Typical Day
These boots are made for fishin'. (Source)
Gil Fischer peers out the window of his cabin and wipes away the frost. Brrrrr, another cold spring morning...he decides to add an extra layer of long underwear before going to work. After a hearty breakfast, he dons his high traction boots and heads out the door.
When he arrives at the Okeedokee Hatchery, Gil meets up with his coworker, Finn. They load some nets into the boat for their morning expedition. Muskies (a shorter name for the muskellunge fish) are coming into the shallows to spawn, and Gil is going out on the water today to grab some unsuspecting fish on the lookout for romance. He sticks his net into the water repeatedly, and finally comes up with a flopping muskie. A 43" female, and pregnant, a good find. He nets several more females and some promising males, careful to avoid those sharp teeth. A few immature fish get dumped back into the water, but they shouldn't feel rejected...Gil is only looking for eggs and sperm today. After he nets a few more fish, Gil loads them into a cooler full of water and turns the boat around.
When he gets back to the big concrete hatchery building, the muskies are poured into a water tank laced with anesthetic. This sends the fish into a chill, dreamy state, and they lay peacefully in the water until Gil grabs one. She is a good-sized muskie with a nice, plump belly. Gil scans her with tracking software, and sees that she was also harvested last year, when she was given one of the chips the hatchery implants in migrating fish. Welcome back, old girl.
Gil positions the female over a bucket of water, and Finn supports her body while Gil gets a better handle on her tail. The anesthesia keeps her calm and uninjured. Gil gently squeezes his fingers over the fish's abdomen, and a stream of yellowish fish eggs squirt into the bucket. When he has enough eggs, he returns for a male fish, and draws out the fish sperm, or "milt," with a needleless syringe (source). (Sorry, little guy.)
Then, it's time to make fish. Gil pours the milt into the bucket of eggs, and stirs the concoction gently with a feather...there can't be any broken eggs in this omelet. Next, he adds a bit of corn starch, so the milt disperses evenly, and the eggs go into a jar for fertilization. "It's a little like cooking," Gil thinks.
After a week and a half, the eggs will turn into tiny wriggling fish, only a few millimeters long, with a yolk sac attached like a pot belly (source). Gil and his coworkers have to watch them 24-7, like careful parents, because a single water impurity or temperature drop can kill the entire group of hatchlings. Gil likes to listen to audiobooks while he's on nighttime "baby duty." Sometimes he puts Moby Dick on speaker, to inspire the baby fish. You, too, can be a great white whale.
After the fertilization process, Gil returns the woozy captives to their home. As he watches them flop goofily through the current, he pulls out a sandwich to munch on. Peanut butter and jelly...ironically, he can't stand tuna fish. He pulls off some of the crust to give to a seagull, and sniffs the crisp air. Ahh, what a life.
But until then, they'll be our...weird, gross little babies.
After lunch, Gil and Finn go out to the nursery pond with a bag of fertilizer, and spread it on top of the water. When the hatchlings are big enough, they'll need something to eat, and the fertilizer encourages some delectable algae to grow along the surface (source). Eventually, they'll graduate to tasty minnows, and learn to catch their own food. Mmm-mmm.
When the muskies become "big kids" (about eight to ten inches long), they'll be loaded into a big tanker truck and shipped out to stock a recreational pond in a state park. This is Gil's favorite part, especially the moment when he opens the pipes and watches the streams of water empty into the lake. Every few seconds, a fish will shoot out like a torpedo...bombs away (source).
During the summer, anglers from around the state load up their gear and head to the lake in the hopes of catching "the big one." It will be a good year for sport-fishing...the energetic muskies Gil's seen so far would even give Ahab a run for his money. He feels a touch of fatherly pride that they took his bedtime stories to heart. Swim on, little white whales. Swim on.