An alien experience they just keep coming back for: fish hatcheries in Illinois with Kayleigh Smith

Abigail: 00:07

Welcome to another episode of the everyday environment podcast where we explore the environment we see every day. I'm your host, Abigail Garofalo.

Karla: 00:15

And I'm your cohost, Karla Griesbaum.

Abigail: 00:18

And today, we are here with Kayleigh Smith, the natural resources coordinator for the IDNR Jake Wolf Memorial Fish Hatchery and here to chat about fish hatcheries in Illinois. Welcome.

Kayleigh: 00:30

Hello. I'm happy to be here. I'm very excited to tell people about the work that we're doing at Jake Wolf and also other hatcheries in the state.

Abigail: 00:38

Well, it's awesome. We're excited to have you. This is a aspect that I feel like a lot of our audience and people across the state don't have a lot of experience with to kinda see what what goes on at these fish hatcheries, what what, you know, kinda work they're doing. And so why don't you just tell start off with telling us about your work with the fish hatchery?

Kayleigh: 00:55

Yeah. So my job at the fish hatchery for me specifically is showing people who don't work at the hatchery the things we do here. So I take people on tours at the hatchery where we can go behind the scenes and get really up close to the little baby fish that we're raising here. I also run the social media. Not everyone's able to make it to the hatchery, but they still wanna know what's going on.

Kayleigh: 01:16

So I try to keep that updated so people can see what we're doing and get very excited about the fish that are about to come close to them. I also go visit classrooms and do science fairs and career fairs and, the state fair. I do that. I, basically, anywhere that people want to learn more about fish, I'm happy to go to them. It doesn't cost anyone anything, for me to come teach them about aquatic resources in the state.

Abigail: 01:45

There you go. So call up Kayleigh if you wanna learn more.

Kayleigh: 01:48

Yes, please. Please fill my schedule. It's pretty busy, but, like, there's room. I could be busier.

Karla: 01:54

So, Kayleigh, I've only been to one fish hatchery, and it was in Arizona. So I get

Kayleigh: 01:59

Oh, cool.

Karla: 02:00

I haven't been to one in Illinois. What exactly is it? What does it look like? And then what role does it play in our state's natural resource management?

Kayleigh: 02:11

Yeah. So a lot of the hatcheries let's say that you're wanting to come visit a hatchery. If you were to look us up on, you know, a map app or something to see how to get there, if you're looking at a satellite view, you'd see some kind of a building and usually a bunch of big rectangular looking ponds outside. That's pretty standard for a lot of hatcheries. And there's gonna be stuff inside the hatchery with tanks and things where we're raising fish, and then we also raising fish outdoors.

Kayleigh: 02:36

And so if you were to come to Jake Wolf Memorial Fish Hatchery, which is where I'm at, you would walk into a big building with a huge visitor center. And we're very lucky here. Not all hatcheries have the space for a visitor center, but when they built this particular building, they were very conscious of the fact that they wanted people to be able to come and learn about the hatchery. You'd be able to come in and see depending on the time of year because every month is different. Every week is different. Every day is a little bit different too.

Kayleigh: 03:02

But depending on when you came here, you might be able to see us bringing in wild muskie or pike from outside and spawning them in our spawn room where you might be able to see largemouth bass eggs in our incubation room, or you might be able to see Chinook salmon or coho salmon swimming around in our tanks inside, or, you know, big northern pike outside getting ready to get just big enough to go to a lake or, or something near you. And, yeah, something different every time just you come to a hatchery. Most hatcheries are gonna be like that.

Karla: 03:38

You mentioned spawning. What Mhmm. What does that look like?

Kayleigh: 03:42

Oh, that is thank you so much for asking. So it's a different fish species. The spawning methods that we use are going to be different. So I was I think I was talking about I mentioned musky and pike. Those are really cool, big, long predatory fish.

Kayleigh: 03:56

Some people kinda think they look like a barracuda, which I think is cool, and and they're not totally wrong. It's a big toothy fish that is an ambush predator. And we district biologists will capture these fish in lakes nearby and bring them into our hatchery, and we, for lack of a better term, we will squeeze the eggs and sperm out of them. And so we squeeze the eggs into and it's careful. Like, it's it's the fish are not hurt by this process.

Kayleigh: 04:23

We squeeze the eggs into it's essentially a stainless steel kitchen mixing bowl. I don't know if you knew that you could make musky at home, but you might be able to. You know? I wouldn't do that, but we we do that equipment. And then we squeeze the sperm out of the males and aspirate into test tubes so we can check it for motility, make sure that they're good to go and healthy, and then we mix it together, with some chemicals that help the egg and sperm, not decay.

Kayleigh: 04:53

So once they are activated by water, there's like a very tiny ninety second window for those eggs to get fertilized. And if they don't get fertilized in that window or if the sperm doesn't find an egg, they will start to decay at that point. So we try to use some buffering solutions to increase that time so we get higher fertilization rates. And then we take those eggs, we put them in an incubation jar. And so that is probably the most intense spawning process that we do at Jake Wolf.

Kayleigh: 05:19

It's an all day thing. It's very physically intensive for the people working here because we have to hold these fish that all they all the fish know is happening is that they're being handled out of their lake by a bunch of humans, and they want nothing to do with us. We do send them back to the lake where they came from, and tracking studies have been done to kinda see if do they survive this? And they do. And we get many that will come back year after year for this strange alien abduction experience.

Abigail: 05:47

Like a following. They're like, I'm here for it, bro.

Kayleigh: 05:50

Yep. Our free we we call them our frequent flyers.

Karla: 05:53

So I did put it in my own head about if this is happening to me. It's just like to be taken out of my environment. Mhmm. Having an I didn't want this IVF, but I'm getting it.

Kayleigh: 06:05

Yes.

Abigail: 06:07

I'm honestly thinking about, like, the people who are, like, really into, like, skydiving and, like Mhmm. Really, like, you know, like, exhilaration sports and things like that. It feels like that that for for this. Like, they're they're like, bro, you gotta try it. It's so cool. Come on a little ride. Come right back.

Kayleigh: 06:26

We know that some of these fish have the ability to learn certain things, so, like, maybe they remember from year to year. Who knows?

Kayleigh: 06:33

Other fish, we will let them spawn and nest outside. We give them little structures that they can lay their eggs in. We do this with small mouth bass and large mouth bass, and then we bring the eggs inside. So we just it's hands off. We put them in a tank.

Kayleigh: 06:45

We start giving them warm water. The warm water triggers that spawning behavior. Males will pick a nest structure. Females will pick a male, lay their eggs. It takes several hours for, you know, hundreds of thousands of eggs.

Kayleigh: 06:57

Sometimes we can get a million eggs in a day in that process, which is very cool. And but we let them we let them do that, and then we just go pick up the nest, which they are never pleased about. Some of the males get very, very feisty about that because they don't know they don't know that we're taking the eggs in to be safe.

Abigail: 07:15

Yeah. You, like, think you're picturing, like, a kind of a scientific lab environment. You're like, no. Actually, I'm, like, in it with the fish, and the fish are in it with me.

Kayleigh: 07:23

Like We're in the water, and we're interacting, and nobody's having a good time. So no. It's actually really fun. The spawning prod like, any any of the spawning is fun because we get to see cool fish behaviors. We get to see some really cool fish.

Kayleigh: 07:38

For this year, this spring when we brought in the musky, the biggest female that we had was 46 inches long, and she was so angry.

Abigail: 07:48

I am one of those people who's like, I love wildlife. I love nature. I'm a I'm a host of this podcast. Like, I love all those things. I love learning about them. But I something about big fish

Kayleigh: 08:01

Mhmm.

Abigail: 08:01

There's just something about that that feels it's like and I don't know. Like, sharks don't really scare me because I'm like, they're meant to be big. Right? And not all sharks are big, which is, like, not an Illinois thing. Right?

Abigail: 08:11

Like, we're not wanting to do that. But, like, something about big fish, Like

Kayleigh: 08:14

Like, in a lake that you could go get to in twenty minutes, there's big fish.

Abigail: 08:19

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why. I just am like, oh, that's a big 48 inches. That is a big fish.

Kayleigh: 08:26

Yeah. She was it was really cool to see her, and she's back in her home lake. She's doing good. She had a weird couple of days, and that that was it. A little blip.

Abigail: 08:35

And maybe she'll be back next year for, like, that wild ride, man.

Kayleigh: 08:39

Yeah. Who knows? She might be like, yeah. That was fine. So, yeah, she was yeah.

Kayleigh: 08:44

It was that was a very cool fish. She had, I think, three or four people had to, like, pick her up to hold her. Just we try to make sure that we're extremely careful with the fish. And sometimes if that means grabbing another person to help, we just do that. Like, no one's trying to prove anything here.

Kayleigh: 08:58

Cool. So we're just trying to make sure that the fish are safe and not hurting themselves while they're here so that way they can go live their normal life back where they're from.

Abigail: 09:08

Nice. Well, you talked about a lot of different species. You talked about, like, you know, you had the musky spawning this season. Mhmm. How do you determine which fish to stock and where they're released?

Kayleigh: 09:20

Yeah. That's I'm so glad you asked because I think it's a really cool process. So I how much do you like group projects? Like, when you were in school, thoughts on group projects?

Abigail: 09:34

I'm an abnormality. I like group projects, but I'm also, like I like to gather people. Yeah. I know. It's fine.

Kayleigh: 09:41

Okay. So maybe if you like group projects, you could be fisheries biologist. So managing these lakes, it's a collaborative thing. And so kind of roughly the process that happens, just as a general rule, is a biologist is managing a region that has you know, they're in charge of a set of lakes, ponds in their area, and they want to use stocking as one of their tools to manage fish populations in some of those lakes or ponds. And they will submit a request.

Kayleigh: 10:14

We have an online system that all the biologists use to submit these stocking requests. And then it will be leaders within the division of fisheries that can include, like, regional managers. It will include the chief of fisheries, and it will also include hatchery managers. And they have a discussion where they look at all the requests. They see where they're distributed, and they evaluate those requests against what the hatcheries can reasonably produce in a year.

Kayleigh: 10:40

And because each hatchery is working with multiple species and we're working with finite resources, like water, for example, you can only pump so much water through a hatchery even if the water at the other end of the of the pipe is, you know, unlimited, the pipes are only get so big. So we can only pump so much water, which means we are a little limited, and we have to figure out how many fish we can have at different times of the year and to make sure that we have enough water and enough tank space and ponds and labor to produce fish that are going to be healthy at the lengths that the different biologists want them to be stocked at into their into their lakes or ponds or rivers or whatever body of water they're managing.

Kayleigh: 11:22

And so that does mean that there might be requests that don't get fulfilled. And so in those meetings, they have to prioritize those requests. And it I'm not I've not been in those meetings, but I do know that sometimes, you know, someone doesn't get what they ask for one year, but they might get it the next year.

Kayleigh: 11:38

Or their manager will go back to them and talk to them about, you know, what what can be done. And most people are pretty happy as far as I have seen with what ends up happening. So So because we all are invested in everywhere in Illinois being healthy, and so it's and we are we're all coworkers. Everyone's been working together for years. A lot of people may have gone to school together, so everyone in the division

Abigail: 12:03

It's a small community. It's not the fish people in Illinois are grouping.

Kayleigh: 12:09

It's a small it's a small community, and that's really, really fun. It's one of my favorite aspects. Like, people know each other. They know we know everyone's families, because our jobs could be a little bit weird with you know, sometimes you have to do things on weekends or you have really long days, and you just end up getting to know more about people in those settings.

Karla: 12:27

Well, speaking of those days, I know you kinda mentioned some things that are going on at the hatchery. But on your typical day, what's going on at the hatchery, like fish care, facility maintenance, and all that good stuff?

Kayleigh: 12:40

Yeah. So a typical day will start at 8AM at this hatchery. There's a hatchery down south. They start earlier. They're trying to beat the heat.

Kayleigh: 12:48

But here, we started at 8AM, and for the first part of the day, it's chores. And so the chores are it's cleaning fish tanks, and it's refilling the automatic feeders that the fish have. And so, yeah, that has to happen every single day. That's just the first thing that we do in the morning. And then after that, there's no such thing as a typical day.

Kayleigh: 13:10

It is just whatever needs to be done that day. So I guess in that way, that's just thematically typical, whatever is happening. Sometimes it means that everyone who is a technician here is out on a stocking truck taking salmon to Lake Michigan. Sometimes it means that we're draining a pond or we're doing collecting bass spawns from outside or we're spawning pike inside or we're waiting for you know, we're cleaning and fixing things while we're waiting for a shipment of bloodworms to feed lake sturgeon. And it just everything kinda looks different.

Kayleigh: 13:42

I mean, sometimes you don't even know. Today, we lost power. So we're currently running on an emergency generator system right now. And so I that changed the day for pretty much everyone, even for me, because I had to make sure that certain lights were turned off and just not using power you know, and I had to change some things in the visitor center to make sure that, people aren't just walking around in the dark.

Karla: 14:06

So you said Michigan. How what's the range that you send your fish?

Kayleigh: 14:11

We stock fish. It depends on it depends on the species. Okay. So we stock most of the Central Illinois region is us. Even sometimes we will take fish that are being raised by hatcheries to the north and south of us.

Kayleigh: 14:24

They'll bring them here, and then we do the stocking within Central Illinois because it is just easier logistically for us to do that.

Abigail: 14:32

Is that just, like, IDNR sites, or is it, like, other site requests and things

Kayleigh: 14:38

like that? Good question. So we only stock bodies of water that are publicly accessible. So they have to be managed by IDNR in some way, and they have to be accessible to anyone with a fishing license. And so we for some species, we're the only hatchery that produces them, and so we are the hatchery that stocks them.

Kayleigh: 14:57

So they're gonna be our Lake Michigan cold water species, our brown trout, Chinook salmon, coho salmon. We do some rainbow trout stockings up there, and we also stock steelhead trout up there. And that the stocking in Lake Michigan is actually why the Jake Wolf Memorial Fish Hatchery was built where it was, which I know sounds we're not close to Lake Michigan, but we are on top of an aquifer, the Mahomet Aquifer, that has clean water. It's 54 degrees Fahrenheit, which is right at the top of the temperature tolerance range for those cold water fish species when they're developing. And so it is most cost effective for those fish to be produced here rather than being produced up north with water that maybe needs to be filtered or chilled.

Kayleigh: 15:40

And so we yeah. We're all of our fish here are in well water. We have a solar pond outside that warms up well water for us that we can use for our warm water fish species. And so we were constructed with the idea that we would do warm water fish, cold water fish, and then the fish that are in between, which we call cool water fish. And that's why we do so many different species here.

Abigail: 16:02

Very cool. Interesting.

Kayleigh: 16:04

So, yeah, the cold water fish, I'll go to Lake Michigan. But then for musky and pike, we're the only hatchery in the state that does those, and we do all the stockings. Anywhere in the state that has musky or northern pike, those came from us.

Abigail: 16:14

Got it. Interesting. It's interesting you have to think about too, like, the physical location of where that hatchery is located, like Mhmm. Because it's such a like, water is such a big resource. So yeah.

Abigail: 16:26

So when it comes to, you know, looking at these hatcheries, you know, you're you're distributing the fish. These managers are making these decisions of these different ponds for part of their management plan. How how does that contribute to, like, conservation and maintaining healthy aquatic ecosystems?

Kayleigh: 16:42

Yeah. So for these biologists managing these systems, they have kind of a two part goal, but they build each other they build into each other. So they want to increase quality fishing opportunities for people, make sure people are gonna be able to fish for fish and have a good time, and they also want to have healthy ecosystems. And so the decision to stock or not stock fish is going to be a factor in both of those goals. They may choose not to stock fish in order to achieve those goals.

Kayleigh: 17:09

Stocking is just one tool among many that managers have at their disposal. It's not going to be the right tool in every for every, you know, problem that a manager might face, but it is the right tool sometimes.

Abigail: 17:22

I feel like having a lot of those different tools in your toolbox, that's a part of land management. Right? Like, it's like Mhmm. Fire isn't always the answer, right, for for land ecosystems, but it's the right answer in some instances, and it's the right answer in certain spaces. Right? Same with, like, stocking, like you were saying.

Kayleigh: 17:40

Mhmm. Yeah. And, historically, stocking was kind of a default answer. The field of fisheries management as a whole came out of fish culture. So the growing of fish, the moving of fish to stock them.

Kayleigh: 17:53

The, you know, the US Fish Commission was a their big goal was aquaculture and stocking fish around The United States. And now in as I think 1940 was when they became what we now call the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The American Fisheries Society, which is a professional society for fisheries biologists, started with people who were doing aquaculture. And so you do see some of that kind of, play out today where people will reach out to stocking as, you know, kind of a first line tool. And it's a good tool in many in many circumstances, but it started to shift a little bit.

Kayleigh: 18:33

It's not always the right tool, or people are stocking in kinda different ways. There's cool research about how different sizes of fish do when they get stocked. Like, is it better if we grow a fish out to be six inches long, or will they survive better if we grow them out to 12 inches long? And, well, do they survive is the survivorship that much improved at that length that it's worth putting in the time and effort and taking away resources from growing other fish to cure this fish out to this size? There's really cool research on that front to really fine tune the fish stocking process from every part where it comes to collecting eggs to how how big we grow the fish out to to how we're stocking them physically, like the technology of the stocking trucks or how we're transporting them to the body of water where they're going.

Abigail: 19:17

Oh, interesting. Well, and I think with land management and conservation management in general, you also have to think about the economic side, right, and how we can afford to to do some of these restoration pieces and these ecosystem management pieces. And that's, you know, we talk about that with hunting. Hunting is also a population management tool as well, but it's also a a source of of funding and also connection building culturally with the natural resource. Right?

Abigail: 19:43

Like, we think about people who are really connected to the natural resources, who care really well for the natural resources, often are not people who are just like, oh, yeah. I know every fish, and that's how I know. Like, that's how I got that's why I love this lake because I know all the fish. Right? It's because I went hunting there or I went fishing there with my grandpa, and that's a core memory.

Abigail: 20:03

And now, like, I care for this landscape in this way. Right? And so it's an important, like, cultural connection as well as, like, an economic connection to to supporting these conservation efforts.

Kayleigh: 20:15

Yeah. That's definitely been my experience interacting with anglers is they're deeply connected to the places where they like to fish. They all have stories that are really important to them. They all love to take either their own kids or nieces and nephews fishing or grandkids. Get a lot of people visiting the hatchery who are grandparents bringing grandkids when they have days off from school, which is one of my favorite types of groups.

Kayleigh: 20:38

I like all my groups, actually, but that one's just really cool to see because they, you know, they leave the hatchery, then they go fishing at a lake that their grandpa was fishing at when he was little. So and I think that's a it's a cool thing.

Karla: 20:51

So speaking of that, what are some of the educational programs and opportunities that you offer?

Kayleigh: 20:57

We so the big ones that people most mostly know about if they know about the hatchery is that we offer free tours. So we have a visitor center that's open every day, and you can walk in there without a tour. And you can walk around the visitor center, and there's windows where you can see every production area in the hatchery. It is on the second story, so sometimes looking down, it can be kind of hard to pick out the little tiny fish in those tanks. But you can see what all those areas are, and there's stuff explaining them in different areas in the hatchery of different exhibits just explaining some of the history of some natural areas in Illinois.

Kayleigh: 21:31

We're about to get a new exhibit explaining talking about the Mahomet Aquifer, which I'm very excited about. So the visitor center is a great resource. We also do free behind the scenes tours. I'll take people downstairs, and we'll get right up next to the fish. You can't touch them, but you get to be right next to them, which is really cool.

Kayleigh: 21:48

Most people haven't had the opportunity to look down and see 6,000 musky at once or 1,000,000 largemouth bass eggs or a tank of 30,000 rainbow trout, and you can do that here at the hatchery. And on those tours, we'll also talk about, you know, fish life cycles, how they reproduce, how they would live in the wild, and how they're kinda like humans and how they're kinda not like humans and all the various ways that fish can be unlike humans. And we'll talk about the history of, you know, fish stocking in Illinois and also just how fisheries management works. And it can also be an opportunity for people to ask questions if they've had ever had any questions about aquatic anything in Illinois. I also, you know, can go to classrooms and do visits with teachers or, you know, classes.

Kayleigh: 22:39

I would we had some classrooms earlier this year that were raising trout in their classrooms, which is really cool. And so they got to see those trout every day, and then I went to go talk to them about trout and what fish are like in Illinois and how we raise them and what's gonna you know, what would happen to the trout after they got released. And so that was that was fun and cool. But, yeah, the the tours and the just the visitor center itself, it's a really cool research to have here in Mason County.

Karla: 23:07

So can you just come to the visitor center any day and just

Kayleigh: 23:11

Yeah. Any day the visitor center's open. I think sometimes on Christmas or, like, big holidays where the technician. So we do have someone working here every single day. But on holidays and a lot of weekends, there it's one person, and they are here to clean fish tanks and refill the feeders, and that's it.

Kayleigh: 23:29

They'll come up and unlock the visitor center at the beginning of the day, and then they'll come back up and lock it at the end of the day. So you don't get to interact with anyone working here. You'll probably get to see them running around downstairs. So if you wanna talk to people about it, then I would recommend scheduling a tour.

Abigail: 23:46

Yeah. Well, when, you know, we're thinking about the fish hatchery, you mentioned the Mohomet Aquifer. Mhmm. And we just finished a season season two of everyday environment. It was all about, like, water resources, water quality, things like that.

Abigail: 24:00

So that kinda makes me think about some of the challenges that have arisen from that, from water quality, climate change, or even just, like, habitat loss. What are some of those challenges that, like, related to those issues that hatcheries are facing today?

Kayleigh: 24:16

Man, how are those questions how are those things not impacting hatcheries? It would be a much easier question. I think I'll start with water temperature just as, like because it's a really good example because water temperature is impacting hatcheries on a big scale and also on a small scale. So if we're talking about climate change, average temperatures of, you know, air and water and just regions are increasing. We're seeing that.

Kayleigh: 24:42

So how that plays out in water is that water warms up earlier in the spring than maybe it used to, and it takes longer for a body of water to cool down in the fall. And this can impact fish hatcheries that are using surface water for their fish to be raised in. Because a lot of fish species every fish species I can think of, to be honest, there's probably an exception out there. But all the ones that we raise here, they are very sensitive to temperature during their early life stages. They're not that they're not sensitive as adults, but they're just a little more resilient.

Kayleigh: 25:17

But at their early life stages, having the temperature be off by just a few degrees can severely impact their development. If it's too warm, they can develop too quickly and hatch without a digestive tract, and that is not compatible with life. Once they've absorbed their yolk sac, that's pretty much it for them at that point. And so hatcheries can counteract that by implementing chillers, but chillers are quite expensive to run and use a lot of power to do that. It's not necessarily going to be cost effective for a lot of hatcheries to be able to do that and continue to stock fish.

Kayleigh: 25:51

So hatcheries are getting impacted in that way by temperature. Hatcheries are also having that water be too warm into the fall, has an impact. Here last year, for example, we were supposed to have, I think, a couple of days where we didn't have any fish in the hatchery, which would have been nice for getting some maintenance done. But we had steelhead trout that needed to get stocked into Lake Michigan, and we had to wait until the lake temperatures at the harbors where we stock them dropped enough for it to be safe for those fish to go to be stocked into Lake Michigan. If it was too warm, it would be a shock to their their little systems.

Kayleigh: 26:26

And so we had to keep them for a little longer, which meant that we had water flowing through the hatchery every single day, and we weren't able it impacts our ability to do some maintenance. And that's that's a tiny one. That's a little one. It just meant we didn't get any days off from fish, but it's something that we've noticed. Another thing that can happen as water temperature increases, you know, earlier in the year, it will a lot of adult fish, they will start their spawning process based on water temperature.

Kayleigh: 26:55

That's kind of the environmental cue they look for is for water temperature to be warm enough. But as the water temperature warms up a little too early or at least earlier than we're historically used to, then that changes how we have to schedule when we're bringing, like, these adult fish, like musky and pike, into the hatchery because their lake got warm warmer you know, it got warm enough for spawning a week or two weeks earlier than we're used to. And if that happens, you know, one year, that's fine. But if it's you see the creep year after year after year, it changes things, and that means you're bringing these fish into the hatchery earlier. You're starting them earlier, and it changes all the moving parts that you have at the hatchery with what species are there at what time using how much water, to live in.

Kayleigh: 27:37

And so impacting hatcheries in that way. Water quality is a problem for any hatchery that's using surface water. And as you have these bodies of water getting warm and staying warm, you have fish that are a little more susceptible to pathogens, maybe have new pathogens being introduced, and those pathogens are getting brought into hatcheries that are using surface water. Again, it's not really impacting Jake Wolf directly, but we collaborate with other hatcheries. And we are impacted in a maybe, like, two steps down the line.

Kayleigh: 28:07

And then the other hatcheries in Illinois do get more of that impact. So that's just that's just one way where water temperature changing and how, you know, lakes and rivers warm up and cool down over the course of the year. That's just the impact hatcheries in just a whole bunch of big and small ways.

Karla: 28:27

This is kind of a dirt question, but what happens when you have, like, fish die? Like, do you have you ever had a bunch of fish die and you have to do something with them?

Kayleigh: 28:37

So we are I mean, at different times, we'll have millions and millions of fish in the hatchery. And so if only, you know, a few fish from each tank die, that's still, a few buckets of fish that we have. And so we have a few things that we do with fish that have died, and part of that's the normal course of things. Other times, they can happen because the whole tank got a disease and what the fish weren't able to kick it. And so we if it's only a few fish that have died, we have a back pond that has a lot of fishes living in it.

Kayleigh: 29:08

It's part of our wastewater management system, actually. We have to process our own wastewater here because the fish just they they poop quite a lot, and they're producing a lot of waste. And so we have to process our own wastewater, and so we have a settling lagoon in the back. And there's plenty of fish living in there, and the fish are doing great. And so if it's only a few fish that have died, we'll put them in that pond.

Kayleigh: 29:32

But we have if it's more fish than that that have died, then we have pits that we dig, and then we fill them up with the dead fish, and then we cover them up. And we let them go back to nature in that way. So

Karla: 29:48

That makes sense.

Kayleigh: 29:49

Yeah. It is I get that question on, I think, probably two thirds of my tours because it's very likely if you come here, you might see one or two dead fish while you're here because you're looking at a tank that has maybe 50,000 fish in it perhaps. And so sometimes there will be a fish that is dying that day. Little baby fish have really high mortality rates in the wild. They have much lower rates in the hatchery, but it can be it it means you're gonna see probably one or two.

Abigail: 30:17

I was thinking about mortality rates in, like, wild fish versus, like, the hatchery, which is probably again, creating the perfect environment and incentivizing, like, we want higher or lower mortality rates in the hatchery because, like, that's you know, it's part of the you're to grow stuff, and then I give them more of a chance of success in those kinds of hatchery environments. So that, yeah, that was a solid question because I was like

Kayleigh: 30:43

Yeah. It really in the wild, I mean, you're looking at survival rates for a bunch of eggs getting to, like, what we would call a nonvulnerable size. They're not quite adult, but they're it's recognizably a fish. It's big, and it can it it could still get eaten by something really big, but it's not, you know, prey for everyone. It's maybe a 1% survival rate to that point in the wild, and fish compensate for that by laying thousands and thousands and thousands of eggs.

Kayleigh: 31:10

In the hatchery, we can get that survival rate up to eighty percent for some species, which I think really highlights just how many fish die in the wild due to inconsistent water temperatures or quality, like having low oxygen maybe or not being able to find food or being eaten. So you're still gonna have fish that have developmental issues. They also can sometimes eat each other. There's a few fish that we have that are big offenders when it comes to cannibalism, and that's a normal natural behavior for them. And we call we have our muskie are about to enter the cannibalism phase.

Abigail: 31:47

So you to have watching them real closely. They're like, no. No.

Kayleigh: 31:52

Yeah. If you think parenting is hard for humans, at least developmentally, we don't have a phase called the cannibalism phase. Whereas for muskies, that's just, like, a normal thing for them to just eat fish that are similar to them in size, which for them is gonna be a sibling.

Karla: 32:10

Sometimes I think my 12 year old daughter would love to do away with her nine year old sister. Right. But she lacks the equipment to do that. Right. Yeah.

Karla: 32:19

Hopefully.

Kayleigh: 32:19

So muskee you have the right equipment to do that. It's about the ratio of their mouth size to their body size, and so any of these fish would eat their siblings given the opportunity. But some of our fishes have smaller mouth relative to their body size. So I don't want anyone to walk away from here thinking that all these that some of these fish are cuddly and nice. These are all predatory fish.

Kayleigh: 32:41

Part of what makes them very fun to work with and what makes them really fun to fish for.

Karla: 32:47

Right. Well, working at a hatchery, you have to have a fun fish story. Right? You have to have a story that's just unique and interesting. So do you have one?

Kayleigh: 32:57

Oh. Oh, no. All my fun stories are about, like, a someone falling into the water.

Abigail: 33:09

What happens when somebody falls into the water?

Abigail: 33:11

I mean, it's like people were walking through big bodies of water. It's I feel like that's fair. You know?

Kayleigh: 33:17

So if anyone falls into the tanks here, they have to buy donuts for everyone else. Oh. So that is that is the rule. Because if you weren't watching your step and you weren't being careful and being mindful of what you're doing, that's why you know?

Kayleigh: 33:30

And so then you have to buy doughnuts for everyone else.

Abigail: 33:33

How many times have you had to buy doughnuts for everyone?

Kayleigh: 33:36

Zero. So if I worked on I was I did fisheries research on boats for a few years before I worked here. So I'm a little I like to think I'm a little steadier on my feet, than maybe some of the other I don't a lot of them go on boats to fish, but I think working on a boat, doing fish research for sixteen hours, like electrofishing for a full day, I do think that teaches you some some steadiness on your feet.

Karla: 34:02

Wow.

Kayleigh: 34:03

But, yeah, let's see. Fun fish stories. I think I have my favorite are just, like, the my favorite fish stories are kinda just, the heartwarming fish stories, where someone gets to see something really, really, really cool. So we back in March, this is on March 14, so pie day, we had a bunch of northern pike that were sitting in the eggs were sitting in jars. They haven't quite hatched out yet.

Kayleigh: 34:30

And I had a tour. It was a couple people, and I didn't I had no idea that they really liked fishing for pike. They were just coming to the tour to the hatchery, and I was gonna show them some pike eggs. And they happened to be there right when every single pike egg that we had hatched at the within, like, the same space of ninety minutes. And so they got to see that just happen, and, like, you can't you can't time a tour to make that happen.

Kayleigh: 34:56

I can't tell people, oh, yeah. If you come on this day and this time, you're gonna see it. I can tell people probably what week or what part of the month that's gonna happen, but there's still these are living organisms. There's, you know, a ton of other factors. They could have missed it by, you know, an hour or two hours, But they didn't, and they got to see anyway, we just scrapped the whole rest of the tour.

Kayleigh: 35:17

Like, you know, I just changed the entire script. And, you know, if something cool happens at the hatchery, I'm always going to change the script, and we just go look at the cool thing that's happening.

Abigail: 35:25

Yeah.

Kayleigh: 35:26

So that one was a cool one that happened a couple months ago that, like, made me feel really happy about my job. I do like my job just overall. It's a great work environment and a great job to have. But, yeah, that one was really cool. And then we had a young man.

Kayleigh: 35:40

He was in high school, and he wants to be a fish biologist someday. And how cool that he is a junior in high school and knows exactly what he wants to do someday. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was 17. And he came for a tour just to check it out, and then he emailed me and asked if he could come back to observe a bass spawn. And so I worked with him and I made sure they were able to get him in on a day that we were spawning largemouth bass and collecting those eggs, and he got to get right up next to the action.

Kayleigh: 36:08

It was just really cool. His mom, he skipped school that day. They get, like, a certain number of days that they I guess they can skip school to go do a job shadow or look at colleges or whatever. So it wasn't, like, bad that he skipped school, but I think his mom would have let him skip school anyway to get to see that. But, yeah, that was really fun, and he got to talk to everyone here.

Kayleigh: 36:28

And everyone here loved talking to people. Kind of an interesting thing in a fish hatchery where every single person working here happens to be a people person. That's not always the case. That's the the stereotype of a fish biologist or someone who works with fish maybe just preferring to talk to the fish and not to the people, that usually holds up, not here, which is really fun.

Karla: 36:49

That is so heartwarming on several levels. Not only that you have a youth that is so passionate about something so young and, yeah, like, knows what they wanna do, but then to have an environment that they can go to and just be inspired and just, like, keep it rolling.

Kayleigh: 37:04

Yeah. Like, it's not, like, the funniest fish story in the world. Like but it's, like, it's, like I don't know. It's the kind of thing that makes it just really special to work in a place like this. And sometimes I forget how special it is to see the things here because, like, I do see all these fish every day.

Kayleigh: 37:18

This is very routine. I enjoy it, but it's so the tours really help me keep the perspective that this is the kind of thing that most people don't get to see. Most people don't know about because if we're doing our jobs right, you won't know about it because the fishing will stay good where you are, and you'll have no idea where the fish are, you know, where the fish are coming from. You don't have to think about it.

Abigail: 37:42

Well and like you said, the this hatchery in particular was designed with, like, a visitor center and that educational component. And, like, that's so valuable for, like, the continuation of the sport in general, right, as well as investment in natural resources and all these other pieces of just connecting with nature and all like, just all of the different elements that benefit from people seeing and knowing and learning and and interacting with these kinds of this kind of work.

Kayleigh: 38:12

Yeah. Definitely. And, you know, you have wherever you live in Illinois, there's a fisheries biologist who's covering your county. But maybe they're covering multiple counties. So the probability of you seeing them while you're out fishing is really, really low.

Kayleigh: 38:26

But if you come to a fish hatchery, you're and you want to talk to someone about fish in Illinois, there is going to be someone here as long as you're not here on the weekend. But if you're here on a workday, there's gonna be someone here who will talk to you about the fish. And if they can't answer your questions, they'll be able to get you a phone number or email address to someone who can answer your questions if they're very, like, specific to your area.

Abigail: 38:49

Awesome. Well, how can, our listeners, you know, they're bought in. They're like, I'm here for the fish. I wanna get involved. How can they get involved with fish conservation efforts in their own communities?

Kayleigh: 39:00

Yeah. Buy a fishing license and go fishing. I'm so serious. That is, we have one of the cheapest fishing licenses in the country, certainly the Midwest. And all of that money goes to support the division of fisheries and the work that we do.

Kayleigh: 39:18

We're not funded by, you know, your income tax and that kind of thing. It's if you have a fishing license and if you buy fishing equipment, that kind of that is where our funding comes from. And so if you're doing that, that's gonna support us and keep us going and and take people fishing. If you know people who are young enough that they don't need a fishing license, take them fishing. And even if you don't have a fishing license and you don't wanna get one, if you know someone who's under 16, you can help them fish even if you don't have a fishing license.

Kayleigh: 39:50

If more people are out on the water using these resources and having a good time out there, people will see that and notice that, and they'll stay important when people are thinking about resources in their community that matter to them. We know that there are, mental health benefits and physical health benefits to going out and spending time by the water, and going fishing. And, you know, maybe not for everyone. Fishing might not be the you know? It's not the right hobby for everyone, but for people who it's the right hobby for, they get a lot of health benefits from being able to do that.

Kayleigh: 40:22

And even if you go occasionally, you're gonna get some benefits from that, and we're we're all gonna benefit from other people in our communities being healthy. You can get a fishing license. You also don't have to use a fishing license if you get one. So if you just, you know, think what is happening with freshwater management this day is cool and you wanna support it, you can just get a fishing license. There's no real saying you have to, for sure, go fishing if you get a license.

Karla: 40:44

So my son loves fishing.

Kayleigh: 40:46

Yeah.

Karla: 40:46

So if he goes to, like, Walmart, he's always, like, stocking his tackle box. So some of what he's purchasing will benefit. Like, that money will go towards conservation?

Kayleigh: 40:57

Yeah. Some of that. So there is there's been a sales tax on that kind of thing that's been around since 1950 as part of the Sport Fish Restoration Act, and it's a it's a small sales tax. Most people don't notice it. A lot of repeats will be under other taxes and fees.

Kayleigh: 41:14

And that money gets collected on a federal level, and then it gets distributed back to the states based on an equation that incorporates both the number of licensed anglers in the state as well as the land area of the state or just, the overall area of the state that has to be managed. And so, first of all, if you have a fishing license, that means that we get your fishing license money, but we also you get added to the number of licensed anglers that we have. So that helps us get more of that money back into our state. But then also if you're buying that fishing equipment, that is going directly to support us as well, which I think is pretty rad. It's part of why States will also track, like, nonresident fishing licenses as well because that can count towards the number of, licensed anglers that are in I believe it can count towards the number of licensed anglers in a state.

Kayleigh: 42:05

So, yeah, by doing that, you're allowing us to to and that's where that's where our money comes from, and that's part of why at the fish hatcheries, the fish that we're all growing are fish that people like to fish for recreationally. And it's also why we're not stocking lakes that are not publicly accessible. The public is paying for these fish, and that's what we're going to provide.

Abigail: 42:27

Awesome. Yeah. That's really cool. Well, Kayleigh, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your knowledge about the hatchery and fishing in Illinois. We're gonna finish today's episode with everyday observation where we highlight the mundane and normal of our environment that is actually really interesting.

Abigail: 42:45

So, Karla, go ahead.

Karla: 42:47

My everyday observation actually has to do with fish. We had our master naturalist river ecology course with Allison Sedola, who's with INHS, this past Saturday. And this sounds so ignorant of me, but I didn't know that minnows were a certain species of fish. I just thought minnows were small fish. Like, baby fish were minnows, but we were in the stream and catching a bunch of minnows.

Karla: 43:15

And it's like, no. They're actually minnow species. So that's my great observation because it was just kinda like you have to unlearn some things that like, when you when you really start getting into something. And I just grew up thinking that minnows were just all baby fish, but that's not the case.

Abigail: 43:36

Gonna stay with you on that, Karla. I also thought that until right at this very moment. I was like, yeah. You know, it's like the size of fish, like a little Right. Like, it's like a chick.

Abigail: 43:45

Right? Like, it's like Yeah. Like it's but no. No. Kayleigh's gonna correct us now.

Kayleigh: 43:54

That's very common. That's very, very common. People will come to a tank of our fish, they'll be like, oh, these are, like, these are minnows. Like and I'm like, no. They're trout.

Kayleigh: 44:02

They'll be like, well, are they trout minnows? And I anyway, so that that's actually super, super common to think that. The word we would use for that lysase in fisheries biology is gonna be fingerling. That's why I was gonna touch the size of your finger. if it's actually, like, a fish that's gonna get much bigger, when it's at that, like, shorter size, it's fingerling would be a word that you would hear a fish biologist using.

Karla: 44:30

Oh, I can't wait to use that now.

Abigail: 44:32

Yeah. Me too. I feel like that's kind of like a thing that, like like, baby shower games. Right? Like, what's, a baby fish called, right, or, like, a baby certain animal, and you're like, Now I'm ready to win this game.

Kayleigh: 44:44

They could also be called fry. So right when they first hatch, they're called fry when they're little tiny. So we call them fry. It's not because you can eat them. They wouldn't provide you much nutrition at that stage, but it comes from, like, an Old Norse word meaning feed.

Abigail: 45:16

Fry to Fingerling. Amazing. I love that. Honestly, I think nature, biologists, like, biologists in general, like, are the best at kind of those kinds of puns and jokes, and I'm here for it. I think we all need to embrace this part of our personality a little

Kayleigh: 45:32

bit more. So Come to the hatchery. That's all we do here. Amazing.

Abigail: 45:36

I am going to come now. I can't believe I haven't been there yet.

Kayleigh: 45:41

Yeah. You have my number. You have my email.

Karla: 45:43

Just I know.

Kayleigh: 45:44

Tell me you want on the calendar. We're getting lake sturgeon soon, and a lot of people like to see those. So if you wanna come, like yeah. Come see those. Hey.

Kayleigh: 45:54

I mean, I think all the fish are very cool, but lake sturgeon are I have a special fondness for weird fish or little fish or fish that people maybe don't traditionally fish for. Although sturgeon are definitely one that people traditionally fish for, But they're just a cool fish with some really cool anatomical features. It's really fun to I'm excited to show them to people.

Abigail: 46:16

Nice. Well, Kaylee, what is your everyday observation?

Kayleigh: 46:21

Mine was that this morning when I opened the visitor center and I went to turn on all the lights, I found a toad in one of the bathrooms in the visitor center, and it was just hopping around. And I there's I guess there's there's pipes that could come through there. I'm not sure how it got there. I don't think it knows how it got there. But now it's, in a tank in my office, and it might become an animal that I take with me when I go to classrooms to talk to them about aquatic animals and things that you might see near the water.

Kayleigh: 46:49

Part of my job is, you know, helping people get more comfortable with the idea of fishing, and sometimes that means showing them a snake that they might see in or an or a turtle and teaching them how to safely pick up a turtle and move it, you know, to somewhere that you know, across the road.

Abigail: 47:05

So I love a good toad find, honestly.

Kayleigh: 47:07

He was great. I would pick I would bring that toad over here to see you, but that toad does not like me right now.

Abigail: 47:15

It's I mean, yeah, it's having another alien experience. It's not a fan at the moment. It's just it's living.

Kayleigh: 47:22

So but, yeah, it's a front office. I have three turtles, a snake, a toad, and a salamander, and three fish in here in various tanks and things.

Karla: 47:31

Okay. What about you, Abigail? What is your everyday observation?

Abigail: 47:37

Yeah. So mine is just I it's like the time of year up here for the Cottonwoods, so there's just little cotton fluffs floating around everywhere, and they've been around for a couple weeks. But I just cottonwoods are not, like, my favorite tree species. They, like, tend to be they they tend they have, like, very hard wood, so they tend to fall really hard, obviously, and break easily. And then, like, something about the cotton just, like, irks me.

Abigail: 48:08

But my favorite part about them is when they leave out, they're super easy to identify from far away because they're kind of, like, the way that their stems are are, like, instead of a flat like, they're they're flat, but they're flat in the sense that, like, allows for, like, the waving. So if you look up at a tree canopy and you're like, that particular set of leaves looks really weird because it's, like, waving really hard, like, waving hi! at you. That's usually like a cottonwood. And so it's pretty cool to kind of see that and then and just kind of, like, be able to recognize from that far away that kind of tree. And so so yeah.

Abigail: 48:49

So that's kind of, like, made me think of that, and I like to use that as kinda, like, a little point of education for people. Like, oh, you see the leaves up there? It's waving, and that that kinda connects people more than just like, oh, it's a cottonwood. Right? Like so so, yeah, I just kinda always think populous deltoides.

Abigail: 49:04

They kinda have, like, a triangle shaped leaf, that deltoides scientific name. So yeah.

Kayleigh: 49:10

I'm gonna be looking at leaves now.

Abigail: 49:13

You oh, like, careful when you start learning trees and you're, like, looking at leaves and you're like, I can't drive places now because it's too distant.

Karla: 49:21

Yeah. You wanna pull over and see if you're right about everything. Like, I think after this, I should stop and find out.

Abigail: 49:28

When I was in college, I took, like, an Illinois native plant identification class, and I would ride my bike everywhere. And I had to, like, stop and tell myself to focus because I would be, like, looking at things as I was riding my bike. And I'm like, this is so unsafe. Like, I'm going to die. So well, Kayleigh, thank you again so much for joining us.

Abigail: 49:51

It was really cool to hear about all of the work that you're doing at the hatchery and the work that, you know, just hatcheries across the state are doing and and all the different pieces of it. It's just it was really, really interesting. So thank you.

Kayleigh: 50:03

Thanks for inviting me. This was really fun.

Abigail: 50:06

Of course. Well, this has been another episode of the everyday environment podcast. Check us out next week where we talk with Chris Anchor about the urban coyote research project.

Abigail: 50:20

This podcast is a University of Illinois Extension production hosted and edited by Abigail Garofalo, Erin Garrett, Amy Lefringhouse, Karla Griesbaum, and Darci Webber. Marketing and communications are by Emily Steele.