The Lake: Fish

In episode 3 of The Lake, I speak with Bryden Urie about his passion for learning the waters and fish of Lake Superior, and about his favorite types of local fish. Bryden spends his spare time on deep dives into the habits of local fish and the tributaries that flow into the Lake. Then he gets out there with family and friends and goes adventuring and fishing. Follow Bryden on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bryflytravel/. Wishing Bryden many more days out on the water!

Learn more about new findings on coaster brook trout spawning in Lake Superior (versus rivers) here. 

Episode photo by Bryden Urie, that's a coaster brook trout in the picture.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This computer. Hi Bryden. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:08

I'm doing amazing. I'm super excited to be here. Um, first podcast, so this is this is new to me.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

A milestone for you. But I hear you have gone fishing more than once.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Yes, no, many times. I was fishing this morning, so there's that.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Where do you go fishing this morning?

SPEAKER_00 0:27

On Lake Superior.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Because you were coming on the podcast tonight.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

100%. Um, now my uh brother is home for a few weeks and he loves going out there. My dad was off, so we all went together. It was fun. We only caught one fish, but it was fun.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Nice. Um, so how did you get started fishing Lake Superior?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Um how did I get started? I think um we we really only started fishing Lake Superior a few years ago, like in a boat in the open lake. Um originally I I've been fishing the tributaries though since I was like a little kid. Um which is where which is where my true my true love lies with superior, but um it's really nice to be out on the lake too, and like just kind of taking the gravity and be able to see 100 feet into the water. And um yeah, it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

So do you consider the tributaries part of Lake Superior? And could you describe them a little bit for people who are listening who might not be familiar with the tributaries and their properties?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, yeah. I it's not part of the lake, but it's part of the watershed. Um, so I kind of think of it as one like being, one waterway, one water system. Um, they're the rivers that um flow into the lake, and so they're connected. Um, some and there's many of them, and they're different structures to them depending on what part of the lake you're on. The north shore of Lake Superior has a really steep gradient, and so there's a lot of waterfalls. So um they're really rocky, have a lot of white water, um, and the fish can only swim so far up from the lake to the waterfalls. The South Shore has a slower gradient, and the rivers are um yeah, don't have as many rapids, they don't have waterfalls usually, and the fish can run a lot further. Um, there's some rivers on the lake that have a waterfall that goes right into the lake, and those ones are really cool. Um, pictured Rocks is a place where those are at, and those are really cool. Um, I would recommend going there. Where is that? Um that's in the up um UP of Michigan, Upper Peninsula.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Um, it's I don't know how tall the cliffs are, but um you can hike right along it, and there's just like giant cliff into the lake, and there's a couple you know, waterfalls right into the lake. It's really awesome. There is also a river um near Silver Bay, I think, the Manitou, that's um it's private property next to it, but it's also a waterfall that goes into the lake, and you have to paddleboard from Tetagooch a few miles up along the coast to see it, but it's like worth it. It's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

It's amazing. That's so cool. So, can you catch um fish when there's a waterfall into Lake Superior? Are there fish at the bottom of the waterfall? Is it different fishing or yeah?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

So, usually when there's a waterfall that goes right into the lake, usually there's like one sort of hole or pool because the way the waterfall works, you know, it digs out a hole at the bottom of it. And so theoretically, fish, yeah, like smaller fish maybe too, would be like feeding in the waterfall because it's like kicking up sediments and it's oxygenated. Um, but it's not like good spawning habitat per se, because they need gravel, they need to be able to run up the rivers to find gravel bars to spawn on, um, which is a big reason why the migratory fish go up the rivers seasonally, spring or fall. Um, but as you get further up the tributaries and um any river for that matter, that's where you know other like river-only fish, like resident fish is kind of what we call them, can hold and are there year-round. So there's kind of different populations in each river, too.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

So it's also really cool. Um, what are the fish that you kind of have the best relationship with or that you really enjoy a lot?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

The um fish that's I would say the dreamiest and the one that like you know I really get excited about um are the coaster brook trout. Those are the the native fish in like lake trout are native too, but those are the native fish that can run up that run up the rivers in the fall to spawn. Okay. Um and they're absolutely gorgeous. And sadly, they are pretty rare around here now because of all of the years of um non-native fish species being stocked and um harvesting um in the early 1900s, killed off a lot of the coasters, but there's still a stronghold up in Thunder Bay and Nippagon Bay, to be precise. And they've been they've been doing a lot, the DNR's been doing a ton of research around here, and they seem to be doing a lot better, which is super exciting. I've caught a few, I haven't caught a like a trophy one that I'm still chasing. But yeah, those are definitely my favorite. Um, the one that's the most fun to like catch, actually, like the most the best fight are the steelhead rainbow trout, um, which run up the rivers in the spring. But yeah, those are native to the Pacific Ocean.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Okay. Um, but they're here now.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yes, they've been here. They've been in they were introduced in the 1870s, 1880s, and um in Lake Superior, they're completely naturalized and they don't stock them. Um they've have you know probably 70, 80 generations of fish now that have been naturally produced in the lake. So they actually called it the I think in 2021 when they did the last published the last coaster study, they named this the steelhead uh Lake Superior Steelhead, like a new strain of steelhead.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

So oh wow, because it's kind of like become its own thing here.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

It is, yeah. Eventually, I mean in a couple hundred years, no one's gonna be like they're non-native, they're just here. They're I mean, I guess when you something native, you know, to an area because it's not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

So right, yeah. Um, so do the coaster brook trout spend some of their life in Lake Superior? Like, what do they like to do in Lake Superior? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Um, watch me. Um, what do they like to do? So they're called a coaster because they like to swim along the coast. Um they feed in like over shallow, um bouldery, like they they use boulders to hide, and that's like kind of where they sit and feed on other bait fish. Um, and they they're difficult to catch. That's what they're notorious for, because you kind of have to just like stand on the beach and hope one swims by you. Um and it is a thing people do like up, yeah, near Thunder Bay. People will just stand and cast from shore and wait for one to swim by. Um, people don't really catch them in the boats, but yeah, they run up the rivers in usually like September, October, spawn. They leave the rivers by November. And so they spend a majority of their life actually in the lake. Um actually, just recently, um, Ontario's Fish and Wildlife, I'm not exactly sure what they're called, just published an article um that they found the first um uh recorded spawning um behavior of coasters in the lake. Because um, that's what the Minnesota DNR has been studying and thinking that's because they've been finding in surveys in the lake fish, but then they're not finding them in the rivers. So they feel like they've to spawn in the lake, actually, over um, because and they think that there's three populate two or three species of coasters, and one or two of them only they think spawns in the lake, and they think they start to do this because um the river, um, the rivers, a lot of them have become too warm and aren't really hospital for the fish anymore. Okay, due to you know, climate change and various other reasons. Um, but yeah, so they some of them don't even go in the rivers, but it's pretty cool, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

That sounds like a cool article. I'll have to link it in the notes for everyone. Um, so spawning just means they're laying their eggs. Is that what it is?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, so yeah, reproducing. So yeah, the females are laying their eggs, and yeah, the males are um fertilizing them. So and they the they do this really cool thing. The females like they they build a bed and they like kick their fins up and this like smack the gravel and clear it out, kind of. Um and they it's like when you see in the rivers, you're like, oh my god, what are they doing? Because they like it's super aggressive, they like smack the bottom of the river.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

You've seen this before.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Uh they um especially in the fall in September when the cold um the pink salmon run up, it's like everywhere, like just them doing crazy like acrobatics. Um males will fight over the beds. They call we call them beds or they call them reds too, actually. I don't really know why, but um they're nesting bets, and um the males fight over like the females and they like bite each other.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Really?

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah, they leave a mark, like do they leave a mark? Yeah, it's it's they get they get pretty beat up. Um, salmon especially like portray that behavior the most, I believe. The salmonids. Um I think it's a little the trout are a little less aggressive with that, but yeah, the salmon, it's really something to watch them do that.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

That's wild, that's really cool. Um, what do you use? Do you fly fish for the um coasters?

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I yeah, but spoke exclusively fly fish farm. Obviously, when we're trolling in the big lake, we're not fly fishing. Well, maybe not, obviously, we're not fly fishing in the big lake um because of the gear we have to use to get down deep enough to where the fish are. Um you could over reefs. Um when I'm on the big lake, it's um more of a family plane, and I'm you know, I'm not in charge, but if I was in charge, I I would still be fly fishing, I think. Um in the rivers, though, yeah, we um we use a little bit lighter gear than we do for like the steelhead. Um, but yeah, I fish for them very similarly. I use different bug variations that look like stone flies or caddis flies. Um sometimes they run the rivers in the spring too when the steelhead are spawning um to eat their eggs. So if we're using like egg fly patterns, we've caught in nice brook trout doing that too, just when we're fishing for steelhead. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Um that's cool. Um, and how do how do you feel when you're out there?

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Um alive. Um, I yeah, like there's no place I'd rather be when I'm on a really pretty river um fly fishing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Um and my last question uh is uh what do you uh wish for yourself in the river? Or not the river, sorry. What what's your wish for yourself in Lake Superior in the future?

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Um I guess just like that um continue to find joy in the little things. I mean, we go down to the beach and sometimes we just watch the lake, um bring the dogs and swim. I don't swim, it's way too cold. Um continue to um support it, um, to protect it, um and just hope it continues to thrive and that we continue to coexist as humans and earth.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Thank you. I really appreciated talking with you and I learned a lot, so thank you, Brian.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Thank you for having me, Brennan.