Ah, it’s mid-April in Wisconsin and, right on cue, snow popped back up in the forecast and temperatures this week are going to struggle to get above freezing. Spring, it seems, is on hold for us land-dwelling types. But, in our rivers and lakes and even roadside ditches, the water is just fine for our …
After a week of our walleye research in the news, it made us think back on past posts. Then we stumbled upon this one from 2013 when, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologist, Kurt Welke, poured more than a quarter of a million fish into our boat slip here at Hasler Lab. Enjoy! …
Trout Lake Station’s summer science communication intern, Bethany Prochnow, wasted no time getting out with a field crew. Read below to learn why she went fishing in the dark.
MADISON – When we think about the world’s fisheries, the images that readily spring to mind are big ships hauling nets full of wriggling fish up from the depths of a lake or an ocean. What we don’t picture is an individual angler perched in a boat or standing on a pier casting a line …
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Contact cjwatras (at) wisc (dot) edu, 608-356-4892 BOULDER JUNCTION, WI – A new study has found an unexpected connection between water levels in lakes and toxic mercury levels in fish. When droughts cause water levels to drop, the levels of mercury found in fish also plummet. In extended periods of wetter weather, …
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 …
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 …
Night was falling quickly over Big Muskellunge Lake. The pink glow of sunset was fading to grey, and a damp wind that cut through my thin raincoat had kicked up over the water. On our boat, Miriam Burgos pointed low at the horizon. “Do you see it?” she gasped. I followed her finger toward the …
by Sydney Widell – At the start of every fishing season, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources embarks on the arduous task of setting catch limits on the state’s popular game fish like walleye. In order to estimate how many fish anglers may safely remove from a lake while still keeping the population healthy, the …
by Sydney Widell For walleye and other northern Wisconsin fish, a warming climate may mean smaller populations and shrinking ranges, said Center for Limnology Director, Jake Vander Zanden, in a lecture Wednesday. Addressing a crowd of homeowners and area fisherman at the Nicolet Area Technical College, Vander Zanden illustrated the way warming lakes, among other …