(Ethereal chime swells) (upbeat music begins) - [Bret] On today's "Prairie Sportsman", we host some anglers from north of the border to go ice fishing for sturgeon on the St.

Croix.

- Welcome to Minnesota.

- Well, thank you.

- [Bret] Then we learn about work being done to restore native aquatic plants in Minnesota's Lakes.

- Our underwater forests are just the bedrock of our lake systems.

- Welcome to "Prairie Sportsman," I'm Bret Amundson, we got another great show starting right now.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Sportsman" is provided by the Minnesota Environment 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.

- Well, it's no secret people like catching big fish.

And in Minnesota, to catch the big ones, a lot of times you gotta head to the rivers.

Sturgeon are becoming more and more popular in the State of Minnesota, and we're back here on the Saint Croix River with Darren Troseth bringing down a couple of guys from north of the border for their first experience for Sturgeon in Minnesota.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music begins) I spend a lot of time in Saskatchewan.

Once in a while I'm able to bring my friends down from the province to experience what Minnesota has to offer.

I reached out to Darren Troseth from Three Rivers Fishing Adventures, who invited us to spend some time near the newish Stillwater Bridge, called the St.

Croix Crossing, going after big sturgeon.

- I'm Darren, nice to meet you.

- Trevor Montgomery.

- Nice to meet you.

Ready to catch some sturgeon?

- Oh, that sounds great.

- Yeah?

- Yeah.

- They're out here.

There's a lot of big fish out here.

We'll see some probably swim through, and hopefully we get a few of 'em to bite.

- Excellent.

- [Darren] There's some big fish out here.

- Right on, yeah, looking forward to it.

It's a nice big river, hey, looks great.

- [Darren] Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Welcome to Minnesota.

- Well, thank you.

- [Bret] Can you understand his accent?

- I can get it pretty, most of his words.

- [Bret] I was talking to Darren.

- I know, I know.

Yeah, I've been pretty fortunate.

I live in Saskatchewan, so we got a lot of sturgeons.

So I fish them around my home in Saskatchewan River and Tobin Lake in Saskatchewan there.

- [Darren] Oh, right on.

- [Trevor] Got some land up there.

So I fish there quite a bit.

And then I've also been to British Columbia to the Fraser River to fish.

- [Darren] Oh, you got spoiled.

- [Trevor] Yeah.

Yeah, we've had some amazing days out there, that's for sure.

- [Darren] Very nice.

- The tug is the drug though, man.

Don't matter how big they are, how whatever.

- [Bret] A few years ago, Darren caught the state record sturgeon through the ice.

When he brought it up, it didn't fit through the holes.

He needed to cut more, but his auger batteries had died.

He had to enlist the help of somebody fishing nearby to cut the holes for him.

Do you have enough auger batteries in case we need to drill a couple.

- I do.

I learned my lesson.

Yeah, I never, I'm always prepared now.

Like you learn from your mistakes and I've learned.

So hopefully we won't run into that ever again.

- [Bret] Darren's been guiding on the St.

Croix for a long time.

Not only does he have adequate auger batteries on this trip, but a lot of other accessories to make us comfortable and hopefully successful.

- We got set up for four people today, so we got the mat set up and got some chairs set up.

I'm Darren by the way.

- [Barry] Darren, I'm Barry.

- [Darren] Barry, nice to meet you.

Getting to be about that time we need some light.

Live scope's set up.

We got some double holes.

We got a bonus hole in case we get some crappies come through, but we're just gonna sit and wait.

Hopefully we'll have a big girl come through.

- [Bret] Do you think there's a time of day that's better than others?

- I do feel that the low light hours is probably better.

You know, sun up, sundown.

You can catch 'em right out here in the middle of the day though.

And I have, so I tell people the best time to be out here is when you can be out here.

All right, so basically we just have some glow beads and I just use a bullet weight, like a three eighths ounce, and then a treble hook.

I think that's like a two aught treble hook.

Got some crawlers on there.

And then we will pinch off minnow.

And I do like to put one live one on there, just to have a little movement.

So I usually just tail hook this one, something like that.

Nothing special.

And then we got a little glow light down here.

We'll glow these beads up.

Well I actually think the barbs are better just for keeping your bait on.

- [Trevor] Oh, absolutely.

- [Darren] Not necessarily for catching the fish.

- Yeah, well it definitely doesn't hurt to keep the fish on, but definitely the bait, absolutely, eh.

- [Bret] Using barbs and live bait isn't something the guys normally get to do.

- No, not at Tobin we don't get barbs.

The rest of Saskatchewan we can use barbs.

Just our quality waters, our trophy waters we can't use.

Forget when we went to Devil's Lake, you remember that?

It was like, right on, I can finally fish with live minnows.

So we get down there, we sit down, Bret grabs this minnow, I'm thinking he's gonna hook it onto the bait, and he pinches the head off and sticks on the bait.

And I said, well why do you pay the premium for live minnows when you're just pinching the head off?

- [Darren] When these fish come through?

- [Trevor] Yep.

- [Darren] Sometimes it's just like a bright orange mark, like this just going right through the mud, and sometimes it doesn't even look like a fish.

It's just a big.

- [Trevor] A blob.

- Big blob, yeah.

- So what's the technique when they come through and they actually take, what should we expect?

- So we'll see 'em come through on the sonar here and they'll be kind of going back and forth around our baits and all of a sudden they'll just start like hovering right where your bait is.

And we're looking for any movement of that bobber.

Most of the times what we like to see is that bobber will just like flip on its side and then you know they sucked it up and then you can set the hook.

But sometimes that bobber just starts bobbing, so you gotta lift up and feel weight.

If you feel weight then you'll just set the hook, so.

Just kind of a let them do whatever they need to do.

But sometimes we will jig it when they're doing that too and kind of stirs stuff at the bottom and get some scent going and then they'll find it.

Their pec fins are like airplane wings when they're coming through the water, and so these lines are straight up and down, right, so they swim into your line and it just pulls the line and then they get hooked in the fins sometimes.

- [Trevor] Heck of a fight then, I bet.

- Oh yeah.

A big coal plant over here, I dunno if you saw that smoke stack over there, but they have a warm water discharge and so it's right out in front of there.

It's basically open to the middle of the channel.

There's a big section of open water out there.

That does tend to attract some fish there.

Attracts the bait, but it also attracts these mud puppies.

It's just like loaded with these mud puppy salamanders over there.

So they get kind of frustrating too to sort through those all night.

- [Trevor] Oh, they'll bite and eat too?

- Oh yeah.

- It takes, actually, it takes a lot of talent to catch one of those.

Just watch an old "Prairie Sportsman."

- [Trevor] You're an old pro.

- [Darren] That's exactly what we're looking for here.

You wanna lift yours up just for a reference?

- [Trevor] Sure.

- [Darren] Just lift it up a little bit.

Okay, he's right on it, yeah.

- Come get it buddy.

- [Darren] Lift it up and feel if you feel anything you can kind of jig it a little bit.

- Nothing yet.

- [Darren] Yeah, sometimes you can just like stir up the bottom.

You'll see, yeah, you got his attention when you did that.

Boy, he just moved right in and out right when you did that.

- So like, keep twitching, or give it a couple and then let it sit for a bit?

- [Darren] Yeah, I would just let it sit.

Sit on the bottom.

He'll find it.

- [Trevor] Boy, he's looking at me.

- [Barry] Trevor's side, try to steal him.

- [Bret] Get 'em, Barry.

- [Darren] Coax him over.

Oh, you might have.

Yep, here he comes.

(Barry laughs) - Going back.

(all laugh) - Oh, where'd he go?

- [Darren] It's over there to the right.

- [Trevor] In between, eh?

- [Darren] Oh, he came back.

- [Trevor] Swimming over that way now, eh?

- Yeah, so when we see that these fish come in and we see that bobber moving, a lot of times we'll just set the hook, you know?

'Cause they won't pull a bobber all the way under.

So they're sucking that bait up, and a lot of times they're filtering it, 'cause all the mud and stuff down there.

So they suck it up and then they spit it out, and they suck it up and they spit it up.

So they're, that's your bobber going up and down when they're doing that.

So we just usually tend to set the hook.

All right, drop that one down.

(group laughs) - [Bret] Go on buddy, go over here.

Uh oh, you gotta, - [Darren] There's two of them down there or something.

- [Bret] That's your line thing.

So normally when you go to set the hook, would you typically reel up to feel weight and then set, or you just set when the bobber's jiggling?

- [Darren] I don't think there's a wrong way to do it.

You're either gonna catch 'em or you're not gonna catch 'em.

- [Trevor] Certainly, yeah.

- But I usually do tend to lift up, and then if I feel a little weight then I'll set it.

But it's kind of hard to teach people what you're feeling for.

- [Trevor] What weight you want, I imagine.

- If it's a big fish, obviously you're gonna feel it.

It's gonna be a lot of weight.

A smaller fish you might not recognize it right away, but for sure if the bobber tips sideways on its side, set the hook right away.

Otherwise they will, I think they do have kind of sensitive mouths.

- [Trevor] They'll spit it out.

- They'll spit it out and they'll just move on.

- [Trevor] Yeah.

- Oh, there we go.

- [Barry] Yep, yep.

- Nope.

- [Darren] Nothing?

- Nothing.

- [Darren] Oh, there he is.

- [Trevor] Missed him.

There was a little something there for you.

First of all, I thought wait, that's why I wanted to set it, but.

- [Darren] Little trail of tears here.

(all laugh) - [Trevor] That was tears, that's for sure.

- [Darren] Oh, he's on you now.

- Come on.

- [Darren] He had it.

- [Trevor] Well I was expecting weight there.

- Well he tapped it a little.

- [Bret] Yeah, he did.

- Just gave it a little.

- [Trevor] Same thing he's doing with me.

I think it's another mud puppy.

- [Bret] It might be.

- [Trevor] If he can find it, there we go.

- [Darren] Oh, you got 'em?

- Yeah.

- [Darren] What is it though?

Mud puppy?

- He doesn't feel very heavy.

Perch.

- [Darren] Oh it's a perch!

- [Bret] I told you we were going perch fishing!

- Ah, you did too, totally.

That's funnier than hell.

- [Bret] I never would've guessed that, man.

- That is funnier than hell.

- [Bret] I never would've guessed that.

That's funny.

- [Trevor] Nice.

- [Darren] Nice Perch.

- [Trevor] It's actually a pretty nice one.

- [Darren] It is.

- [Bret] So you like to use 40 inch extra heavy custom rods when you perch fish?

- Yeah.

That's how you know.

- [Trevor] That perch bent that rod, eh?

- You know you're a good fisherman when you can finesse them with that extra heavy rod.

- [Trevor] A 50 pound Power Pro.

- That is a big fish right here.

He's right on, oh.

- [Trevor] Two of them.

- [Darren] There is two of them.

Man, look at that.

- [Trevor] See maybe they're breeding.

- [Darren] Eat it!

Eat it.

- [Trevor] Come on, Darren.

- Yeah, eat it.

(Darren laughs) Oh man, look at the size of that thing.

Come on over.

Oh, he's like, "I'm going back this way."

This live scope is so frustrating.

Oh, he's coming back.

- [Bret] It's like a camera, eh?

Underwater camera, same deal too.

It is like, come on already.

- [Darren] You know what would be worse though?

Not even knowing, just staring at your bobber.

- [Bret] Well you wouldn't be worse, 'cause you wouldn't know.

- [Darren] Yeah, but how boring is that, just staring at your bobber.

- [Trevor] Yeah, no, I hear you.

- [Darren] Oh, oh, eat it.

That would be awesome if he ate it right there.

He's going to eat yours now.

It's coming right on you.

- [Barry] Oh, eat it.

Just eat it.

- [Darren] Oh, he's on it.

- [Trevor] He's moving it.

- [Darren] He's on it.

Oh.

Oh, let it down.

Oh.

Oh, look at that thing.

Oh man.

- [Trevor] He bumped him up to hit it with his fin or whatever on the way by, hey.

Yeah, he's coming off the bottom.

- [Darren] Five footer.

Yeah, he might've bumped it with his fin or his tail or something.

- [Trevor] That's why I just lifting for weight, but there's nothing.

- [Bret] Well, in the outdoor TV world, timing is everything.

While I had stepped out to take some scenic photos of the bridge and the area around us, Barry hooked up with a sturgeon.

So I hustled inside just in time as they lifted the fish outta the water.

- [Trevor] Nice.

- [Darren] There he is.

All right.

- [Barry] Sweet.

- [Darren] You see how the bobber went on its side like that?

That's like a guarantee when it goes on the side.

- [Barry] Then it kind of hit and he came up.

- [Bret] Who caught it?

- [Trevor] Barry.

- [Barry] Yeah.

- [Bret] Good boy, Barry.

- There you go.

- Nice.

- We can measure that one if you want.

We gotta open it to 80?

I don't think so.

He's probably like 35, 36.

- [Barry] Yeah, I think 34, I'd say - [Darren] 34.

- [Barry] 35, 34.

- [Darren] 34.5, good eye.

- [Barry] Nice, nice, nice.

- [Darren] Here you go.

He's pretty strong.

- Yeah.

- My first American sturgeon.

- [Bret] Love it.

- [Trevor] Nice, awesome.

- [Barry] Cool buddy.

- [Trevor] Thank you Darren.

- [Darren] Let this guy go.

- [Darren] They usually wave goodbye to you too as they go down the hole.

There he goes, waving goodbye.

All right, good job.

Right on.

Nice.

- [Bret] What did I say?

As soon as I went outside with the camera.

- [Darren] Never fails.

- [Bret] You guys will catch a fish.

- Just get the camera out of the way and we start catching fish.

- [Trevor] Yeah, absolutely.

- [Bret] All right, I'm gonna go back outside.

If you're going to fish this Saint Croix River in the winter, there's something you need to be aware of.

Every so often, the Xcel Energy power plant begins operating.

During operation, warm water is discharged from the plant and that can create thin ice and even open water.

Fortunately, those seeking big sturgeon on the river have a lot of area to choose from.

- Where I caught that 78 incher, I was with my friend and we were just driving around like, this looks like a spot away from people.

Let's just fish here.

I mean that's, just a random spot, you know?

- [Trevor] Another mud puppy?

- [Darren] You want catch her?

- [Trevor] Oh sure, I'll take that.

I've never caught one, so.

- [Darren] I think he's on there.

Maybe he fell off.

No, he is on there.

- [Trevor] No, he's on there.

He's fighting like crazy.

(group laughs) It's taking the drag, man.

Oh yeah!

Woo!

- This is fairly typical of a night out here.

You know, you see some fish come through, you got the mud puppies, you got big fish you're hoping to catch, and then you catch a fish in between, you know?

And hopefully one of those big fish will bite, so it's just, it's a waiting game.

And this is what it's like out here most of the nights.

- [Bret] Well, Trevor, you never caught a crappie before, but you got perch.

- Darren got me on mud puppy.

(group laughs) Excellent, I always wondered, I've seen them around, I've seen some videos of 'em, so it's always cool to catch one.

So excellent, another species, a new PB.

(group laughs) - [Bret] The St.

Croix River can offer great multi-species fishing right next to the Twin Cities.

You might even catch the biggest fish of your life.

(diver splashes) (dramatic music begins) Beneath the surface of Minnesota's Lakes exist vast underwater forests that serve as an important habitat for aquatic animals of all kinds.

For years, these ecosystems have been threatened by invasive species like curly leaf pondweed, Eurasian and hybrid watermilfoil, and starry stonewort.

On the frontline against these invaders are researchers at the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center, or MAISRC.

Their battle plan against invasives involves more than simply stopping the invaders.

(dramatic music continues) - Invasive plants can be a problem in lakes for a number of reasons.

One is that they can just grow really densely, produce floating mats that are a nuisance for lake users, and interfere with recreation.

All that abundant growth can also affect native plants by shading them out and displacing them.

And there are also variety of environmental consequences.

All that dense growth can just change light, and oxygen, and then potentially have effects on fish and other animals that we care about in lakes.

One thing that's really important for people to understand is that eradication is almost never a feasible management goal with aquatic invasive plants.

So eradication would be fully eliminating the population.

That is just about impossible to do.

- We have a lot of invasive plants in our lakes across Minnesota, and every year we go out and treat hundreds of them with herbicide.

But the problem is, oftentimes the invasive plants keep coming back, and the native plants, which are needed to reestablished the plant community there don't.

So we're hoping that by planting native plants back in there after these herbicide treatments, we're able to break that kind of herbicide cycle and get good things back.

- To be clear, we're not here just to kill invasive species.

We're here to restore ecosystems.

Once we develop tools to get those invasive species out of a water body, we have to think about that restoration piece.

It's an essential component.

(dramatic music continues) (upbeat music begins) Think about a forester maybe who's managing trees, cuts the timber down.

You have to replant.

It's not expected that it's just going to come out of nowhere.

And the same is true for lake ecosystems.

It's just an underwater forest.

We have to, in some cases, give it a little oomph to get it going again.

We wanna be real sure that something else doesn't take over that open space in the environment.

- As somebody who is a plant ecologist, I care about the native plants themselves and their biological diversity.

So I wanna see them there, kind of for their own right.

But that aside, native plants are really valuable to have in lakes for stabilizing sediment, providing cover and refugia for fish and other animals.

They contribute to good water quality and potentially even taking up space to reduce the extent to which the invasive plants come back following management.

They bring a host of different benefits.

- Our underwater forests are just the bedrock of our lake system.

So without healthy plant communities, it's really hard to achieve anything else in a lake, like having good fish habitat, having good water clarity.

- So one of the species that Abha has been working with is Vallisneria Americana, or water celery is one of the names for it.

And that's a species that ducks love, in particular canvasback ducks.

It's in their Latin scientific name.

This plant species is right there built into it, 'cause they love to feed upon it.

So that's an example of an aquatic plant species where there's a direct wildlife benefit.

- [Bret] However, saying you're bringing native plants back and doing it are two very different things.

- Dealing with things underwater is difficult, because oftentimes a lot of these conditions that lead to invasive species and deteriorated lakes happen simultaneously.

So you have low water clarity, you have other invasive species other than plants, like zebra mussels, et cetera.

And these can really complicate that revegetation process by making the conditions difficult for those native plants to establish, but also for us to go in there and reestablish them.

(upbeat music continues) - [Bret] Researchers hope that someday the process of restoring native plants underwater will look very similar to that of another ecosystem.

- Many people will be familiar with prairie restoration.

Maybe they've even been involved as volunteers or had it done on land that they hunt on.

And any of us could go online today and order some really good native seed mixes to go out and do that restoration.

And I think of aquatic plant restoration, we're kind of in the dark ages compared to what's been developed for terrestrial restoration.

So not only can you not go online and order those plant species, for the most part, with a few exceptions, but there's really basic questions about propagating those species.

There's basic questions about their seed biology and establishment that are unanswered.

And there are also special challenges to working in aquatic environments.

And it requires really labor intensive, technically challenging things, like Abha has been doing in her research, going in and scuba diving, hand planting these things.

- [Bret] One aspect of the MAISRC project is to make these labor intensive efforts more successful.

- The standard practices in the state right now is that you would go to a donor lake that has a really healthy native plant population and take those plants and put them in a more degraded lake.

And so we're looking at different techniques, such as wrapping them in burlap to make sure their roots sink and establish.

We'll dive and we'll use landscaping staples to put them in there.

And we're looking at different species and method combinations to see what's really gonna work.

(gentle music begins) - [Bret] In addition to improving traditional methods, researchers are seeking answers to questions that could potentially lead to a game changing approach to restoring aquatic plants.

- I think the biggest breakthrough that we need to increase capacity for lake restoration of plant communities is being able to do seed based restorations.

And if we were able to reliably germinate seed of these species, we could really scale up what we do.

So Abha's been doing really exciting things in the lab, investigating how she can improve germination of native aquatic plant species.

- Some of the most exciting things that we've found is that we've been able to germinate and grow 11 different species this year, which is really exciting for us.

- There's been past efforts, past research where we've had very poor germination, where there have been species where we couldn't get any of the seed to germinate, or they would germinate, but in really low numbers.

And so what Abha has done on the technical side is kind of investigate how to collect, store, treat, the care of that seed to get better germination.

And it's led to results that I did not expect.

I was very skeptical at first and I've been blown away by how much is germinating.

And the hope is that, over time we can translate that into the field and eventually be able to do seed based restoration of aquatic plant communities, which would be huge.

- I would wanna highlight that there's so much amazing work happening already by folks across the state.

And so what we're really hoping with this project is that we can gain a more like, synthesized understanding of what's going on.

There are these big questions of which plants, how do we get them back, when do we put them back?

How long is it gonna take?

- It's a great example though of the progress of research.

Over the last decade or so, we would not have been thinking about the idea of restoring post-treatment.

Like treating was our big question.

Like we didn't even know how to do it or do it successfully all that well.

Like now we're talking about restoring it.

And that is a huge transition, and we have some of the best and brightest scientists working on this topic here in Minnesota and Minnesota's problems.

That's an incredible resource.

- [Abha] I love being outside, I love being in the lakes.

I love diving.

But being able to use those in a solution oriented way that I hope will have these resounding impacts and be able to improve that outdoors over time is something that really excites me.

- My pie in the sky hope for long-term impacts is that we could be talking 20 years from now and you would be able to go online and purchase native aquatic plant species for use in restoration, and that we would have the methods worked out well enough that it'd be a high chance of success.

The work is still underway, so we don't know where it's gonna take us, but I think this could be a big step in the fight against invasive species to have that natural resistance to re invasion.

- [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.

(upbeat music begins) - [Narrator] 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.

(ethereal chime swells)