Scientific Reports Share Details that Intrigue Your Inner Geek

   Folks often ask writers and editors how they come up with story ideas every day or week.

   The late Jack Brauer of Appleton, co-founder and co-owner of Deer & Deer Hunting magazine, had a standard answer when people asked how it’s possible to devote an entire magazine to white-tailed deer and those who hunt them. They’d ask something like, “Don’t you get bored and eventually run out of ideas?”

   Brauer’s response: “Do you think Hugh Hefner ever got bored publishing Playboy magazine?”

   In other words, if you must ask such questions, you’re not obsessed enough to understand.

   Folks truly curious about the outdoors stumble into interesting facts and random sights nearly every time they go fishing, hiking or hunting. They question everything they haven’t seen, smelled or heard before.

   For example, fishing guide Jeff Robl of Mercer introduces scores of anglers each year to the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage in far north-central Wisconsin. Before he returns them to the dock hours later, Robl will help nearly every client rescue a hook or jighead from the flowage’s endless supply of submerged trees, stumps, branches and other woody debris slowly decaying in the TFF’s 13,500 watery acres.

   Yes, snags happen no matter where you fish, but you haven’t experienced woody water until you’ve fished the Turtle-Flambeau. Unless you use bobbers and/or weedless hooks, you can’t fish the TFF’s 21 square miles of water without getting annoyed by snags.

Anglers never know what they’ll snag and haul out of the depths, such as this waterlogged wood from the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage in northern Wisconsin. Scientists report that trees submerged in freshwater take at least 500 years to completely rot away.   — Patrick Durkin photo

   Why so much wood-induced grief? Curious folks soon learn that thousands upon thousands of trees drowned in 1926 when the Chippewa and Flambeau Improvement Co. created the flowage by building a dam downstream of the confluence of the Turtle and Flambeau rivers. The dam flooded out 16 natural lakes and much of the surrounding forest to create the TFF.

   The flowage’s wood supply doesn't end there. Vast forests still surround the flowage’s 114-mile shoreline, and trees cover most of its 195 islands, so wood never stops falling into the water. The most infamous wood drop occurred in 2010 when an EF1 tornado slammed the flowage, blowing countless branches and entire trees and root balls onto the TFF’s shorelines and shallows.

   In addition, people have supplemented all that naturally drowned wood by adding over 400 log fish cribs around the waterway.

   Fishing geeks hear such details and flood locals like Robl with questions. When realizing waterlogged wood hangs around awhile, they might even try stumping him (no pun intended) by asking: “Hey Jeff. How many years does it take a tree drowned in 1926 to rot away beneath the waves?”

   Robl would probably shrug and let you guess yourself unless he read a 2015 research paper on the TFF’s walleyes by Lawrence Eslinger and Zach Lawson, two fisheries biologists with the Department of Natural Resources. In their report on the TFF’s walleye population, Eslinger and Lawson note that researchers in Ontario, Canada, determined it takes 443 years on average for white pines to completely decompose underwater.

   They also note that the TFF’s drowned trees probably take even longer than 4.43 centuries to rot away. Why? Because most of the TFF’s submerged trees are second-growth hardwood species, not virgin white pine. Hardwoods typically take longer than softwoods to rot when submerged in cold freshwater, given their natural oils and greater densities.

   If you don’t believe it, consider the ancient dugout canoes found the past few years on the bottom of Madison’s Lake Mendota. Scientists couldn’t just dry out these dugouts, clean them thoroughly, and paddle them back into service. But neither were the canoes rotted beyond recognition. Scientists tested wood from the dugouts and determined that a canoe made of white oak was 1,200 years old, while one made of ash was 3,000 years old.

   Curious minds ask related questions, too. Did you know that pressure-treated lumber made from Southern yellow pine lasts 10 to 40 years in most backyard applications, depending on the treatment and how well you maintain the projects you build? If you keep your wooden deck clean and paint it occasionally, you should get 30 years out of it with treated wood. But if you “build it and forget it” and let it settle into damp ground, rot starts spreading within five to 10 years.

   Fishing nerds keep all those details in mind when hooking into sunken wood, no matter where they cast their line. If nothing else, the more they know about such things, the better they understand why their frustrations won’t end soon.

   In fact, those truly fascinated by walleyes and the TFF might stumble into that 2016 research by Eslinger and Lawson on their own when visiting a DNR website titled “Fisheries Management Reports” (https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/Fishing/publications/ManagementReports). Readers will call up that study to learn about walleyes in the TFF, but get sidetracked on Page 5 by details on waterlogged wood.

   Curiosity never sleeps. It just keeps searching. It might even pause to click on the most recent report, a 2023 survey titled, “A Profile of Behaviors, Awareness and Management Options of Wisconsin's Lake Michigan Salmonid Anglers. By Lauren Bradshaw and Nick Legler.”

   Yes, the titles of scientific reports sound boring, but they usually include details you didn’t expect to find. For instance, of all those folks fishing Lake Michigan and Lake Superior with a Wisconsin license, 72% are state residents. The other 28% come mostly from Minnesota, 11%; Illinois, 10%; and Iowa, 2%. The remaining 5% come from 23 other states, the nearest being Michigan and the farthest, Alaska.

    The study found that anglers travel an average of 91.6 one-way miles to reach Lake Michigan, with residents averaging 52 one-way miles and nonresidents averaging 198.5 one-way miles. Further, resident anglers spent an average of $243 per trip, with spending ranging from $0 to $10,000. However, 25% of residents spent less than $30 per trip and 50% of residents spent less than $100 per trip. Nonresidents spent over twice as much than residents, averaging $534 per trip.

   The most popular ports for residents to launch their boats were Milwaukee County, 22%; Sheboygan County, 18%; and Kewaunee County, 14%. Meanwhile, nonresidents preferred Door County, 26%; Kenosha County, 17%; and Kewaunee County, 16%.

   So, here’s a pro tip for writers. If you must report regularly on specific topics, read a lot of related scientific reports and share their nerdiest details with your fellow geeks.