It was the trip of a lifetime on Thursday for 98 white bass, stunned and transported in a tank on the back of a pickup truck over the 2.4-mile distance between two north-metro lakes.
As part of a Department of Natural Resources fish-stocking program, they were moved from Pleasant Lake in North Oaks to Sucker Lake in Vadnais Heights.
State statute designates Pleasant Lake as a fisheries lake, so sport fishing is prohibited.
Sucker Lake is the closest lake open to fishing, and one that in the past has been popular with Hmong fishermen, who favor the white bass because it's similar to a species native to southeast Asia, said Tong Vang, a DNR community liaison.
Fisheries specialist Rick Walsh led the move at the request of the Capitol Sportsmen Chapter of the Minnesota Deer Hunter's Association. The chapter is made up mostly of Hmong outdoorsmen.
Walsh steered an electrofishing boat equipped with a generator and electricity-transmitting probes into a narrow channel connecting Pleasant Lake to Charley Lake in North Oaks. T.J. DeBates and Joel Stiras stood on the bow, long-poled nets at the ready. Walsh caught a low branch before it whipped his face. "It's like Humphrey Bogart in the 'African Queen,'" he joked.
At the channel's end, Walsh flipped a switch on the generator, and DeBates pressed a floor pedal to start the current. Within three seconds, the water was churning with seized-up fish. Their white-gold bellies glinted in the brown water, making them an easy target for netting.
The fish were stunned for about a minute, and some got away. The electrical system generates a 4- to 8-amp, 120-volt current within a radius of about eight feet.
The three men dumped the fish -- which also included crappies, small-mouth bass, bluegills, walleye and carp -- into an oxygen-fed tank. Back at shore, they moved the white bass by the netful into another specially aerated tank on the back of the DNR truck.
By that time, most of the fish had come to. A few still floated belly-up in the truck tank, but after a gentle prod flipped over and swam away from DeBates' touch. The men tossed some of the other species back into the lake; they kept a few samples for testing.
"It sounds kind of barbaric," Walsh admitted. "But it's a technology used for fish sampling for decades."
The machine's controls allow Walsh to regulate the flow of electricity. Of Thursday's haul, all but two were in good condition to swim away; those were taken back to the lab.
After the first two runs in the lake, the men drove through North Oaks on W. Pleasant Lake Road, across Hwy. 96 and into Vadnais-Sucker Lake Regional Park. With the help of Vang, they schlepped 51 fish by the netful to the bank of the channel and into Sucker Lake. Once in the water, the fish somersaulted and swam off.
The fish-stocking program isn't new, but it was suspended last year because of concerns about spreading zebra mussels in lake water.
The move Thursday was made easier by the fact that three connected lakes -- Pleasant, Sucker and Vadnais -- all have zebra mussels already.
Although white bass are common in the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers, the Pleasant Lake population tests lower for PCB and mercury contamination, and so they are better suited for eating within state Department of Health guidelines.
Walsh coordinates the DNR's Fishing in the Neighborhood (FIN) program for the east metro, which aims to boosts sport fishing in part by stocking lakes near where people live. The goal is to make the fishing good enough that sportsmen keep coming back.
Only a couple of fishermen stood on the channel's banks Thursday morning. Neither had come for white bass.
"They'll be here tomorrow," Vang said.
Maria Elena Baca • 612-673-4409
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