(pleasant music) - [Bret] Maybe it's the big one.

Could be awesome.

- Could be.

- I'd say it's definitely bigger, - Who knows?

- Yeah, definitely bigger than the last one.

- Ooh, look, Flatty!

- There it is!

Hey, there's our flathead (laughs).

- Flatty.

(men laughing) - Right at the end of the night.

- [Woman] Every year, in rehab, we see birds, waterfowl coming in with lead toxicity.

And it is a horrible thing to witness.

(bright music) (exhilarating music) - [Announcer] 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.

(electric guitar music) - [Bret] While Minnesota is home to some trophy-caliber muskie, pike, and walleye, there are even bigger fish that roam these waters and their popularity is growing.

Two fish come to mind when I think of giants in the state that don't get the respect they deserve, with one being the sturgeon and the other, a catfish.

There are three primary species of catfish in the U.S. with two of them residing in Minnesota.

The channel catfish is high in numbers, popular table fare, and found in many lakes and rivers, but they're relatively small in size to the other catfish that can be found here, the flathead.

When I was asking around about flathead catfish in Minnesota, one name kept coming up, Darren Troseth.

Darren owns and guides for Three Rivers Fishing Adventures based in the Twin Cities, but he grew up on Lake Vermilion fishing for walleyes.

When he moved to the cities for work, he began fishing from docks and piers.

- You know, I wasn't really interested in catching a catfish, to be honest with ya.

But one day, I had some sucker minnows, I was pike fishing and my bait died.

So I was like, you know, I'm gonna just take a walk down there and just give it a try.

And, and so I had my bass rod that I was fishing for pike with and threw out a chunk of sucker, just like what we're fishing with here today.

And I hooked up within 15 minutes and it was like a 45 pounder.

Oh, geez.

- And I broke my rod and I was up to my knees in mud and, you know, it just, it changed my whole world, my fishing, you know, and from that day on, you know, I've just loved being down here.

- People know that there's catfish here in Minnesota.

But I think if you talk to the average person, and sometimes even just the average angler, they won't really know that there's different types of catfish here, or they might just think of channel catfish, or some people don't realize how big these flatheads get here in Minnesota.

- Right.

There's some really big fish and the funny thing is when people see it, they're like, well, I'm never going on that river.

You know, they're scared of it when they realize how big of fish are out here, you know, there's, you know 50 pounders aren't common, but there are 50 pounders.

They're 60 pounders.

I'm sure there's probably 70 pounders swimming around down here.

- [Bret] The state record is 70 pounds.

It might possibly never be broken because most flathead anglers don't keep what they catch.

- I want to say five or six years ago they started doing a catch and release record where you just document the length you know, and then release it, which is kind of nice.

You don't have to kill a big fish like that.

And that's currently 52 inches, I think, which is, you know, probably 60 to 65 pounds, you know, maybe even a little bit heavier than that.

- Generally, the people that target flatheads, it's pretty much all catch and release on flatheads.

Explain to people why that is.

- Well, first thing is the flatheads are so slow growing.

I mean, you catch a 50 pounder, or it's probably, you know, 25, 30 years old.

So you think about what it took to get that fish that big.

With any fish species, when you're talking about the trophy caliber, it's always the top 10%.

I just feel you have to protect those fish.

You know, those are the fish you want to protect because that's what keeping people out here doing it is catching those big fish, you know, and you take a fish like that out of the system, well, you got 25 years to replace that fish now.

It's not like a trophy deer where you replace it in three to five years, you know, you're 25 years you got to wait.

I think it's kind of like that with all species in Minnesota, they're all just slow growing, you know, a 10 or 11 inch panfish, you just want to let that fish go.

That's always been my philosophy.

- [Bret] Mm-hmm.

Big flatheads aren't the only fish Darren likes to target.

- Yeah, I lucked out and caught a pretty big sturgeon.

Actually, I do a lot of sturgeon fishing in the fall and we've been doing some through the ice, as well, and happened to hook into a real big one.

We have not seen this fish.

I've been fighting it for 10 minutes.

Obviously, it's a little different game, you know, you're catching these, you're expecting to catch big fish.

So the first thing we do is we're drilling, you know, three holes kind of in a triangle shape.

- So you actually drilled those holes ahead of time in anticipation of catching some big fish out there.

- Yeah, that's generally what we do.

And then, that particular night was late in the season.

We had, I want to say 25 to 26 inches of ice which is, I mean, that's a lot of ice for the Metro area.

So, you know, drilling through that much ice, you know, connected.

You're just piles of slush, you know, it's a lot of work to drill four sets.

So we had two guys, we just used two lines each, so four sets of three holes, you know, by the end of the year, just, you know, dead, dead tired.

And I told my friend, John, I was like, you know, I'm beat.

I'm just going to do a double hole in this last one.

I don't want to do the third one.

You know, I'm just going to skip it.

And I said, you watch we'll probably get the big fish on that one, too, you know.

Been sitting here for three hours with not a single blip on the sonar and all of a sudden we get one mark.

And that was the first Mark we'd seen on the sonar, all night.

So I fought it for probably 15 minutes probably.

And there he goes again.

Anytime I get him close, he's just gone.

- And it finally came up and we both just, our jaws just dropped.

I was like, oh my God, this is never coming up this double hole.

Keening quite a bit on him.

Oh, I saw something.

- I saw him.

I saw bubbles, bubbles.

- Oh, yeah, I see that.

Hold on, I see him.

He's right here.

He's right here.

Got bubbles.

He's a big fish, real big fish.

- [John] Bubbles up all the holes at the same time.

- I mean, I'm not even sure it's gonna come up the triple whole.

It's sure not coming up this double hole.

- [John] It's a big fish.

- [Darren] Well, seeing him down that hole.

- [John] There he is.

- [Darren] Oh, oh my gosh.

- Oh my God, dude.

- Are you kidding me?

- [John] We are not getting that up that hole.

- [Darren] Oh my gosh.

- [John] He's not coming through there.

- [Darren] This is a 100 pounder.

- [John] Yeah, he's not coming through there.

It's a 100 pound fish.

- And we're like, well, what are we going to do now?

And so our first thing we wanted to do was maybe bridge the two sets of three and try to expand it that way.

- What if we... - Cut a bridge?

- [Darren] Cut a bridge here, and then I can go.

I think that might be the best option.

- [John] Yeah.

- This is mayhem, man.

My drill was acting up, but you know, after drilling all those holes and the battery was just kind of acting wonky.

And I said, you know, we gotta do something else.

So I run this sturgeon Facebook group.

And I told John, I said, ping the group and see if anyone's out here and see if we can get someone to come over and help us with a gas auger, you know, maybe a 10 incher, if possible.

And sure enough, he posted it and probably three minutes later, someone replied - We'll get on it.

- And said, you know, we're going to come help you.

I've been fighting this fish for probably 45 minutes.

It's not so much of the fight, but we can't get them through the hole we got.

So we got a backup coming with a 10-inch auger.

They're gonna ream this out for us 'cause this is easily a 100 pound fish.

Without a doubt, the biggest fish I've ever seen.

- Here's what's funny, it's a spot I've never fished for, you know, before ever.

And just a random spot.

I've heard stories of people seeing fish like this.

- [Man] Do you need some of that ice scooped out?

- [Darren] No, I think I'm good, I'm good.

- [John] He gets paranoid when I do anything, so I'm going to close his line.

We'll let him take care of that while he's waiting.

- [Darren] All I'm saying is if I lose this, I want it to be my fault.

- [John] Yeah, exactly.

- So we fought it for another, I don't know, 15 minutes.

We had to fight the fish again and got it up.

And now we have 26 inches of ice to get that, you know, 78-inch fish vertical.

Oh my gosh, look at this!

- [John] Holy!

- My buddy got down and just went all the way down to his shoulder and reached down and put his hand in the mouth.

Careful!

- That's massive!

- Careful!

- Oh, yeah.

- [Man] I don't know if he's going to fit, man.

I don't want to put too much pressure on him though.

- [John] I think he'll fit.

Oh my God.

- [Darren] You got him?

You got something.

- Geez.

- You got something.

- [Man] All right, we got him.

- Oh my God.

- Oh my gosh.

- [Man] All right, I think we got him.

- Watch that hook.

- On the ice.

Oh my God.

(men laughing) - [Darren] You gotta be kidding me, man!

- [John] Oh my God, that's nuts.

- [Darren] That's what I'm talking about, boys!

- Putting your arm in ice cold water is not as easy as you think.

You know, everyone's like, oh, you just reached down and grabbed it.

I mean, it's painful.

I mean, he, he kind of took one for the team there.

So it was a team effort for sure.

But yeah.

And we got it up on the ice and it's the biggest fish I've ever seen.

You know, I've caught, you know, 80 to 100 pound fish before, but it was just blows them all out of the water.

- [John] Oh my God.

- I went deep.

- That is nuts.

- [Darren] We'll pull it from here.

- Got it.

- 78, 78 inches.

- [Darren] We measured it, and with the sturgeon, they have a new catch and release record as well.

So we measured it, documented, and then sent it in and got the new record.

- [Bret] That's awesome, wow.

- Well, there you go.

- Woo.

- [John] Nice fish.

- [Man] Congratulations.

- I might be done ice fishing.

I don't think I want, I honestly, I don't know if I want to experience that again.

it was- - Come on, dude, that was awesome.

- That was awesome, but man.

- That took a team effort.

- Holy cow.

- Back to flatheads.

What's your big flathead then?

- So my biggest flathead is a roughly 57 pounds.

It's when you get a big fish like that, it's tough to weigh.

That's why we do mostly measurements, kind of measure length and girth.

You know, you're trying to weigh, that's another thing people don't realize why they, you know, try to get an accurate weight.

Well, you're weighing them, the scale's bouncing around, the fish is flopping around, you know, you get an approximate weight.

So I say about 57 pounds, you know, give or take, you know, maybe 10%, I don't know.

- Well, that fish might be a couple of pounds different than, you know, few hours later the next day or whatever depending on what they're eating.

- They will definitely eat a five pound bait.

So yeah, that's 10% there.

- Geez (laughing).

So we've been out here for a little while.

We got out about six o'clock tonight.

What's an average night, you know, I always see these cat fishermen fishing after dark out here.

Is it better after dark?

- You can catch them all throughout the day, especially this pre-spawn period, which is usually how they go into spawn kind of beginning to mid-July, that pre-spawn period, you can catch them all throughout the day.

They're, they're really hungry.

They're putting the feedbag on.

And there does seem to be a period, you know from eight to midnight where it's better than the rest of the day.

So that's kinda what I target.

Cause I've had the most luck doing that but there's guys that will come out during the day and do that too.

So I just prefer the evening.

(birds chirping) It's super relaxing.

Like I, I was telling someone I could come out here and even if I knew I wasn't going to catch any fish I just love being out here.

It's just my sanctuary.

(quiet music) - [Bret] And once the sun went down, we had our first bit of action.

- [Darren] Yeah, full channel.

- [Bret] Get the skunk out of the boat though, right?

- That's right.

- [Bret] So explain the difference between a channel and a flathead.

- [Darren] So a channel cat, the first distinct difference is the fork tail.

Then you got the fork tail here.

And the difference between the blue and the channel cat is this anal fin here.

You can count these rays and a blue cat will be really angled, sharp angle.

And this is kind of rounded.

And in the small channel cat, you'll see, you'll have these spots.

When they get bigger, they kind of lose those spots.

And then the flathead will have a much bigger head and a flathead will have an underbite actually.

So the bottom lip will be over the top lip - [Bret] Catfish in the Minnesota river.

Well, it was closing in on midnight but we weren't done quite yet.

As we started to pack up, we strategically left our baits in the water.

- [Darren] And pick 'em.

There you go, you got him.

- Oh yeah!

- You gotta be kidding me.

I'll turn the light off.

- [Brett] We were cheated.

We were literally packing up here.

That's the live baits, so, okay.

Oh, so it could be.

- [Darren] The way it was the way it was running, Ii might be a channel cat.

- [Bret] Definitely bigger than the last one.

- There it is!

- Hey, there's our flathead.

- There's our flathead.

(men laughing) - Literally packed to go.

- Nice.

- That's funny.

- That's great.

- You know, people will never believe this either.

It's like, aw, they just edit the TV show to look like he caught it at the last minute.

It seems like this happens all the time.

- [Darren] It's not a giant, but guess what?

- It's a flathead.

- It's a flathead.

- We talked about this earlier.

This has a flat tail on him versus the, the fork tail.

One's got a flat tail and then this mouth got the underbite and you can see it's much larger.

It's got his pads on top here, pads at the bottom and some pads away down in there for holding bait.

But there you go, here's your fish.

- Flathead from the Minnesota River, not a big one, but - They get a lot bigger, but hey, it's better than the fish we were looking for.

- [Bret] Darren, thank you very much.

- [Darren] Yeah, that was fun.

(water splashing) - And there he goes!

- Nice!

- Heck yeah.

- That's crazy.

- [Bret] Isn't that hilarious?

Right at the end, every time.

(boat motor humming) - [Man] 90% of what people buy today contains lead.

The split shot, these traditional sinkers, the jigs which are commonly used in Minnesota, these slip sinkers, those more often than not are lead.

(lively music) - [Announcer] Which fish species is native to Minnesota and which is the invader?

The answer is coming up right after this.

(lively music) (loon calling) - [Bret] Two iconic sounds of a Minnesota summer are the call of the common loon and the cast of a fishing rod.

Unfortunately, our fishing tackle could be putting our beloved state bird at risk.

- [Kevin] If every angler loses a piece or two of lead fishing tackle each year, and you times that by the millions of anglers in the state, that adds up to a whole lot of lost lead in the environment.

And lead is an element of the periodic table.

It stays in the environment forever and it's a available to be picked up by wildlife.

And now is the time for us to move away from lead in the use of fishing tackle.

(pleasant music) - [Bret] Get the Lead Out is a public awareness campaign run by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

- [Kevin] Our campaign is centered on the common loon, which is our state bird.

It's a waterbird and they have a gizzard and they pick up rocks.

And they use that is to aid in their digestion process to grind up small minnows and fish.

And oftentimes they will mistaken a piece of lost fishing tackle as one of the rocks they use for eating and digestion.

And that of course, results in either illness or death.

Oftentimes what happens is they lose weight.

They get listless.

Sometimes they die prematurely in the environment.

And other times they get reported in by people on the lakes or cabin owners and sent to the DNR and studied for cause of death.

This is a major source of loss for common loons and it's one of these avoidable causes of death.

It's just a small change that we can make as anglers and as consumers.

- [Bret] Loons are just one of many bird species impacted by lead's toxicity.

- The Raptor Center has been working for well over 40 years monitoring, researching, educating, and trying to solve problems on lead in raptors, which is a huge issue, especially in bald eagles, vultures, some California Condors, any of the raptors that scavenge, any birds that scavenge, any wildlife that scavenge.

We do know that it only takes a very, very small amount.

It might be the size of the tip of a pencil for a raptor.

For an eagle, a single number six lead shot has enough lead in it to kill multiple birds.

85 to 90% of adult Eagles have some amount of lead in their blood, which is not normal.

Every year in rehab, we see birds, waterfowl coming in with lead toxicity and it is a horrible thing to witness.

Lead is not natural.

No amount of lead is natural in a biological system.

When these birds come in, we take radiographs.

We find fishing tackle in the, in the gizzard or in the stomach, or we find lead shot in the stomach.

It's a bit of a detective place but it's been just linking the two together, birds dying of lead, sources of lead.

- We've banned lead from paint.

We took it out of gasoline in the 1970s.

We no longer have it in our plumbing fixtures, in our drinking water fountains, but it's elsewhere in our consumer goods.

(pleasant music) Most of them the terminal tackle, that's the piece of fishing equipment at the end of the line, contains lead.

More than 90% of what people buy today contains lead, the split shot, the traditional sinkers, the jigs which are commonly used in Minnesota, these slip sinkers, those more often than not are lead.

The alternatives are a whole host of metals that have some weight to it.

That's what anglers are looking for.

They want to take their bait and they want to make that available to fish underwater.

And the sources are, very common, are tin or tin and and bismuth, these are two metals.

You're seeing quite a bit of stainless steel.

And now in recent times, especially for serious anglers they're very attracted to tungsten which is another type of heavy metal.

In fact, it's a more dense than lead and it makes noise.

And there's a lot of different features associated with it.

It cuts through weeds in the lake where the bass may be hanging out.

And so tungsten in recent years has really taken off.

One of the issues with it is it's more expensive than lead, but as we say, the cost of a fishing trip, from the license to the car ride, the motor, lunch and beverages, maybe the overnight stay, the costs for fishing tackle is really a small piece of the overall cost.

- So most big box stores carry lead-free fishing tackle.

It's not labeled very well, but most store associates will understand what you're talking about and will be able to point you in the right direction.

The problem is that some smaller places like the mom-and-pop shops up in Northern Minnesota just don't have the purchasing power to make those decisions yet.

And they need consumers to help them out and let them know that they want these products and stock in their mom-and-pop bait and tackle shops.

- [Bret] MPCA's first campaign to switch from lead to non-toxic fishing tackle ran from 2001 to 2010, until budget cuts eliminated it.

Then the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

(solemn music) - It was the biggest oil disaster in the history of mankind and our loons, unfortunately, winter in the Gulf of Mexico.

And so through research and study, we were able to document and determine that about 600 to a thousand loons, Minnesota loons, died as a result of the Deepwater Horizon accident.

And then there was loss and impacts to our loon population in the subsequent years.

When they came back up North, they nested in Minnesota lakes and then some of their reproductive abilities were lost as a result of overwintering in the Gulf.

As a result of some legal action, the state of Minnesota settled with BP, and now we have a three-year $1.2 million educational campaign to help Minnesotans make that shift to lead-free fishing tackle.

- Experienced anglers generally know that this is an issue and are slowly making the switch already.

And a lot of them have commented on the fact that, oh, I already use lead-free shot for hunting and now I'm making the switch for fishing as well.

- There's doubt in my mind that people really do care about this.

They understand it, they get it.

They know that lead is a problem.

Anybody who's from Minnesota or has visited Minnesota, when you hear that call of the loon or see a bald eagle overhead, there's something really special about that.

People who participate in outdoor sports are some of the original conservationists.

They're the people who most want to save the natural world.

So getting this message out that lead in outdoor sports needs to go away because there are answers.

There are solutions that don't impact our wildlife.

Again, it's an easy thing we can do to take care of our natural world.

(pleasant music) - [Announcer] Which fish species is native to Minnesota and which is the invader?

The invader is the ruffe.

How do we tell an invasive ruffe from a yellow perch?

The ruffe spec is all olive to gold brown.

The yellow perch is green on top with six to nine stripes down it's yellow sides.

Unlike the perch, the ruffe's dorsal fins are fused and have dark spots.

The ruffe's mouth does not extend past the front of the eye, unlike the perch's mouth, which does.

The ruffe has sharp spines on the gill cover.

Yellow perch grow larger than ruffes, which are typically less than six inches long.

Why are invasive ruffes a problem?

Ruffes feed on the young of walleyes, yellow perch, and other native fish and compete with them for food.

Where are ruffes found?

They are found in Lake Superior but not yet in Minnesota inland lakes.

(upbeat music) We can stop these invaders from infesting more lakes and streams by cleaning up everything we pull out of the water.

It's a simple drill, clean in clean out.

Before leaving a water access, clean your boat and water equipment, remove and dispose of all plants and aquatic species in the trash.

Remove drain plugs from your boat, drain bilge, live well and bait containers and keep them out when transporting your watercraft.

Dispose of unwanted bait in the trash.

If you've 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.

Funding for this segment was provided by the Aquatic Invasive Species Task Forces of Wright, Meeker, Yellow Medicine, Lac Qui Parle, and Big Stone counties.

(pleasant 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.

- [Man] I prefer fresh, So I cut 'em up fresh.

I cut 'em up, you know, a couple inch, just like that.

We'll throw 'em out like that.