- [Bret] Well, there's a nice walleye.

- Awesome!

- [Bret] On today's "Prairie Sportsman," we fish with "Adventuress" magazine's Jennifer Pudenz.

- The amazing double there.

- [Bret] Awesome.

And learn all about her magazine and mission.

- I just think it's really important that women have something like that for media.

- [Bret] Then we hear from researchers who are trying to figure out what's behind the cyanobacteria threats to Lake Superior.

- We're trying to understand a little bit more about the fundamental ecology of the organism.

Basically, what causes it to grow.

- [Bret] Finally, we check in with Nicole Zempel as she helps us discover the benefits of mullein.

- Anything to do with your chest or breathing easier and deeper.

- Welcome to "Prairie Sportsman."

I'm Bret Amundson.

We got a great show for you starting right now.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Sportsman" is provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, as recommended by the Legislative Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources.

And by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farm, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

- [Bret] In recent years, more and more women are participating in the outdoors.

As those numbers continue to grow, more and more opportunities to cater to those women are becoming available.

(gentle music) Welcome to "Prairie Sportsman."

I'm Bret Amundson.

We're up here at the Northwest angle at Lake of the Woods and today, we're going to introduce somebody to this unique area who's made it her mission to help women be more successful in the outdoors.

- Oh, hi.

Excuse me.

I'm Jennifer Pudenz, owner and editor of "Adventuress" Magazine.

"Adventuress" is actually the only women's hunting and fishing magazine and I started about 10 years ago.

First digitally and then a high quality print magazine and it's all about giving credit to experienced women and also sharing that with other women.

(gentle music) - So this is your first time to Lake of the Woods?

- It is.

Well, so I'm originally from southern Iowa and I just moved to Minnesota like four years ago and so I just hadn't made it up this far yet, so it's been a bucket list trip for me though.

- Not only did you get to come to the Lake of the Woods, but your first trip coming up to the angle is pretty neat.

- [Jennifer] Yes.

- [Bret] There you go.

Nice.

- There's another one there though.

Yeah, slinking on the bottom.

- [Bret] He perched.

He perched.

- It's tiny.

(Bret laughs) - [Bret] That's a sauger.

- [Jennifer] Oh man.

- No, that's Tiny.

(Jennifer laughs) - [Bret] Oh boy.

- But I got him.

Oh, dead stick.

Sure did.

- [Bret] Did it hit the dead stick?

- Yeah.

(upbeat music) (rod whirring) - [Bret] Nice.

- Hey.

Oops.

Sweet.

- [Bret] Well, there's a nice walleye.

- Awesome.

- [Bret] Hey.

- Yeah!

- [Bret] On the board.

- On the dead stick.

- [Bret] Well Jen, first time at the Northwest angle.

First time in a bomber and- - Yes.

- [Bret] First walleye of the trip.

- Nice healthy walleye.

- [Bret] Congratulations.

- Thank you.

(gentle music) So ever since I was little, I loved hunting and fishing magazines and always loved the print magazines, and so that was something kind of which is how my mind works too.

I think like a magazine, I feel like, and just always have had that love for print.

I went to Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa and went for journalism and print design emphasis and also art emphasis.

(gentle acoustic music) - [Bret] He's chasing the minnow around.

There's two of them chasing the same minnow around.

- Sweet.

- [Bret] There's fish all over down there right now.

- Yeah.

There's another one right behind that, isn't there?

(rod whirring) - [Bret] Nice.

- Oh, it's a big perch!

- [Bret] Oh, look at the perch.

Yes.

- Oh, that's, oh yeah!

(both laughing) - [Bret] That's awesome.

- Sweet.

That's awesome.

- [Bret] That's a big perch.

Jeez!

- Yes.

- When we fished up here last time filming for "Prairie Sportsman," we caught one or two perch I think and a burbot and some multispecies.

But the perch fishing this year, Jesse, has been- - Has been fantastic.

- Been crazy.

- It's been better than the last few years, I'd say.

- And you think that's because maybe there wasn't as much pressure up here last year that the fish had a little bit of a break?

- Yes.

- And you know, all over the region, you know, we didn't have as cold of a winter or whatever.

We had some different conditions, so maybe a few people didn't ice fish as much last year.

That allows these fish to grow and, you know, grow in numbers, grow in size.

And we caught one, Jennifer caught one in our house that literally looked like a rectangle.

- [Jesse] Yeah.

- Like it was huge.

And I looked at it and I said, "What is that?"

She was measuring, I said, "What was that?

Is that 14?"

And she said, "12 and a half."

Oh yeah, he's cruising with it.

- [Jennifer] Oh yeah.

Good.

- [Bret] Cruising.

- [Jennifer] Good, good.

- [Bret] Oh.

I think he just spit it.

- [Jennifer] He did?

- Sure look like it.

Unless there's two of them.

Oh, there's a big mark coming in.

- [Jennifer] Okay, I'm going to take this.

- Okay.

- [Jennifer] I think.

(rod whirring) - Nice.

You got him.

Oh, I'm going to catch, this is a nice fish.

- Oh, this is a nicer fish.

- Is it?

- What is going on actually?

It's really weird.

- Oh!

Oh.

- What is going on?

- Mine just missed.

He's swimming around with it.

He might be wrapped in- - Your bobber's going too.

- Oh, I got one.

We doubled on nice fish here.

- Okay.

Oh, jumbo!

- Nice.

Oh, look at that one.

- Is yours a jumbo?

- Probably.

This is a nice fish.

(Jennifer laughing) - I hope you do too.

This is huge.

- Oh, mine's a nice walleye.

- Oh, is it?

- Yeah.

- Do you need help?

- Not sure yet.

I got to get him up the hole here.

There we go.

- Oh, good job.

- Nice.

Oh yeah.

(Jennifer laughs) Whoo!

(Bret laughs) Lake in the Woods.

- That is an awesome double.

- Cheers.

- Sweet.

Cheers.

- Alright.

- Back in the day when I started with the idea, there wasn't a women's hunting and fishing magazine at all that had been done before really.

And so that was just something I really wanted to create.

I just think it's really important that women have something like that for media for them and specifically created for women and giving them credit and showing how we do things differently and stuff like that.

I just think it's really important to have that.

Just being a woman in the outdoors myself, like I know I have to do things differently than guys do for a lot of things.

And also I think women learn from other women easier.

And also like, you know, our gear and everything like that is different, so I think it's just a great way to learn from another woman as well as it helps to just inspire and, you know, when you see other women doing things in the outdoors, I think it helps inspire them and also give great role models for youth.

- Nice job.

(Jennifer laughs) - Nope.

It's a perch.

- Nice.

- Sweet.

- Oh, look at that perch.

(gentle acoustic music) I want you to just kind of explain why you ended up catching that fish because right before that, we were hooked into a pike and actually both of us caught this pike, like bit her dead stick, swam over, bit my dead stick, wrapped all our lines up, all four lines.

We had a bit of a mess, but you had a backup.

- Yeah, so with us all taken out here with lines, I had a backup dead stick that I put down.

So at least, we had something if a fish came in, and you know, we're still fishing and here that 20-inch walleye took that backup dead stick while we were otherwise out of commission.

So that was an awesome catch.

(laughs) - That was a great idea.

- It kind of looked like a walleye, didn't it?

Oh, nice walleye.

- [Bret] Nice.

- Sweet.

- It looked like a big mark on the line.

- It did look like a good walleye on there.

- [Bret] What's it doing down there?

- Doing yoga.

(laughs) Oh, beauty.

That was awesome.

- [Bret] That's quite the sequence.

It's a good thing you got a backup rod.

- [Jennifer] Yep.

- [Bret] I mean- - I really, really like having that backup because then, otherwise, I wouldn't have been under for this.

- [Bret] Right.

Nice.

- What a beautiful walleye.

When I was growing up, I didn't have any, you know, women to look up to in the outdoor industry and follow like that, so that's a really big deal to me that other people have that.

Also I keep the magazine really clean and so, you know, families read it together, which is amazing to hear about that.

- [Bret] And even some guys.

- Yes.

So I always want things to be very experienced and educational, and so I have guys that read the whole magazine that say, you know, they learn something from every issue.

- [Bret] Jen's efforts to help aren't limited to the magazine.

Her faith has inspired her to organize events that bring women into the outdoors.

- Four years ago or so, I moved to Hibbing, Minnesota and got involved in Chisholm Baptist Church and they weren't doing like a ministry or anything for the outdoors.

And well, I guess I should say there was one for men, a fishing trip for men and there was nothing for women.

So I started a women's outdoor ministry at first and then that's expanded and grown to have events for everybody with, you know, kids and adults, as well as to have co-ed groups and stuff like that.

So we've done everything from ice fishing and maple syrup making and snowshoeing and cross country skiing to kayak fishing down a river and- - [Bret] Now maybe a trip to the Northwest angle.

(Jennifer laughs) - That'd be awesome.

Oh, I've got one staring at something.

- Oh yeah.

Get him.

- Uh, he left.

Oh, he left.

What's he doing?

- Oh, he's coming back to eat one of the dead sticks.

Yeah, your bobber's going down over there.

- Not as much as he left.

No, he doesn't have me.

- Oh, he's spooking.

Oh, he just swiped that.

- He took- - Swiped that- - Is it a pike?

- Oh.

- You got it?

- I missed him.

He's still coming back though.

There, I got him.

- Did you really?

- Yep.

- Good.

- This one's a little bigger now.

Oh yeah.

- Dude, go down.

- It doesn't take much to be bigger than the last one.

- That's looking decent.

- That's a tullibee.

- Oh, a tullibee.

That's why he was acting so different.

Hey, we can keep them.

- Yeah, we can.

(Bret grunting) (Jennifer laughs) I mean, they're like a trout.

They're so strong.

(both laughing) Okay, bud.

They're slippery.

There we go.

Excuse you.

These fish are a lot of fun and they're actually really good to eat.

A couple of years ago, we filmed an episode where we netted tullibees and smoked them.

They're delicious, you can find that on the "Prairie Sportsman" YouTube channel.

Fun fight.

They're fun fish to catch.

(gentle music) - So the magazine, I use it in a format of like a lot of how-to articles and so there's just a lot of learning with that and so it has a hunting and fishing base, but it also includes another article each issue that has something about the outdoors related.

So that could be, you know, like snowmobiling or four-wheeling or snowshoeing, something like that.

Learning that technique, I think it's better when we learn from other women usually actually, I think women learn better from women and- - I've taught you how to catch all these fish today.

(Jennifer laughs) - What?

- [Bret] What just happened?

- So I just doubled.

This one hammered my rattle, and then I looked over and my bobber was gone on the dead stick.

(laughs) So that's pretty amazing double there.

- [Bret] Awesome.

(gentle music) - [Jennifer] Oh, good.

Yes.

- [Bret] Got them.

- [Jennifer] Yes.

Good job.

- [Bret] I'm the big rattle bait.

- [Jennifer] Sweet.

- There we go, just about 5:00, and we're being a little picky on keeper walleyes.

I don't know, this guy's borderline.

I think we're going to have them fry up some of our fish again tonight at Flag Island.

They have a lot of good food in there actually.

- [Jennifer] Yeah.

- Keep your fish to take home or have them fry up or do a fish fry one night or have burgers or some of their other entrees there.

The food is really good.

But I wouldn't mind doing fish again tonight.

- No, it was excellent.

Everything's been excellent at the restaurant.

- This guy looks delicious.

(Jennifer laughs) So while dealing with that fish, I just realized my bobber and my dead stick is down.

I don't know if there's a fish there or not, but we're about to find out.

- [Jennifer] I think there's going to be.

- There's a fish there.

- Yes.

(Bret laughs) - So I get to double up (Jennifer laughs) at the end here.

See what it looks like.

I don't think it's going to be any bigger than the last one.

- Oh, okay.

- About the same size.

Maybe a little smaller- - Awesome double.

- Than the last one.

Too bad it's not a sauger.

We got room for a couple more saugers, but threw a lot of saugers back.

This guy's going back.

That's a heck of a good time.

- Yes.

- Good day.

- That was a good day of fun.

- Let's go eat.

The outdoors are for everyone, and all of Minnesota's great places make it easy for people like Jen to fulfill her mission.

- Understanding when it starts to come up naturally in its lifecycle is the key.

And when does it produce that toxin?

- [Nicole] This plant has been used like a component of a smoke mix.

(upbeat music) - [Bret] This scene is way too familiar.

Signs warning us of the dangers in our lakes, rivers, and streams.

Many cases, these dangers are created by cyanobacteria, more commonly called blue-green algae.

While these algae blooms prefer warmer and shallower water, recently they've been showing up in our Great Lakes, including the coldest and deepest Lake Superior.

(gentle acoustic music) - Like other algae that we have, cyanobacteria is an organism that can undergo photosynthesis so it can produce its own food from sunlight, but cyanobacteria can also produce toxins, which is why we care about it from a public health standpoint.

- We think about cyanobacteria in the history of earth, these organisms have been around for billions of years.

So they've seen conditions where we had no oxygen, they saw dinosaurs, these things saw meteors coming down, yet they still survive, right?

And so part of when we have these big blooms, it's not so much that we can come in and just like knock them out clean.

It's how we also think about like managing them.

- We still don't fully understand why they produce toxins or what events trigger them to produce toxins and that's what we're trying to better understand.

So this project, we're actually just starting this year.

It's a project that was funded by NOAA through the Minnesota Sea Grant College Program.

Really what we want to do is take a molecular approach to understanding these organisms.

- The interesting thing about cyanotoxins is that there's several types.

The one that we're most frequently encountering here in Minnesota is microcystin, and there are over 150 different styles of these.

These are really big compounds built out of amino acids, and the way they arrange them make them more toxic or less toxic.

Part of what we're trying to understand is not just like who has these genes, but also kind of why they're making these.

Are these storage compounds that have just been co-opted for other things over time, or do they have some sort of functional role that is just evolutionary significant?

(gentle acoustic music) - Not all cyanobacteria produce toxins.

So cyanobacteria are good, they provide food for things upper in the food chain like the fish that we like to eat.

But every once in a while, you get these nuisance strains that cause stress to that ecosystem and those are the ones that we're really trying to understand from a public health perspective.

- When you look out here at Lake Superior, the water clarity is so great and it's cold too.

These types of lakes around the world are very atypical for blooms.

- In Lake Superior, really the first reported bloom in recent memory was around 2018.

We saw bloom along the south shore of Lake Superior, and we're starting to see them also in the St. Louis River Estuary.

One of the important distinctions is the strain that we find in Lake Superior isn't able to produce toxins, but the organisms that we do find in the St. Louis River Estuary do have those genes present.

Now that we're starting to see them, there's something in the lake that's changing.

We think that's largely related to climate change, but we're still trying to figure that out.

- When you start looking at all the data, it starts to point to say, maybe there's something greater happening here.

Specifically in Lake Superior, we've been trying to think about their natural lifecycle, like are these organisms being invaded?

Like are they coming in from other places and just growing really quickly or are these actually just part of the natural ecosystem?

And something about the lake changing is really what's driving their growth now.

- The ultimate overall goal of this project, the big question we had coming into it that seed grant wanted answered, under what conditions would a toxic cyanobacterial bloom form in Lake Superior?

So right now we're trying to understand a little bit more about the fundamental ecology of the organism, basically what causes it to grow, and then learn a little more about what the environmental triggers are that cause it to release toxins into the environment that are harmful to people and pets.

- Once we have that, we can start thinking more broadly, not just about Lake Superior, but how these organisms are connected to say Lake Michigan, Erie or the same organism or a flavor of this organism that causes these blooms is also found.

- [Chris] If we can understand those systems a little better, we can better forecast where these blooms are going to occur so we can get out some early warnings.

- Understanding when it starts to come up naturally in its lifecycle is the key.

And when we start thinking about it's coming up on its natural growth cycle, when does it produce that toxin?

Once we kind of figure that out, it's like, okay, how do we deal with their sort of lifestyle on top of like things that we want to do, like fishing and boating and things like that.

(upbeat acoustic music) - I think when most people think about cyanobacteria or like poor water quality, for the Great Lakes, people probably think about Lake Erie, right?

We know Lake Erie has these annual cyanobacteria blooms.

In 2014, the bloom was so bad and toxic that those toxins got into the Toledo water supply and shut down drinking water for almost a week.

So these are the things we're really keen to understand more about.

We're also going to do some experimental trials under like future climate scenarios to see how different strains compete with each other.

And the thing we're really trying to track is whether or not this is like an early warning sign that the lakes are changing.

- Part of the work that we're doing in the lab right now is really thinking about future conditions and how these organisms will respond under elevated CO2 concentrations, which we keep seeing going up and up and up and also elevated temperatures.

- Although it's not a problem now, this is something we want to get out in front of because once it's here, it's already too late.

And I think we just want to be cognizant of that problem just to keep people safe as best we can.

- As scientists, you know, we don't get to be the stewards, right?

But we get to help them inform people who are in that mindset of like being stewards of the land or stewards of the water.

And you know, if we can help inform that and help sort of guide these hands, maybe we'll have a good resource for the next 100 years.

- [Narrator] Stories about aquatic invasive species research are brought to you by the Aquatic Invasive Species Task Forces of Meeker, Yellow Medicine, Lac Qui Parle, Swift and Big Stone counties, and by the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund.

We can stop aquatic hitchhikers 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, drain water from your boat, ballast tanks, motor, live well and bait container, remove drain plugs and keep drain plugs out while transporting equipment, Dispose of unwanted bait in the trash.

To keep live bait, drain the water and refill the bait container with bottled or tap water.

And if you have 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.

(upbeat music) (gentle acoustic music) - I am standing next to a mullein plant.

Some people say mullein, I say mullein.

And we will post the scientific link for you as well.

This is in its second year.

It's a non-native plant.

They figure it was introduced sometime mid to late 1700s and brought over as like a medicinal herb.

The first year of its life, it sits very low to the ground and grows kind of as a rosette.

Then as you can see, the spikes get really tall.

I'm 5'2.5".

That half is very important to me.

They grow between 5 and 10 feet tall.

So the mullein plant is pretty easy to identify.

The leaves are kind of wooly or fuzzy.

Also, you kind of can't miss the spike and then the yellow flowers, which something I think is kind of pretty about that.

Each flower will bloom before dawn, and by afternoon, it's already closed up.

So that's kind of cool, like an early morning bloomer.

This plant is used medicinally.

Anything to do with your chest or breathing easier and deeper.

Things like asthma, bronchitis, things like that that impact our chest and make it feel kind of heavy.

Can be used fresh or you can dry it.

Can be used as tea, just figure a cup of boiling water and then your desired amount of plant material.

Also you can just boil it and then breathe in the steam.

Interestingly, when we're thinking chest issues and lungs and respiratory, we might not think of smoking as something that would be beneficial for that, but this plant has been used like a component of a smoke mix.

You can smoke the leaves of the plant, also the flowers in their dried form, and that will work similar to how a tea would work, only it's just how you prefer to take that plant in.

So the mullein plant.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Sportsman" is provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, as recommended by the Legislative Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources, and by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farm, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.