- Okay, a good one?

- Look like a good hook set.

- These big males are really important to a population because they pass on their genetics.

And the bluegills, you know, have truly big fish.

A lot of it is genetics.

- We see the most over salting on our parking lots and sidewalks especially at businesses.

- Minnesota has three native varieties and more cacti than any other upper Midwest state.

(upbeat music) - Funding for this program was provided by Safe Basements of Minnesota, your basement, waterproofing and foundation repair specialist since 1990.

Peace of mind is a safe basement.

Live wide open.

The more people know about West central Minnesota, the more reasons they have to live here.

More at livewideopen.com.

Western Minnesota Prairie waters, where peace, relaxation, and opportunities await.

- And the members of Pioneer PBS.

(soft guitar melody) - Fishing for Sunnies off the dock is a great way to introduce kids to the outdoors.

And I spent hours hooking worms, trying to tempt the swarms of pan fish in the shallows as a little kid.

And as a big kid, the big blue gills have my attention now, but their future could be in jeopardy.

Thankfully, there's a group of diehard anglers and resort owners, business owners out there pushing for a more catch and release approach and some tighter restrictions on pan fish.

- [Bret] Garett Svir has become a big proponent of catching and releasing of big bluegills since he learned about their growth rate.

- [Garett] Probably in the last seven, eight years.

I've really just started to appreciate big bluegills more and just how old these fish are.

In Minnesota, these fish grow about an inch a year.

And so, you know, a fish like this which is a cookie cutter fish for this.

Like, we've got a ton of these already.

We've only been here for, you know, half an hour.

And these are nine year old fish.

And in Minnesota, you know, you get a one inch a year growth rate.

- The Quality Bluegill Initiative is becoming more popular among anglers in the state.

It would play specific panfish restrictions on certain lakes.

- You know, it's a pretty fragile fishery so it doesn't take long for, you know, the word to get out and then to kind of wipe out some of these fish that we've talked about that are eight, nine years old.

And it'll take you eight or nine years to regrow a fish like that.

Because if somebody was to wipe out all the good genetics in the lake, you could actually do irreversible damage and the fishery might never recover.

- [Bret] So Garrett, why are these big fish important?

- You know, this isn't a giant one here, but a real nice one.

And these big males are really important to a population, because they pass on their genetics.

And the blue gills, you know, to have truly big fish, a lot of it is genetics.

I always tell people like my son probably never be a seven foot center in the NBA.

(laughter) And it's the same thing with these big bluegills.

If you take out all those big seven foot centers, pretty soon we're not going to have anymore.

And I think that's why a lot of people are passionate about this QBI, this Quality Bluegill Initiative, I think it's going to be a really great deal.

I really hope we can pull it off and save some of these lakes for the future.

- This is kind of what we're after here today.

These fish put up a pretty good fight for the size of fish that they are.

There are a lot of fun to catch.

- [Garett] On these ultra light rods, it doesn't get much better.

You can see this is a male.

The bottom of his tail is beat up there from fanning a nest.

Unlike with humans, the males are actually the more beautiful fish.

You can tell they're going to have the most vibrant colors and get that little knob on their forehead.

And these are the most important ones for population because they pass on their genetics.

And most of the genetics for big fish come from the male of the species.

Those are the ones you want to kind of conserve for the future and let go.

- All right, well, let's let this one go.

We need some more.

There he goes.

There's fish.

How do you like being the net man, Garrett?

- [Garett] Oh, really nice.

That's what I do best.

That's a good one, right?

(laughter) Look at that one.

- Yeah.

That's a big one too.

Every time I get into one of these big bluegills, you know, like I haven't gotten excited about, you know panfish other than maybe some crappies since I was a kid.

But I'll tell you what, when you catch bluegills like this, it kind of reignites that passion that you had as a kid fishing for a sunfish off the dock or whatever.

'Cause these are just, I mean, for their species, these are just great fish.

- [Garett] You know, an ultra light gear, you know- - Yeah.

- this is as much fun as catching, you know, big walleyes or anything in my opinion, more so for me personally.

You know, just using light gear and having to do those big circles when they come off, it's a lot of fun.

In Fishermen actually rated us in the top 10 places in the country, Otter Tail County, Minnesota to catch world-class trophy bluegills.

And they turned to Northern giants because most places in the country, the growing season is much longer.

So the fish grow faster, but here it's a real short growing season for them but they're just old fish that have been around a long time.

- [Garett] We're in about 10 to 12 feet of water today.

And what we're doing is we're fishing these fish pre spawn.

There is some fish on spawning beds right now though the water is 73 degrees.

And kind of the magic temp, seems like in Minnesota it's like 72 is when you start to see a lot of spawning activity.

The bluegills this time of year are kind of vulnerable.

And that's a one time a year where it's real important to let them go.

Especially when they get on spawning beds, those fish will do whatever they to protect their nest.

And so they'll hit out of aggression to protect their nest and their offspring.

So when you can get on a bunch of these big fish like that, a time of year when they're kind of susceptible, lower your harvest.

So you want to make sure you're letting a lot of them go on.

(laughter) - [Garett] Yeah, that's going to be a pretty good fish I think.

That's hard to tell.

They're all fine on this light gear on these ultra light rods.

That's a female.

- [Bret] How do you tell the difference between males and females, Garett?

- [Garett] You can tell this one just doesn't have those vibrant colors.

She's real plain.

You can also see that it's going to have a big lump of eggs in her, you know, a big single fish.

- Oh you can see the lump.

Yeah.

- She's just loaded up with eggs here, preparing for the spawn.

Yeah.

I'ma take a Horus on here.

Look at those circles it's doing.

You're kind of a wallet guy.

We converted the area (laughter) versus big panfish.

- I mean, it's fun.

- And under this Quality Bluegill Initiative too, though, one thing you'll notice is that when they put the limit at five, five fish of that caliber, that's a big meal of fish, you know, in my opinion, to keep 20 that size, for my family of three, it's a ridiculous amount of meat that we almost can't even handle and consume.

And you know, it's too much.

- So would you keep this fish and eat it if you were looking for a meal?

- Yeah, that's a great size a real sustainable fish to harvest.

That's a, you know, like an eight and a half inch fish and that's a real good size to keep.

- Nice.

All right, well, you're lucky.

(laughter) - I own and operate Slab Seeker Fishing Guide Service in central Minnesota here.

And people call me to catch trophy bluegills and crappies.

Take people out with the... You know, obviously to be able to keep fish to eat but we have a real conservation approach to these big trophy caliber bluegills.

And kind of on my boat, there's a nine inch self-imposed slot limit You can keep some dinner fish but they gotta be under nine inches.

And those bigger fish we put back so they can, you know, those big fish are so important to a population.

The other factor is those big male bluegills will chase the smaller males off the spawning beds.

The data has shown that if bluegills spawn at too young of an age, they have no biological reason to grow big anymore.

So with this Quality Bluegill Initiative we're not looking to obviously do, you know, a five fish limit on every Lake in Minnesota.

But the DNR biologists around the state of Minnesota picked lakes that have been known to produce giant bluegills.

Anglers will still have 11,000 lakes where they can go out in Minnesota and harvest a full limit of 20 fish.

But there'll be a handful of these lakes that'll be kind of set aside for, you know, my son to go enjoy if he really is passionate about chasing trophy caliber fish.

- Let's potluck it, we're on him again.

That's gonna be a pretty good one I think.

- [Bret] Oh, it might be.

Got some good pull to him.

- [Garett] Oh yeah, real nice one.

Yeah.

Look at this guy.

- [Bret] He's fat.

- [Garett] Yeah, that's a good one.

- [Bret] Girthy.

Maybe we should weigh that one then.

- [Garett] Let's do it.

Nine inches exactly.

- [Bret] Nine?

- 10.9 ounces, 11 ounce fish.

I remember Al Lindner talking when I was young.

I got to go listen to Al Lindner talk and, you know, he talked about how fishing everything is relative and, you know, a 10 inch bluegills as big of a trophy as a 30 inch wallet to put things into perspective, you know, as to how rare and how special those fish are.

- How would a five fish limit on this lake change what our experience has been like here today?

- You know, there's two limits that we're proposing in the Quality Bluegill Initiative, you know, the QBI and one of them is a five fish limit, we call that the size improver.

And data has shown that with a five fish limit, it'll actually improve the average size of the bluegills in the lake.

So we're probably going to see about a half an inch additionally, on these fish with a five fish limit, by lowering the harvest.

The 10 fish limit is the maintainer.

So if you have a lake that's known to have a great size structure of bluegills, ten will kind of keep those fish the same, where a five fish limit's actually going to improve the average size a little bit for you.

What they found is as a bluegill lives to a longer age, they really put on a lot of body mass.

And you've seen that today with some of these fish that we've caught is how tall they are.

So these old fish not only grow long, but they grow really tall, like a dinner plate too.

Speaking of a dinner plate, I think we got it.

(crosstalk) This is a pretty good one, bruh.

And so that's the difference between catching old bluegills and young bluegills, it's just, you know, the body dynamics of a fish like this.

You can tell, I mean, those are really old, healthy fish by how tall they are.

Garrett, we moved to a new lake here to try to catch a bigger bluegill than what we were getting this morning.

And I'm finding out now though, after we been here for a little while, I've been out fished on this lake by a five-year-old.

- (laughing) That's true.

Yeah.

I had my son out here yesterday doing some homework for the show and trying to get kind of dialed in and he caught his personal best on the Zemco Micro.

He caught a 10 and a half, and so we weighed about a pound, four ounces.

My wife caught one about 10 years ago here that was 11 and 3/4 inches with a pound, 12 ounces.

- With these potential new restrictions, hopefully, you won't have to wait another 10 years to see one that big.

- We're not trying to take away your 20 fish on every lake, but we're trying to just set a handful of lakes aside for the future, for people that really care about quality panfish.

That where they can go on, those fish will still exist.

- Overall, on the state level, we see the icing salt is the number one contributor.

So that's going to be the salt that is applied to our roads our parking lots, our sidewalks, potentially some of our trails as well.

- [Bret] Little, prickly pear cacti thrive in hot, dry, sandy or rocky conditions.

They're mostly found in Southern Minnesota, but have also been spotted along the St Croix river, Rainy Lake, and the Sherbourn National Wildlife Refuge.

- Fluoride is an essential element like many things out there in the world.

But when we see it in high amounts in our freshwater systems, it starts to cause problems.

- So it takes one teaspoon of salt in a five gallon bucket of water to start to have negative impacts on the aquatic community.

Fluoride has a very strong affinity with water.

So once chloride and water come in contact with each other, the chloride molecule is going to go wherever the water molecule goes.

While rain gardens and stormwater ponds and all of these great infiltration type best management practices that we have designed and implemented over the years to help clean our storm water, they do not do anything to remove chloride.

There is no plants or microbes that live in the soil that are going to take that chloride and use it or convert it.

It's going to stay with that water essentially forever.

We currently have 50 surface waters that we've put on that impaired waters list as having too high of concentrations of chloride.

That's a combination of lakes, wetlands and streams.

We have another 75 surface waters that are within 10% of that standard.

Those 75 will likely cross that threshold in the next several years if we continue to use kind of that same amount of salt and that same amount of chloride that's making it's way into those water bodies.

It's not toxic to humans, but it is toxic to aquatic life.

So the fish, the insects, the plants living in our lakes and our streams, are very sensitive to chloride in Minnesota.

It will start to limit their ability to reproduce effectively.

In some cases like fish eggs and say some of our amphibian eggs like frogs and salamanders that may lay their eggs in water, those eggs are very sensitive to chloride.

Another negative impact that we've learned about over the years is that saltwater is heavier than freshwater.

When you get really high concentrations of chloride that continue to kind of settle and build up at the bottom layer of the lake, it gets too heavy sometimes for the lake to really turn it over.

And when that water doesn't get brought up to the surface, it's not allowed to get that fresh oxygen it needs and that sunlight.

And so that is a really important part of a healthy lake, is for that turnover to occur.

And chloride is impacting that negatively as well.

Overall on the state level, we see deicing salt is the number one contributor.

So that's going to be the salt that is applied to our roads, our parking lots, our sidewalks, potentially some of our trails as well.

The University of Minnesota did a study back in 2008 and they estimated the purchases of salt used for deicing purposes is about 365,000 tons per year, is how much we're putting down in the twin cities Metro area.

Overall in the state, we're using about 403,000 tons of salt each year.

They found that about 78% of the chloride or salt that is being put onto our roads and our parking lots and our sidewalks is making its way into our local streams and our lakes and our wetlands.

And of course, groundwater as well.

Unfortunately, road salt is a really effective tool for managing snow and ice in the winter in Minnesota.

It's very effective.

It has done a great job of helping to keep us safe.

As far as an alternative to just swap out deicing salt with something else, the most maybe promising one is potassium acetate.

And the Minnesota department of transportation has a research project going on right now where they are evaluating the environmental impacts that potassium acetate will have on the environment before jumping into some alternative project.

We certainly don't want to move too quickly and try to use an alternative that then creates a new set of environmental problems.

We see the most over salting on our parking lots and sidewalks.

Especially at businesses and you know, out in the public just because of this concern and this misperception that more salt is better.

Which is not true.

And so that's one of our big challenges, is to how do we educate the public that more salt is not better?

There are things that businesses can do.

Switching from a granular salt to a liquid salt can reduce your salt use anywhere from 50 to 70%.

And you get the same level or better level of service than what you were getting with granular salt.

The city of Waconia switched to using liquids several years ago and they saw a 70% reduction in their salt use.

Their roads that they were treating were actually clearer than they were when they were using granular salts.

And we've also seen other companies, like Mayo Clinic has done a fantastic job of implementing practices after they attended our smart selfie training.

They didn't make any major changes, just small, very well-informed changes that allowed them to reduce their salt use by about 60%.

For driveways and sidewalks, mechanical removal is really our first and our best strategy.

But in addition to that, just using the right amount of salt.

It's about four pounds of salt per 1000 square feet.

There are currently no labeling requirements for deicing salt.

And so a bag of salt can say that it is safe for pets and it's environmentally friendly and it melts up to, you know, 50 degrees below zero.

And none of that necessarily is true.

So any bag of salt that contains chloride is a problem for our water resources and is not going to be good for our pets.

Water softeners in our homes and our businesses are another significant source of chloride that is contaminating the water resources.

Historically, older water softeners are going to be timer based systems.

And so they are going to kind of regenerate, pass that water through the chloride every four hours, every eight hours whatever you have it set at, whether you need it or not.

Where the newer models are on demand regeneration.

So they will only soften the water as you need it to be softened.

Those are much more efficient, not only with their salt use but also with their water use too.

So there is an added benefit there for homeowners.

Another thing to consider is the level of hardness.

So you want to check that to see what is that level of hardness?

The department of health recommends anywhere between five and seven grains of hardness is acceptable for homeowners.

In addition to those two kinds of large sources, fertilizer, potassium chloride is a very common fertilizer used in our state.

So that is another source of chloride, as well as dust suppressant and manure.

And our wastewater treatment facilities, or our septic systems are not designed or set up to remove that chloride.

Till we reduce it at the source and allow the water that does kind of come in and refresh our water, our lakes, our streams and our wetlands, we're not really going to see that chloride go away.

The time to act is now.

If we wait too long, it's going to be a really hard problem for future generations to clean up and deal with.

I don't want my kids to grow up in a world and not be able to enjoy the same lakes and streams that I have enjoyed because we've contaminated with fluoride.

(soft guitar melody) - The Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge out here in Western Minnesota is known for its granite outcrops here along the upper Minnesota river valley.

And climbing up these rocks gives you a great view of the 11,000 acres of the refuge's tall grass prairie the woodlands and the wetlands, which are abundant with wildlife.

But be warned, if you sit down to rest, you might just sit on a cactus.

Yep.

Cacti aren't just desert plants.

In fact, Minnesota has three native varieties and more cacti than any other upper Midwest state.

Two species can be found right here in the refuge.

The brittle prickly pear cactus is abundant but it's rare to find a ball cactus that only grows on these granite outcrops here in Big Stone County.

If you are fortunate enough to find a ball cactus, you'll recognize it by its round evergreen stem with multiple spines that protect it from herbivores.

It reproduces through a rare process called vivipary, where seeds germinate and develop within the cactus fruit.

When the fruit is mature, it breaks open to reveal young cactus plants.

And don't pick this rare ball cactus.

It was placed on the state's endangered species list in 1996 because of granite quarrying and illegal collecting.

In the Big Stone Wildlife Refuge, it's much easier to find the brittle prickly pear cactus with a flat thick stem and waxy coating that keeps moisture in.

Like the round variety, brittle prickly pear cacti thrive in hot dry sandy or rocky conditions.

They're mostly found in Southern Minnesota but have also been spotted along the St Croix river, Rainy Lake and the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge.

Besides protecting them from predators, these leaves that spike out from the stem help shade cacti.

They also break up a breeze to keep moisture in the air surrounding the plant.

Small holes in the leaves called stomata can close up to prevent water from evaporating in the hot sun.

Then at night, when it's cool and more humid, a cactus opens its stomata to take in air gases that keep it alive.

Although it may seem unusual to find cactus out here, there are more strange native plants growing in our state.

Did you know mistletoe grows in Minnesota?

It's actually a parasite called Eastern spruce dwarf mistletoe that can be found throughout the Eastern half of the United States.

It grows from a tiny seed attached to a coniferous tree like black or white spruce.

The young plant works its way into a branch and gathers nutrients for two to four years until little shoots pop out and grow to the same length as spruce needles.

In the spring, each shoot forms four to five flowers that are pollinated by insects and mature into fruits.

When the fruits mature and burst, they send sticky seeds sailing as far as 20 feet away to land on other conifers and start the cycle over.

Although animals like porcupine, squirrels and birds like to eat mistletoe, the host tree gets no benefits.

In fact, the parasite can rob the tree of nutrients, stunt its growth, and cause it to form a gnarly branch cluster called the witch's broom.

A more attractive and helpful plant is the jewel weed, which contains juices that can ease the pain from nettles or poison ivy.

You can find the wildflower along shaded streams and wetlands sparkling in the sun when dew lands on its yellow orange blossoms.

After the flowers have been pollinated and fade, they form long thin spring loaded seed pods with tension similar to a stretched out rubber band.

When touched, the pods explode open and shoot seeds into the air to repopulate the species.

Head to the woods with rich moist soils to find Indian Pipe that American Indians used in medicines to treat fevers and back pain.

If you turn the six inch native plant upside down, it resembles a Native American tobacco pipe.

While most plants get their green color from chlorophyll that converts sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into food, the Indian Pipe has no chlorophyll.

So it's white from stem to flower.

It snatches food from other plants through underground fungi threads.

Perhaps strangest of all is the pitcher plant that eats ants, flies and other insects.

The carnivorous plant grows in wet bogs, where there isn't much else for nutrition.

The shape resembles a pitcher with leaves that form a cup at the top of a pitfall trap.

Insects are attracted to the plant's sweet nectar then are grabbed by top hairs and fall down a tube into water with insect dissolving chemicals.

The prey turns into porridge.

All these plants are native to Minnesota.

So if you're looking for something weird and wild, explore our great outdoors.

- Funding for this program was provided by Safe Basements of Minnesota, your basement, waterproofing and foundation repair specialist since 1990.

Peace of mind is a safe basement.

Live wide open.

The more people know about West central Minnesota, the more reasons they have to live here.

More at livewideopen.com.

Western Minnesota Prairie waters, where peace, relaxation and opportunities await.

And the members of Pioneer PBS.

- Check out some of these Minnesota cacti?

Cactus?

Let's go check it out.

How's that?

Let's go check them out.

- If you come a little bit closer you'll get a good look at this one.

Ouch, oh, I'm just kidding, I didn't actually touch it.

- Normal?

But I get weird when there's a camera on me.

(indistinct) But these plants and the other native plants in the area have an unlikely hero designed to protect them.

Goats.

It's goats.