Growing up amongst so much beauty I would find myself asking, “Who put the fish in the lakes?” Once again faced with a “Chicken and the Egg” dilemma, I put it down to Mother Nature and natural progression.

In this case of the “Fish and the Egg”, I would find my answer 15 years later with Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Aquatic Biologists. These awesome biologists do everything from habitat management, monitoring water conditions, figuring out fish populations, and protecting our native fish from invasive species and pollution as “all in a day’s work”. Come rain, sunshine, snow or high winds, our biologists are out there helping our wildlife survive and flourish.

I have learned that some fish in our lakes need our help. The walleye in some lakes cannot reproduce easily as the waters have silt in them. This silt interferes with egg fertilization, inhibits oxygen uptake by the eggs, and affects the numbers of eggs hatched resulting in reduced populations.

This year I decided to volunteer for the Walleye Spawn Operation. It was the most satisfying thing that I could have done from 7 am to 12 noon on a Saturday morning. My dad woke me up at 6 am in the morning. It was time to wake up, dress warm, grab a bite to eat and drive to Cherry Creek Reservoir. It was 7 am in the morning (which was still too early for any teenager). The rising spring sun had just starting to warm up the earth. The cool breeze lingered lazily helping to wake me up from my early morning daze for the annual Walleye Spawn Operation on March 31 this year. This program runs between March and April of every year.

We made our way across the marina dock to the CPW spawning barge and introduced ourselves to a friendly group of volunteers, biologists, and CPW wildlife officers. Our mission was to help collect eggs that would contribute to a statewide goal of 139 million walleye and saugeye eggs. These eggs would be shipped to other states to trade for other fish species, or hatched in Colorado hatcheries to be stocked as fry, or to grow into fingerlings for stocking. These fish would be introduced to lakes and grow into big game fish for anglers like me all around the country.

It was hard work but highly rewarding work that started almost immediately after we all got together on the dock. We put on float coats, a must for everyone. Six of us got into a boat and sped out to the dam area of the lake where the gill nets were set the night before. It is such an amazing feeling to be the first on the lake with mist on the water. The boat ride was exhilarating!! The crisp cold air on your face made you feel so alive. Nothing beats skimming over the sparkling water at 30 mph in a sleek aluminum hull “Clark” boat with a Mercury Diesel 2.8L outboard motor putting out 220 horses on a quiet Colorado spring morning.

As we neared the dam, you could see the floating orange marker buoys. The evening before our biologists had set out gill nets near the rocks. This is traditionally where walleye came to spawn and they would swim unknowingly into the nets and get caught.

We start at the first net and pull in the first few yards and then one fish comes popping out of the water flailing. One of the biologists there tosses me a pick and shows me how to untangle the fish from the nets. After he does a few I decided to give it a go. I grab the next fish, hold it close and start picking/pulling the net strings off the fish body. As I am holding and freeing the fish he tells me to release it carefully back into the water. I see it come back to life and disappear into the deep green water.

We unload the nets on the dock and sorted the fish into holding tanks at the spawning barge. Walleye are categorized and separated into groups- ripe females that are ready to spawn, green females that not yet ready, and males. The female Walleye that are spent (have already spawned and do not have eggs in their belly) are released are immediately back into the lake. Every fish is listed by these categories and carefully documented. As needed, some walleye are also tagged with an electronic chip and clipped for identification.

The data that is collected from these trips are carefully analyzed. The numbers give a detailed trend of what is happening in the lake. Are more fish coming to spawn, how big they are, after being tagged, can they be identified again as a producing adult fish? This was almost like Facebook data mining that the fish had no idea about. The biologists could read this data like a map and decide when and where to put out nets. They could project quite a few details on fish mortality and maturity based on these pieces of carefully documented data.

My mentors showed me how they take a female and gradually press her belly to express the eggs into a spawn pan. Then do the same for a male to get the milt. Then mix water to activate the sperm and fertilize the eggs. Finally, add bentonite mud into the spawn pan. This creates a light coating around the fertilized eggs to make sure the eggs don’t stick together or clump up. By stirring the eggs combined with mud and water with a goose feather for 90 seconds it was possible to increase the rate of natural survival of 30% to a 50-90% rate of survival at a hatchery. This amazed me to think that most of the fish we caught from lakes like Chatfield and Cherry Creek was only possible due to nurturing work done by hatcheries and by the efforts of biologists and volunteers. A lot of things such as walleye in the lakes are taken for granted. It is only possible due to these stewards of wildlife who willingly give their time and effort to support conservation.

Final count for the 2018 Walleye Spawn Operations was 116,202,732 green eggs. No more eggs were taken as the survival rates from eggs to fry at the Pueblo Hatchery and Wray Hatchery were really high.

In every opportunity where I have associated closely with our biologists and wildlife officers; I have learned so much about our ecosystem and what goes into making our outdoors so vibrant and bountiful. I look forward to my next opportunity to volunteer with the CPW and be a steward for our wildlife

Mentored Hunts

Volunteers and staff provided 458 mentored dove or pheasant hunts over these 5 years and connected with 46% of the NHP students in the field with a hunt. Feedback from these students was overwhelmingly positive.

Post NHP Student Evaluation

Each student was asked to evaluate the NHP program. From the 35% that responded, 85% were “Very Satisfied” with NHP, 13% were “Somewhat Satisfied,” and less than 1% of the respondents were “Somewhat or Very Unsatisfied” with their experience.

So much credit for the success of this program goes to the many volunteers and CPW staff that spent thousands of combined hours on this program. The NE Region will be moving forward with the Novice Hunter Program again in 2018 while looking for ways to adopt similar concepts to hunter outreach for other species.

For spring PIE (parks in education), May 4 – May 21^st, we had 7 schools attend plus a home school group. Centennial Middle Schools’ special needs students also participated. With classes from those schools, we served 436 kids and had 173 adults participate, including the teachers, volunteers, and myself. Students rotated between four stations, about 40 minutes each. We kept the kids and adults active by locating the stations at Pa-Cho-Chu-Puk beginning at the group pavilions. Since our theme was titled: “Cycles in Nature”, the 4 stations included: Aquatic insect life cycles (the ponds), life cycles of trees (Oak Leaf trail), food chains and webs games (grass lawn area), and nature journaling (pavilion A).Thanks to some fantastic volunteers: Heidi Nadiak, Gerrie Mitchell, Connie Colter, Mary Menz, Amanda Clements, Patty Ray, and Kathy Rasconi!!

Also, we participated in the 4^th grade Natural Resource Festival in Montrose. Ridgway State Park had an interactive booth for students to work in teams and learn about 5 different things that water can be tested for: coliform bacteria, dissolved oxygen, nitrates, turbidity, and ph levels. I estimated that about 220 students and 30 adults visited our booth. Thanks to volunteers Billy Mitchell and Geoff Mason for helping!

On May 19, Colorado Public Lands Day, we had the local chapter of Great Old Broads for Wilderness volunteers to do some trail work. We cleared the Dallas Creek trail, especially the boardwalk area, from overgrown shrubs and trees. That was followed by a plant walk led by local botany expert and volunteer, Peggy Lyons. Robyn Cascade and Barbara Bernhardt were instrumental in organizing this with the park. We had a total 13 volunteers working that day with Ridgway State Park providing tools and snacks!

We began our summer program series with a volunteer guest speaker from the Dominguez Archeological Group, Holly (Sonny) Shelton on May 26 and 27^th. She led some interesting talks and provided many artifacts for display. Her two presentations included “The Western Colorado Bison Project” and “The Wiki up Project”. Thanks, Sonny!

We also began a raptor monitoring program at Ridgway State Park with training provided by the Resource Stewardship Team from the state office. Anna, with the resource stewardship team, provided the training and materials with 14 volunteers attending to monitor 10 zones in the park. We are also continuing our butterfly monitoring through the Colorado Butterfly Monitoring Network with 4 new volunteers attending the training and 3 returning monitors for a total of 7 routes within the park to monitor. Thanks for your help!