Zach Feiner

I will say I did see one guy catch one here yesterday.

So he threw it back.

So there's at least one fish out there for us.

Donuts are essential for ice fishing.

He's a big walleye fisherman.

He is the one who gave me the intel on this spot and he's actually probably already down there.

And one of the parts of my research that has really jumped out is that the timing at which the lakes thaw in the spring has gotten really variable.

So, for example, in recent years, the earliest the lake has thawed has been in the middle of March, and the latest the lake has thawed has been in the middle of May.

So from one year to the next, it's a two-month difference.

All those events start to get scrambled up and mistimed.

So then your food web gets delinked or decoupled.

And ultimately you end up with not having enough food around to feed small fish.

And the important thing to point out is that while I've seen this in walleye, lots of other species are seasonal spawners.

They spawn in the spring or in the fall.

So you could see these effects probably happening for a lot of different species.

We're headed through here.

The joys of urban ice fishing is here.

Yep, I think so.

It doesn't, unfortunately.

That's the problem with fish.