University of Wisconsin–Madison

Tag: Holly Embke

Tale of Two Fishes: Experiment Finds Wildly Different Outcomes for Cool-Water Species in Warming Waters

by Adam Hinterthuer – When Holly Embke was a graduate student at the UW-Madison’s Center for Limnology, she began an extremely labor-intensive research project – one that required catching and removing as many warm-water fishes from a lake in northern Wisconsin as possible. By the time she had earned her PhD, Holly and her team …

Resistance is (Sometimes) Futile: Study Says That, In Many Lakes, It’s Time to Accept Change and Plan for the Future of Fishing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – by Adam Hinterthuer As lakes across the upper Midwest warm, cool-water species of fish are finding it harder to thrive. In Wisconsin, that trend is especially noticeable in struggling walleye populations. Walleye are important to many Indigenous communities, a top target in the state’s sport fishery, and a popular item on …

Study Finds That, In Wisconsin, Eating Local Often Involves a Rod and Reel

Call it the “lake-to-table” movement. A new study in the journal Fisheries looked at the fish-harvesting habits of the million-plus anglers who annually fish Wisconsin lakes. What they found is that, armed with little more than a rod and reel, Wisconsin anglers are really good at bringing home the bacon – or, rather, fillet. Federal …

UW-Madison Undergrads Cast a Wide Net to Catch Ecological Change on McDermott Lake

Over the course of the last four months, PhD student Holly Embke and her team of undergraduate researchers have systematically removed more than 80,000 bass and panfish from McDermott Lake in southern Iron County as part of a whole-lake experiment studying the way those species interact with the lake’s declining walleye population. But in a …

80,000 Fish Later, Researcher Wraps Up Summer Season of “Bass-Walleye” Study

by Sydney Widell – Holly Embke’s Subaru is nearly packed and, besides a few boxes, her desk is vacant. In a few hours, she’ll be leaving Trout Lake Station and driving home to Madison – another field season behind her and a summer’s worth of data to process. Which means that Holly’s job is just …

Off The Reel: Two Rounds of Shock and Awe with Bass-Walleye Crew

by Riley Steinbrenner “Just a little bit more!” UW-Madison undergrad, Ishita Aghi, yelled from the front end of the electrofishing boat as Matt Chotlos, another UW undergrad, slowly backed up the only diesel fleet truck on station until the hitch met the boat’s trailer. With three box headlights, a guard rail and two sets of …

Trout Lake Research Rewind: Fyke Nets & Native Mussels

by Riley Steinbrenner Week Seven This summer, CFL graduate students Martin Perales and Holly Embke are busy catching fish on their two study lakes–Sandy Beach Lake and McDermott Lake in Iron County–using a lot of different methods. One of these involves a net called a Fyke net. Fyke nets are generally used to trap smaller …