisco is suited for eating the critters right in front of them throughout the water column. Cisco are also known as lake herring. Photo by Emily Stone.

The third fish species on the table was a rainbow smelt. Though introduced from the Atlantic Coast, smelt gained a huge following during their heyday, when anyone with a net could catch hundreds at the mouth of a creek during a spawning run. Smelt can be beneficial as a prey species, but they also eat young cisco and whitefish. Now that smelt numbers have moderated, whitefish and cisco are able to increase their populations again.

In fact, current numbers of one-year-old cisco are higher than biologists have seen since at least 1978. This boom was spawned in the fall of 2021, and hatched in 2022. Their reproductive success was thought to be tied to high ice cover, but the new hypothesis is that our recent late springs have provided the cold water that the fish need at just the right time.

While cisco populations are high all over the lake, “the highest densities of the little cisco have been observed in Wisconsin waters,” Dray told me proudly. Wisconsin waters only include 7% of the surface area of Lake Superior, but there are more fish harvested out of this jurisdiction than the rest of the lake combined.

Map of Wisconsin waters of Lake Superior. Image from WI DNR.

Part of that has to do with the number of fisherman out there trying to catch fish. Much of Minnesota’s North Shore and Canada are pretty wild and host relatively few commercial fishing operations. A bigger reason? Wisconsin has more shallow water. Eighty percent of Lake Superior is more than 250 feet deep. Sunlight doesn’t penetrate into those depths, and therefore can’t jumpstart the food chain. In the shallow waters of the St. Louis River Estuary, the Apostle Islands, Chequamegon Bay, and Kakagon Slough, sunlight powers algae, and streams bring in nutrients from the uplands, too.

When you mix that productivity with a wide variety of habitats that support a diversity of species as they grow and reproduce, you get a lot of fish. So many fish are born in Wisconsin waters that they disperse throughout the rest of the lake.

Dray did a fantastic job of explaining the biology and management of the Wisconsin fishery on Lake Superior. To my delight, he even brought it back to geology. About a billion years ago, the Mid-Continent Rift tried to rip apart North America, right through where Lake Superior is today. The lava that erupted from immense seam volcanoes in the rift became the steeply dipping bedrock on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Sandstone filled in the resulting basin, and glaciers carved that softer rock into the islands and bays—and fish habitat—of today’s Wisconsin waters. As the land rebounds from the weight of the glaciers, the lake is tilting southwest to flood the mouth of the St. Louis River and create more great habitat there.

This Friday, as I nibble on a locally caught fillet of Lake Superior whitefish or cisco, I’ll be quietly thanking all the people (and geology!) who contribute to the health of Wisconsin’s fishery.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our new exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open now! Our Summer Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Professor Hike

A roll of duct tape bounced along in my backpack, and a permanent marker poked out of my pants pocket as I strode down the trail. A group of 20 Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteers-in-Training ambled behind me. We’d had a challenging morning of botany and geology at Morgan Falls in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Lunch had revived us, and now it was time for the afternoon activity. Anticipation bubbled.

“During this activity,” I explained, “you will each become a Professor of something in these woods.”

While most of the group opened up their new nature journals to pass the time, I led my first “professor” a little ways down the trail. Maggie and I paused by a big log on the ground, and I asked, “How would you feel about being Professor Coarse Woody Debris?” She was game. I dug out the marker and tape as I explained that foresters use this term to describe fallen dead trees.

We looked at some punky places on the log where fungi were clearly doing their decomposition work, admired the moss growing in the spongy, water-holding material, and talked about death’s roll in the ecosystem. “Ecologists often say that a tree is more alive when it’s dead,” I quipped.

Then, as I handed Maggie a strip of duct tape with her professor name written in black marker, she practiced teaching that same information in her own way. Satisfied with her grasp of the material, I waved at the group of remaining students, beckoning one forward.

“Hello, my name is Professor Coarse Woody Debris,” Maggie introduced herself, and proceeded to teach Craig this little chunk of newly acquired knowledge, ending with a deep thought about how death provides the resources for new life. Then Maggie stayed by her log and invited a new student forward, while I walked Craig down the trail to find a new professor topic.

We stopped by a cluster of little three-leaved plants. (No, not poison ivy!) “Professor Little Jack” I wrote on the duct tape, while I told Craig how Jack-in-the-Pulpit plants can take seven years or more to build up enough energy to finally produce a flower. After expressing his amazement, Craig was ready to teach the next student.

Bit by bit I moved down the trail, finding something interesting for each new “professor” to teach about, while making sure that we were out of conversational earshot but within sight of the professor on either side.

I took advantage of the prolific Jack-in-the-Pulpit flowers let my professors teach about them in easy chunks. After that first patch of just leaves, we found one of their unusual flowers. The outer part looks like a narrow pouch with a graceful rain awning, or an old fashioned church pulpit. Inside that spathe lives the preacher Jack. His part is played by the spadix—the spike that pokes up out of the pulpit structure. At the base of the spadix are tiny flowers, protected from rain by the curving hood of the spathe.

The next professor taught that young Jack-in-the-Pulpits begin by producing only male flowers, because those take less energy. After the leaves churn out enough photosynthesis, older plants eventually gain enough resources to produce female flowers, seeds, and clusters of scarlet fruits.

Down the trail, I left a line of Professors strung out like pearls of wisdom: Professor Virginia Creeper, Professor Habitat, Professor Native Honeysuckle, Professor Buddy Tree, Professor Tip-Up-Mound, and Professor Shade.

The Museum’s new director, Rich Jaworski, became Professor Advanced Regeneration during the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training last week. He’s taking the course to become more familiar with this area and the mission of the Museum. Photo by Emily Stone.

(Remember how I wrote about mosquitoes last week? They're still here! Both Rich and his student are wearing bug jackets from Sea to Summit.)

When I reached the final student and transformed her into Professor Scratch-and-Sniff at a sweet-smelling yellow birch tree, my job was done. Back in the woods, once Professor Coarse Woody Debris ran out of students, she became one herself, visiting all 19 other professors along the trail. The line folded back on itself.

The activity ended with big smiles and rave reviews when we gathered at the trailhead for our wrap-up. Everyone had loved being a student. They were bursting with the delight of fun facts and chunks of information that they could actually remember and were excited to share. Plus, each Professor was proud of how their talking points had been practiced, polished, and perfected over the many repetitions. The shyer students were relieved that these small bits of public speaking felt very manageable.

Over the years, I’ve found that this Professor Hike activity is very effective at connecting students to nature. What’s been a surprise, especially as I lead it with adults instead of sixth graders, is how wonderful it is at connecting people to each other as they teach and learn.

I chuckled during the wrap-up when a student exclaimed, “Maybe you should bring back the duct tape so we can all be professors again tomorrow!” I chuckled…as I tucked the roll into a handy spot in my backpack.

To find out more about the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Program, visit https://wimasternaturalist.org/ or give Emily a call!

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our new exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open now! Our Summer Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

The Menace of Mosquitoes

Slap. Bam. Swish. Thud. That was the soundtrack to my bedtime a couple of weeks ago as I killed mosquitoes in my bedroom. I caught them between two hands, smushed them against the wall, and swiped at the ones on my high ceiling with an extendo-handled feather duster.

Finally having killed all visible mosquitoes, I checked to see that the towel I’d stuffed under my bedroom door was in place, crawled under the covers, and turned out the light.

Buzz…I wiggled one hand up toward my chin where it would be ready to strike and then waited. The whine drew closer. I felt the faintest brush of wind on the downy hairs of my neck. Then tiny feet on my skin. Using all my willpower, I waited until I felt the first prick of the mosquito’s proboscis before I slapped. This gave me a better chance of trapping her under my hand, which I then wiped sideways until I felt her little body roll under the pads of my fingers. Gotcha! I thought, and took a few deep breaths to invite sleep to descend.

Buzz…another. And another. Even after my bedtime killing spree, mosquito after mosquito came out of the dark. Desperate, I threw off the covers and descended two flights of stairs to the basement. Minutes later, my two-person tent was perched on top of my bedspread (it fit perfectly!) with sheets and pillows inside. I climbed in, zipped the door shut behind me, killed one last mosquito who had snuck into my fortress, and slept peacefully until dawn.

The mosquitoes are bad this year. Some people say that they are the worst they’ve ever seen, but I think that’s a case of faulty memory and shifting baseline. The past two springs were unusually dry, and that gave us a bit of a reprieve. Do you remember 2014? That was the first spring after a Polar Vortex winter, and also the year that water levels in Lake Superior and Pigeon Lake began to rise. That spring was at least this bad.

The good news is that our wet spring seems to be turning into a dry summer. Maybe the outbreak won’t last too much longer? The average lifespan of a mosquito is three to six weeks. At least the dragonflies have finally hatched!

In my car, with the vents on high to keep the mosquitoes from mobbing me, I took some macro photos of the little daggers. According to iNaturalist, they are the very common Inland Floodwater Mosquito, Aedes vexans. “Vexans” is right. They vex people on every continent except Antarctica and South America. After mating and consuming a blood meal, the females lay their eggs on moist soil right above water line. Then the eggs wait (maybe for several years) for big rains to flood the eggs and trigger them to hatch. My lake was about a foot higher than last year due to snowmelt. After a couple of dry years, there were probably lots of eggs just waiting there in the soil. But after this first flush, my hope is that our dry weather will dampen their success for the rest of the summer.

Inland Floodwater Mosquitoes, Aedes vexans, have white bands on their legs and white-scaled bands on their abdomens. iNaturalist helped me identify this mosquito, but the experts on BugGuide.net would only identify it to family -- Culicidae.

My second reason for optimism is that another common species—the cattail mosquito—has probably decreased in numbers after our last two years of drought, according to a story by Minnesota Public Radio. So their typical peak—around the Fourth of July—might be less. I’m crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath. I’m also taking action.

I thought people might get a kick out of my tent-on-the-bed story, so I posted a photo to Facebook with a request for other people to share their hacks. The first advice I got was to cover the heating pipes where they open to the outdoors. Turns out, that was the root cause of my continuous stream of mosquitoes. With those covered, mosquitoes can only enter through the front door like everyone else. I put my tent away and got out a fan.

Since mosquitos can’t fly in the wind, fans can be effective. Carol points a fan at herself when she sits outside. Some people, including me, place a fan right inside the front door pointing out, so that the breeze will prevent the mosquitoes from coming in. James Bailey, the former development director at WOJB Radio takes the prize for super fan. He installed a high-powered fan outside, directly above his front steps, blowing down. He explained, “Made to cool a radio transmitter, such as WOJB's 100,000 watt unit on Larson Hill, it comes on any time we throw an outside light switch inside next to the door.”

Covering vent holes, air conditioners, doors, beds, and yourself with netting also help. I never leave the house without my bug jacket anymore. DEET and other concoctions can help, as well as wearing light-colored clothes. Electric mosquito zappers, which look like tennis rackets, were mentioned over and over. Other people simply left the state. Some just left their house…one of my neighbors wrote, “I decided to sleep outside because there were less skeeters outside than in our house!!!” I’m not sure if he was joking or not. My friend Stacy Craig, a Unitarian Universalist Minister and apparently also a super-human, wrote that she has “mastered the ability to sleep while getting nibbled by mosquitoes.”

Several people mentioned dragonflies. “I've been training my local flock of dragonflies to provide air cover. Results have been mixed,” wrote my photographer friend Keith Crowley.

A little amazement can go a long way, as well. Did you know that a pair of mosquitoes must buzz in harmony before they can mate? Next time you hear one, think about that romantic duet for a second…before you squash them.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our new exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open now! Our Summer Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

The Northwoods ROCKS!

Thirty second graders tumble off their big yellow bus and onto the sidewalk in front of the Museum. Hot sunshine makes it feel like summer, and after tomorrow, (their last day of school) it will be. “Welcome to the Cable Natural History Museum,” I shout over the noise of traffic and excitement. “Check out that big banner. What’s the biggest word up there?” I ask pointing to the front of the Museum.

“ROCKS!” They answer as a group.

“Raise your hand if you like rocks,” I command, and suddenly a forest of fingers waves vigorously. With big smiles, Kali and I walk the students into the Museum’s classroom. Kali is a very recent graduate of Northland College’s geoscience program, and is one of our two summer interns. Kali is helping to lead our school field trips about…ROCKS!

The learning starts with a skit that Kali and I designed to cover about 3 billion years of geologic history in Northern Wisconsin. “BILLION?” the kids exclaim, suitably impressed. Yes, billion. Three billion years ago the first continents were forming, including a small continent that would become the heart of North America. That Superior Continent bumped into another small continent.

At this point Kali and I kneel at either end of a large sheet of cardboard painted dark brown. “Do you know what happens when to continents bump into each other?” I ask the students. A girl in the back acts it out with her hands experimentally, fingers meeting, then steepling upward. “When continents bump into each other they push up mountains like Mount Everest!” Kali and I each push an end of the cardboard toward the middle, and a well-placed fold pops up, tenting into a peak.

“Those continents pushed up huge mountains right here in Northern Wisconsin. They were so big that their peaks were covered with snow.” At that point Kali drapes a piece of pure white flannel over the cardboard mountain. “They were bigger than the Rocky Mountains, and maybe bigger than Mount Everest, too. And they were RIGHT HERE.”

At this point in the skit, I take a look around the room to watch eyes go big and round, foreheads crinkle in thought, and heads shaking in disbelief. Geology is astounding, that’s one reason Kali and I both studied it at Northland.

“A couple billion years later (give or take) something else happened on this new continent,” I continue. “It started to rip apart. The crust stretched and thinned.” At this point, Kali pulls a section of the brown cardboard “continent” away, revealing swirling shades of red and orange in the gap. “Lava pushed up from within the Earth,” I continue, “broke through the thin spots, and volcanoes erupted TONS of lava into the area where Lake Superior is today.”

“That lava cooled and hardened into a dark gray rock we call basalt. Have any of you picked up a dark gray rock off the ground?” Heads nod. “That rock was molten lava 1.1 billion years ago.” Eyes go wide.

“After that lava hardened, rain, snow, ice, wind, and gravity started to break the high places into smaller pieces and wash them downhill. Have you ever seen water carrying sand and rocks away?” Some students nod more vigorously than others while I pull our cardboard mountain flat, and Kali whips out another piece of carboard to cover up the lava. This sheet is painted tan with speckles to represent the sandstone that formed in the rift basin that would become Lake Superior. “So much sand piled up that it squashed together and turned into sandstone.”

“Finally, many years after that,” I continue, “huge mountains of moving ice came down from Canada.” Kali hands me a pale blue bed sheet and asks for four volunteers. Once a student is holding each of the corners, we have them carry the sheet down the length of our cardboard continent. “Those glaciers scraped across Northern Wisconsin, flattened off the high spots, broke the rocks into pieces, and carried the pieces away with them,” I narrate as the student-powered glacier moves.

“And then, when the glacier finally melted…” at this point Kali and I quickly flip over our brown cardboard and swirl the glacier sheet off to the side. This reveals a green landscape dotted with small lakes and a sinuous river. “The glacier left behind the lakes, rivers, and hills we see today.”

“How many of you like to go fishing? Paddling? Tubing? Mountain biking? Skiing? Four-wheeling?” Little hands raise and wave excitedly when I call out their favorite recreation. “The lakes and rivers and hills that make those activities so fun in Northern Wisconsin are all thanks to the way that the glaciers and geology shaped our landscape!”

After that, I take the students into our new exhibit “The Northwoods ROCKS: Where Geology is the Foundation for Fun,” to learn even more.

Raise your hand if you like rocks…awesome! You’re invited, too!  

Virtual Exhibit Tour

Students on a field trip complete a scavenger hunt in The Northwoods ROCKS exhibit at the Cable Natural History Museum. Photo by Joshua Hintze.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our new exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open now! Our Summer Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.