(gentle music) - Get ready for an all new episode of "Prairie Sportsman".

Join us as we brave the frozen waters of the St. Croix River for an exhilarating ice fishing adventure targeting sturgeon.

Plus, we'll take you on a tour of the St. Croix Watershed Research Station, and we'll join Nicole Zempel for a fast forage.

Welcome to "Prairie Sportsman".

I'm Brett Amundson.

We got another great show for you starting right now.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] 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.

And by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farm, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, Minnesota, on the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

And by Live Wide Open, Western Minnesota Prairie Waters.

And the members of Pioneer PBS.

(upbeat music) - It's mid-February here in Minnesota, and we're on the Scenic St. Croix.

Today we're gonna see if we can't catch a sturgeon through the ice.

Today we're joining someone who knows a thing or two about sturgeon, Darren Troseth.

Darren runs Three Rivers Fishing Adventures and specializes in sturgeon and catfish.

After a well thought out setup, Darren had our home for the next few hours ready to go.

All right, we're in the fish house and ready to go.

And we figured what a better way to catch a sturgeon than by having the guy who was caught the state record sturgeon take us out, Darren Troseth, how's it going?

- Doing all right.

We have a great day today.

Nice weather.

Finally got some good ice conditions to get out here and drive right up to the spot, you can't beat that.

- All right.

Well, here we go.

Day's just getting started.

It's about early afternoon, early to mid-afternoon now, I suppose.

And we're gonna give it a few hours as the sun starts to drop and see if we can't catch us a nice big old sturgeon.

- We're gonna put all crawlers.

We'll put a combo on this one, crawlers and fatheads, and then we'll put all fatheads on that one.

When they hit, like your bobber's just gonna, it's just gonna start bobbing like that a little bit.

It won't pull it under, it won't run with it.

We'll see them on the sonar.

And your bobber will just kind of go up and down like that.

And you just wanna set the hook right when that happens.

- [Bret] So generally, they're not gonna chase a bait up and down.

- Normally they won't, no, the way their mouth is designed, it's designed to suck it up off the bottom and they're just filtering, it's super fine silt here.

So they're just filtering out that silt to what they want to eat.

And then when we see that bobbing up and down, that's them sucking it in and spitting it out.

(upbeat music) Well that's a nice fish there.

That's definitely a sturgeon, so keep an eye on that bobber.

So walk me through if that bobber starts dancing, am I setting the hook?

Am I reeling?

What am I giving it?

- Yeah, so as soon as this starts bobbing, you just wanna set it, but now it looks like he disappeared, but kind of weird, they just kind of go down into the mud.

He's coming through the mud.

Let's see if he can find our bait here.

Hopefully he's hungry.

- [Bret] Oh boy, he's looking good.

- [Darren] Oh yeah.

- [Bret] He's looking like he might want to eat.

- Oh, he went by me, coming towards you.

Yeah, just hold it still for now.

Let me see that bobber.

Oh, I think he just swiped it with his tail or something.

- Did he turn around?

- Oh, he did turn around.

Yeah, that's a big fish.

You can see those marks.

I mean, those are two foot marks.

Now he's going back to that one over there.

Oh, that's a big fish.

- [Bret] Oh, he's on mine.

- Hold on.

I think he hit it with his tail.

Yeah, hit it, hit it, hit it.

He was right there too.

- God dang.

- Yeah, that's what we're looking for.

He might have been swiping it with his tail.

- Okay.

- Oh man.

- [Bret] I got a little excited there.

Swing and a miss, but this fish was ready for round two.

- There to the right.

That might be that same fish.

You're right at about zero, aren't you?

Yeah.

Oh, he's coming in.

- [Bret] Oh, he hit it again.

- Yeah.

Go go go.

Oh, you got that one.

- [Bret] Fish on.

- Bring in that one.

Yeah, just hold him there for a minute.

And then you can get the camera back on.

He won't get off, so there you go, reel down a little bit.

There you go.

All right, we're good.

- Sweet.

- [Both] Oh no, oh no!

- What did I say?

He won't come off.

(Bret laughing) Well.

- Sorry.

- That's all right.

I mean, what do you do?

- [Darren] You did exactly what you were supposed to do.

- Well we hooked up.

And we didn't catch it, but we hooked up with it.

There's been a number of fish coming through and they definitely seem like they've been a little active, so I'm not too upset about that.

I think we'll get another chance, I hope.

- Yeah, let's fix that bait there.

You got to feel the weight of them though.

- I got to feel the weight.

Yeah, sure did.

- That looked like a nice one just based on the rod bend.

(gentle music) - You've caught many fish, the same fish over and over again many times.

- Yeah, I think.

So one particular one I think I might've caught three or four times.

The record out here I think is eight times, the same fish has been caught.

So yeah, it's weird, there's a handful of fish that have been caught several times and it's like, I don't know if they don't learn or they're just more aggressive or what, or just to the area we're fishing, - [Bret] Thrill seekers.

- [Darren] Pretty cool to see-- - Hey guys, remember what happened last time?

We got a free ride up to the top.

They put us back.

It's not a big deal.

- Yeah, it's pretty cool.

And it just shows you how good catch and release works and how good these fish adapt to catch and release.

And to me, I mean, it's sort of passive fishing, but it's really the ultimate sport fish because it catch and releases well, it puts up a great fight, I think it's the ultimate sport fish.

- And you know the ages on some of these fish because of the tagging program.

- Yeah, so they estimated that record fish I caught was maybe 80 to 90 years old.

And obviously some of the tagging data they have, they're showing that these fish are 30 to 40 years old, some of these 50 to 60 inchers we're catching.

So as long as we respect the fishery and handle them well, our grandkids will be catching these fish.

- You got a fish coming in on the right.

Oh yeah.

- That's a long one.

That is a long one.

He's thick too.

Come on.

- We're losing him.

- Come back.

- Oh, he might be turning around.

- Yep, he did turn around.

(both laughing) - Come on.

He's active though.

He's interested.

- He's looking, he's looking for that food.

He must have got a whiff of it.

Oh, turn around, turn around.

- [Bret] He's turning around.

- He turned around.

(upbeat music) Oh, he's gonna go for that one now.

Oh, yep, yep, yep.

Yeah, yeah.

Set it, set it, set it, set it, set it, you got him?

Reel up there.

- [Dan] Oh no!

- [Darren] Oh, there he is.

Look at him.

Oh, that's a big fish.

Oh man!

- [Dan] God dang it.

(upbeat music) - [Darren] Ooh, that's a nice one.

- Yeah, that is a nice one.

- Let's get him.

Come on.

Just about on you.

Oh, did he turn?

- [Bret] He went past.

Unless he came back.

- [Darren] There's two of them down there.

- Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, right here.

- [Darren] I saw yours.

- [Bret] Unless he bumped it.

- Unless he bumped it because I don't think he was on the ground.

Two of them.

- [Bret] Yeah.

One on me, one on you.

- [Darren] That's awesome.

Oh, that's a long one right, whoa.

- He's coming back.

Oh, this one, right side, right side.

- He's got it, he's got it, he's got it.

(fishers laughing) - [Bret] Oh yeah, I'll get this other rod.

Boy Dan, what did you almost break here?

- [Dan] No worries.

- [Bret] Rod Holder is now a part of the GoPro.

All right, Dan, sweet.

That looked like a big fish too.

- He feels nice, I'll tell you that.

Not anymore.

- [Darren] Yeah, just take him nice and slow.

- Here he is.

There's his tail.

- [Bret] Oh, I see bubbles.

Oh, that might be a big fish with all those bubbles.

- [Dan] All I saw was his tail.

- [Darren] Yeah, he might make a run here.

- Yeah, there's his tail.

You can see his tail right there.

Oh yeah.

Oh, he might be tail wrapped.

All right, he's gonna come up tail first.

Oh, he's not as big as I thought.

- It's all right.

Hey, first sturgeon.

- [Bret] Right away, Dan, first sturgeon.

- First sturgeon, not a giant, but I'm okay with that.

That's still fun.

That's a heck of a fight.

He's a strong fish, and boy, that's cool, that was fun.

Fun to see him on the live scope and come in and take it and watch that bobber go and throw a rod holder around him.

(all laugh) - [Bret] Your rod holder's on the GoPro.

- Yeah.

That's awesome, yeah.

Just cool fish.

(upbeat music) - I would say this has been probably a typical night for catching sturgeons through the ice.

Like we could have easily had, you know, three fish, four fish maybe, so we just missed a couple.

And we do have some skunks out here and it's just part of the deal.

So some might call this relaxing, some might call it boring.

It's just a different type of fishing and there's not a lot of places you can go to catch sturgeon through the ice.

So that's what makes it kind of cool, you know.

- Well we've had action the whole time.

I mean, for the most part, now here, late in the day, it's about 10, 10:30, things have slowed down.

But when you've got electronics like this where you can see fish coming in, you can see them coming in from, you know, 10 feet away or so on either side.

There's definitely a couple moments there where always ready to probably set the hook right through the top of the shelter right there, I was so excited about it.

So it's been fun.

- Most likely as we get all packed up, we'll probably start seeing fish as we're packing up.

That's usually how it happens.

You pack up and you see fish.

- Well it happened to us last time we filmed, Darren.

So you never know.

We're gonna start getting packed up here now, but you never know, we'll probably catch one right as we're getting ready to leave.

(gentle music) So we're getting packed up and we got all the rods put away and we walk back in here and of course there's a sturgeon on the live scope.

So we're gonna give it a Hail Mary here, one last chance.

- [Darren] There's one on you and then there's one at the right of the screen.

- [Bret] There's no way this is gonna happen.

- [Darren] There's definitely still one down there right next to you.

- Oh!

- Oh, did you miss him?

- He hit it.

Oh no!

Ah!

He's on it, he's on it.

- [Darren] Yeah?

- Yeah, I'm pretty sure he is.

- [Darren] Get him?

There might be a mud puppy on there.

Reel up.

- Maybe that's what it is.

- [Darren] You feel any weight?

There's a mud puppy on there.

Hey, you're not skunked.

- Not skunked.

- [Darren] You ever caught a mud puppy?

- I have not.

- Well you're about to see it.

There you go.

- There it is.

- [Darren] That there is a mud puppy.

- She's not happy.

- [Darren] Nope.

- [Bret] Well it's not a sturgeon.

- [Darren] Mud puppy is just basically a aquatic salamander.

You see their gills are like on the outside of their gill plates here.

They're kind of mysterious.

They're pretty cool looking.

- [Bret] We're leaving now.

- You know what's gonna happen, right?

- We're all done.

I'm reeling up.

- We're all packed up.

- There we go.

I'm all reeled up.

Let's put the rods away.

It's never easy to leave when you know there's a state record swimming down there, but it will have to wait for another day.

- Can't believe you're quitting already.

- Okay.

- You see the groundwater's coming up with enough pressure that it just dislodges the sand here and it is quick sand in Minnesota, and this is impressive.

Watch this.

(gentle music) So what did I just...

So if you stepped in this.

(birds chirping) (bright music) - [Bret] In 1989, the Science Museum of Minnesota funded the St. Croix Watershed Research Station to address water quality issues both locally and across the state.

As a research facility, it's generally not open to the public, but director Adam Heathcote invited us in to give "Prairie Sportsman" viewers an inside look at one of the world's premier water research centers.

(gentle music) - We're very interested in water.

That's why it's the perfect place to have a research center like this because I don't know if there's anywhere else in the country where water is as universal a important issue as it is to the people of Minnesota.

So this is the Spring Creek Building behind us.

This is the original building that was the St. Croix Watershed Research Station when it was first founded.

In 1994, it was expanded to the building behind me, which is the Harmon Research Center.

It has been functioning as one of the most productive water chemistry laboratories in the state and has housed research projects that have covered counties all across Minnesota and also in countries all across the world.

We've developed an actual international reputation as a scientific group.

So we processed samples here, particularly lake sediment core samples from all over the world.

This lab actually does all of the Great Lakes National Park monitoring network samples.

And one of the most unique things we do at this laboratory is that we practice a type of science called paleolimnology.

And that's the study of sediment cores in order to reconstruct the history of a lake or its surrounding environment.

But by using these sediment cores, that allows us to look sometimes to the year how old each section is using these radioisotopic dating techniques.

So we can say what was this lake like 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 10,000 years ago?

Say you wanted to fix a lake in Minnesota, but you wanted to set a realistic goal.

So you wanna say like, well what was it like in 1900, or maybe just before then, 1850?

And that will be your goal.

That's about as clean as this lake's gonna get.

(upbeat music) So one of the interesting things we measure in terms of dating is a radioisotope called Cesium-137, which is a human-made radioisotope.

So it did not occur anywhere on earth until we started blowing up nuclear bombs.

And in the 50s, we were actually doing that in the atmosphere.

And because of that, this radioisotope spread all over the planet.

It's useful for dating because one, it didn't exist before.

And also we signed a treaty with the USSR in 1963 to stop atmospheric bomb testing.

And because of that, there's a clear signal of it ramping up in sediment and then just disappearing.

And so we can use that as a very accurate timestamp of this critical kind of period, which also predated the Clean Water Act.

So if we're trying to see like did the things we put on the landscape to fix the water quality help?

And so we can look at it before and after by looking at what were the organisms like that are preserved in the sediment pre-Clean Water Act and post.

(gentle music) At any given time, we might have five or six main research projects that we are actually leading.

We have many more than that that we are collaborating with or supporting.

Right now we have a couple big projects that are funded by the Environmental and Natural Resources Trust fund, the Didymo Rock Snot Project.

We also have just started this year one that's called Pristine Lakes or Wilderness Lakes, where we're looking at harmful algal blooms that have started to crop up in some of our most pristine systems.

Basically every scientist here comes in with their own kind of unique research program which aligns with whatever their interests are.

There's a couple studies that we've been involved in that we still see the benefits of today.

Have you heard of Triclosan?

It was antibiotic that was in like all hand soap 15 years ago and it was, you know, the producers of it said that it was water soluble, it doesn't build up in the environment, it's not harmful, because there's a lot of worry about antibacterial products making it into water systems where they can breed like these super pathogens because they're basically training bacteria to be resistant against the tools we have to fight against them.

But Dan Engstrom, the former director along with other collaborators, actually went out and did a study of that, and using those lake sediment cores, they found that it had actually accumulated in sediments, meaning that it accumulated everywhere.

And because of that, Minnesota became the first state in the country to ban Triclosan in hand soap, and now it's banned federally.

We work at so many different levels.

Like we are not just working for a state agency or a federal agency.

A group from a lake association could come to us and say "hey, we're worried about our lake.

We've raised a little bit of money ourselves.

Will you help us out?"

And we're able to do that because we have enough flexibility and expertise.

(gentle upbeat music) This is Amber's shop.

One of the cool things about working here is that we have a full-time facilities manager who not only maintains the building and the grounds, which she's also a professionally trained sculptor and welder.

And so she's able to make things for us.

- These two objects here are core sectioning boxes.

This is the old core sectioning box that was in use for about 40 years.

As you can see, it's seen better days, it's done a lot of work.

And this is the new core sectioning box that I replicated from these specs.

So when our scientists take a core sample out in the field, it comes to us in a clear plastic tube.

And that tube is inserted here.

And basically, like a big Push Pop, we push the sediment up through the top and it's removed one centimeter by one centimeter.

Necessity breeds innovation.

So we have to make a lot of our own equipment and our own tools for use in the field.

Dan Engstrom made this several years ago.

This is his design and there's really, there's no way you could go out and buy this.

So the great thing about my position that even though I'm not a scientist, I get to learn a lot through science by supporting the work that everyone else does.

(gentle music) - [Bret] After touring the research station's state-of-the-art laboratories and shop, Adam and senior scientist Mark Edlund show us around the facility's grounds that include wetlands and rare boiling springs.

- So this is Spring Creek, this is the stream that the building is named after.

It's completely-spring fed.

And then the boiling spring is here.

This is one of them.

This is the biggest one.

They're actually all throughout this kind of wetland complex.

So this is something that will basically roll year round.

And this is one of the biggest examples of these that I've seen anywhere in Minnesota.

- If you just sit and look at the spring here, you see the groundwater's coming up with enough pressure that it just dislodges the sand here, and it is quick sand in Minnesota.

And this is impressive.

Watch this.

So what did I just, so if you stepped in this, you'd go down what, five feet?

- So this is Taylor's Pond.

It was formed when the road was built across Spring Creek.

You can see there's a culvert here that just pops out on the other side that remains ice-free pretty much year round.

And because of that, because there's quite a few waterfowl that actually over winter along the St. Croix, mainly Trumpeter Swans and Canada Goose.

The Polaris Foundation stepped up and they basically gave us this brand new boat for free in 2018.

Really broadened our capabilities.

There's no body of water in Minnesota that we can't go on now.

It's a credit to the people at the Science Museum who set this up back in 1989, that they had the vision, this was something that was not only a good idea, but that also would be this sustainable.

We're actually doing more research now than we have ever before.

So this is a program that has continued to grow with time.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Minnesota is a land of more than 18,000 lakes and streams.

Here, water is key to our enjoyment of the outdoors.

Efforts to protect our water quality include stopping the spread of species that can harm aquatic ecosystems.

The Aquatic Invasive Species Task Forces of Wright, Meeker, Yellow Medicine, Lac Qui Parle, Swift, and Big Stone counties remind us to clean up everything we remove from lakes and streams.

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) - So this is a non-native plant, wild edible, and it's called the Giant Chickweed.

And actually during the cooler weather months, that is the best time to harvest it.

Now the cool thing is the whole plant is edible.

You can eat it raw or you can cook it by incorporating it in stir-frys or different pasta dishes.

But it's also fantastic in salsa or just in your salads.

Also people eat it the same as they would like a bean sprout as well.

And interestingly, I have a friend that says he feels it tastes like peas, like pea pods from a garden.

I feel like it tastes like corn on the cob or corn silk, but it is really, really good.

And I look at it and I just wanna gobble on these leaves.

They are fantastic.

You will enjoy it.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] 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.

And by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farm, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, Minnesota, on the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

And by Live Wide Open, Western Minnesota Prairie Waters.

And the members of Pioneer PBS.