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March/April, 2005

Genoa NFH Partners With Local Commercial Fishermen to Supply Fish for Fishing Expo and USGS

As the snow melts and the ice slowly disappears from the Upper Mississippi River, one's thoughts turn to spring and the fishing that will soon take place on the river. To help fishermen gear up for the fast and furious fishing season that lies just a few weeks ahead, the Omni Center in Onalaska, WI held its annual Mississippi Valley Fishing Expo, March 18-20.

One of the prize attractions of the fishing expo is the large casting tank used to demonstrate different lures and styles of fishing. Watching a lure in action is always better when there are fish to watch as well, and this year the staff at Genoa National Fish Hatchery partnered with local commercial fishermen to stock the casting tank with northern pike, largemouth bass, yellow perch, bluegill, black crappie and shortnose gar from pool 9. In total, 50 fish were collected under Genoa NFH's fish collection permit for this event.

We want to thank Jim Boardman and his crew for braving a late winter storm that delivered over 12 inches of snow to the area to provide fish that were then transported to the Omni Center by Genoa NFH staff. Fish were returned to the river after the event by the Wisconsin DNR. In addition to supplying fish for the expo, Boardman's fisheries also assisted Genoa NFH in supplying 80 yellow perch for research to be conducted at the fish culture center at USGS Upper Midwest Research Science Center.

— Tony Brady

Spring Netting Yields Big Returns for Local Outdoor Enthusiasts

Each spring, with the advent of the walleye spawning season, Genoa returns to the upper Mississippi river with its nets to capture adult northern pike and walleye and collect their eggs. Once the eggs are taken, the adult fish are then returned to the river. These offspring become a valuable resource to supply host fish for endangered mussel recovery efforts, support fishery management plans on tribal and refuge lands and supplied to state natural resource agencies in cooperative efforts to benefit fishery resources.

Through this spring netting season, a myriad of other operations are also supported. Some other programs dependent on fish collected by Genoa in the spring are the wild fish health monitoring program accomplished by the La Crosse Fish Health Unit, and ongoing studies by the Upper Midwest Environmental Science Center in Onalaska Wisconsin.

Hatchery volunteer showing off a large female northern pike collected during the spring netting season.

Hatchery staff harvesting fish from nets.

One side benefit of our netting operation is having access to adult walleye to supplement other lakes. At the request of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources LaCrosse office, two local water bodies in Vernon County (Sidie Hollow Lake and Runge Hollow Lake) were the recipients of 175 male adult walleye averaging 1 to 4 pounds.

These fish will not be able to reproduce in these small impoundments, but should supply many hours of enjoyment to the hundreds of anglers that visit the state park and recreational area. They also contribute to the management of these lakes by reducing populations of panfish before they become overpopulated and growth rates begin to suffer. This program is extremely popular and biologically sound, as only a small number of walleye males are removed from a healthy population and they are being moved to enclosed impoundments in the same watershed. Many thanks go to our hatchery volunteers who assisted with the netting and transfer of the walleye adults.

— Doug Aloisi

Friends of the Upper Miss Fishery Service Meeting Hosted at Genoa

The Friends of the Upper Mississippi River Fishery Services is a cooperative Friends group supporting the three Fish and Wildlife Service fisheries offices located on the Upper Mississippi River. The offices are the LaCrosse Fisheries Resource Office, LaCrosse Fish Health Unit and the Genoa National Fish Hatchery. April's meeting was held onsite at the Genoa hatchery. April is a busy month at Genoa, with spring river netting operations in full swing. Northern pike spawning season has just ended and the walleye spawning run is in high gear.

The Friends were treated to a walleye spawning demonstration, walking tour of the station, and fed fried flathead catfish prepared by the station's own maintenance crew, Jeff Lockington and Dan Kumlin. Turnout was excellent with 30 folks coming out on a beautiful spring day to talk fish, and make "Friends!" Future volunteer opportunities for the Friends were planned, with a great amount of interest shown in upcoming lake sturgeon tagging and mussel infestation activities next week.

— Doug Aloisi

2005 Lake Sturgeon Restoration Program at Genoa National Fish Hatchery Off and Running!

Hatchery biologist collecting gametes from lake sturgeon

Spring has sprung on central Wisconsin rivers and that means Lake Sturgeon are making their annual spawning runs in the larger tributaries of the Lake Winnebago, Mississippi River, and Wisconsin River systems. Genoa NFH, in cooperation with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, is once again collecting gametes from this ancient species for restoration efforts across the Upper Midwest. Crews from Genoa NFH began collecting fertilized eggs in mid-April as part of a cooperative project involving the USFWS, the Menominee Nation of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to restore lake sturgeon populations of the Menominee Reservation in Northeast Wisconsin.

This long-term restoration program, which has been in place since the mid-1990's, has produced thousands of fingerling lake sturgeon for tribal waters. In addition to this program Genoa NFH produces tens of thousands of fingerling lake sturgeon annually for restoration programs in northern Minnesota and Missouri involving multiple state and tribal cooperators.

— Roger Gordon

Genoa National Fish Hatchery Begins Endangered Higgins' Eye Pearlymussel Propagation Efforts for 2005

As the birds return from their southern wintering homes, and as the bees begin buzzing from one flower to the next, Genoa National Fish Hatchery is busy with Endangered Higgins' eye pearlymussel propagation activities at the Clam Palace. Genoa NFH has been involved with Higgins' eye recovery since 1999 when critical habitat areas for the Higgins' eye in the Mississippi River were impacted by the invasive zebra mussel.

The zebra mussels reproduce in excessive numbers and then the young zebra mussels attach to hard surfaces, such as native mussel shells, eventually forming a thick layer encrusting the outsides of the native mussels. The encrusting layer of zebra mussels robs all the food from the native mussels and prevents the natives from completing their complicated life cycle. Native mussels such as the Higgins' eye require fish to carry their larval form called glochidia. Higgins' eye use a "fishing lure" to attract fish close enough to release glochidia into the fish's mouth where the glochidia are passed to the gills and there attach to the fish for several weeks. While on the fish's gills, the glochidia receive nutrients needed to complete their metamorphoses into free-living juvenile mussels that drop to the river's bottom.

Spring is the time of year when volunteers from USGS, LaCrosse Fisheries Resource Office, Twin Cities Field Office, Region 3's Fisheries office, Wisconsin's, Minnesota's, and Iowa's Department of Natural Resources assist the Genoa NFH staff by being part a "bucket brigade." The bucket brigade is the hatchery's way of assisting the Higgins' eye mussels complete their life cycle. In small buckets, volunteers introduce largemouth and smallmouth bass to Higgins' eye glochidia, and after several minutes of exposure to the glochidia, the volunteers bring a fish to Genoa staff to be checked for the level of infestation.

Kurk Welke (WI DNR) Tim Patronski (SCEP student Region 3 RO) placing fish in their buckets as part of the "Bucket Brigade".

Roger Gordon checking infestation levels on largemouth bass.

A target rate of 400 glochidia per fish is the goal of this infestation process with over 3.2 million potential juveniles to be produced this summer. So far 25 adult Higgins eye pearlymussels have been collected to infest 2000 largemouth bass. At least 50 additional female mussels will be collected in coming weeks (water levels permitting) to invest an additional 6000 largemouth or smallmouth bass. These mussels are collected by SCUBA divers from Genoa NFH and Minnesota DNR, who scour the bottom of the St. Croix and the Mississippi rivers for the gravid females.

Two to three weeks after the infestation process, some fish will be released into Mississippi River tributaries in Wisconsin and Iowa, while the remaining fish will be placed in cages in Lake Pepin, MN and Ice Harbor in Dubuque, IA. Higgins eye pearlymussels are propagated in cages to protect them from predators such as carp and suckers, and to provide an opportunity to quantify the success of this program. Higgins eye pearlymussel propagation efforts have produced over 10,000 juveniles in cages since 2000 with over 3,500 two or three year old sub-adult mussels being placed back into the upper portions of the Mississippi River.

— Tony Brady

For additional information about any of these projects please contact the author at Genoa National Fish Hatchery.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service