[Carolyn Foley]
Teach me about the Great Lakes, teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to Teach Me About the Great Lakes, a monthly-ish podcast where Stuart Carlton, who's originally from Louisiana, gets people who are smarter and harder working than him to teach them all about the Great Lakes. I am not Stuart, I am Carolyn Foley, a researcher with Illinois Indiana Sea Grant, and my co-host today is the absolutely wonderful Megan Gunn.

Megan, how are you today?

[Megan Gunn]
I'm doing okay. I will say the change in weather is really messing with my sinuses.

[Carolyn Foley]
So we don't have any Stuart today, but we can still have a conversation without Stuart. We've done it before, we'll do it again. So why don't we go ahead and bring on our guests, sound good?

[Megan Gunn]
Sounds great.

[Carolyn Foley]
And we will note that our guest today is participating in the podcast on her personal time, and any opinions or recommendations are personal in nature and not to be associated with any of her current or former employers. So let's get to it.

So our guest today is Dana Castle, a fisheries biologist at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Dana, how are you today?

[Dana Castle]
I am doing great.

[Carolyn Foley]
So Dana, we wanted to talk to you about this publication. It's relatively new, it came out in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. It's called Angler Dynamics in the St. Clair Detroit River System After Decades of Change. But first, because we haven't talked about it a ton, even though it's part of the Great Lakes, and it's, you know, things like that. Can you tell us a little bit about the St. Clair Detroit River System?

[Dana Castle]
So the St. Clair Detroit River System is kind of considered, what's considered a connecting channel. So it essentially connects two great lakes together. But it's a weird system in terms of like, it's not the St. Mary's River, where it's just one river, it's got a lake in between, a natural lake. But then it also has the Detroit River, the St. Clair River, the St. Clair River on the north end and the Detroit River on the south end. And we'll talk more about this in depth. But the system, if you think back to like the 1960s, I wasn't alive, but this is what I've heard, is that, you know, there was a lot of pollution and things happening at the time.

And a lot of these systems were influenced by, I mean, we didn't know any better, but we were dumping our sewage, our wastewater, all kinds of things into these river systems, because they went away from us. So we don't have to see them anymore. And so we didn't know any better about what that meant.

But that's how a lot of the river systems were able to be set on fire later. And so that kind of led to the Clean Water Act, which we'll talk more in depth about too. And then trying to clean up some of these systems and waterways during that time.

So the St. Clair Detroit River system is a place where I think there's still very, it's very evident, there's still some big cities that surround it. There's still a lot of industry that surround it. But it's a system that has also come around a lot, because it's very resilient.

And now it has an incredible fishery attached to it too, unlike it did the 1960s and 70s.

[Megan Gunn]
That's awesome. You mentioned that it is a connecting channel between two lakes. For those that aren't looking at a map right now, which two Great Lakes is it connecting?

[Dana Castle]
Yep. So it connects Lake Huron on the north end to Lake Erie at the south end.

[Megan Gunn]
Nice.

[Carolyn Foley]
Okay. And then, yeah, you mentioned the industry. So I love crossing at the Blue Water Bridge, but I only ever look one way.

Like if I'm driving to Canada, I'm looking to the left. And if I'm driving to the US, I'm looking to the right, because the other side, it's just like buildings. That's the St. Clair River there, right?

Like, and it's just kind of...

[Dana Castle]
Yes. Yeah.

[Carolyn Foley]
Yeah.

[Dana Castle]
Yeah. Then the Ambassador Bridge goes over the Detroit River in the south end. Yeah.

[Carolyn Foley]
Right, right, right. Okay. And then so, okay, before we jump into, there's some really fascinating stuff. And we're going to talk about the fishery.

We're going to talk about the Clean Water Act. Is Lake St. Clair a Great Lake? Okay.

So actually, I should back that up. Every year, the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab and others around Valentine's Day create these really cute little like memes or whatever that you can share. And there's always like someone who's like, where's the Lake St. Clair love?

Where's the Lake St. Clair love? So is Lake St. Clair a Great Lake? And if yes, why?

And if no, why not?

[Dana Castle]
I feel like I, like I don't, I've never heard of it considered a Great Lake. I think it's a Great Lake in terms of, it's a Great Lake with an awesome fishery, like a really cool river delta. But like, as far as like the big Great Lakes, I've never heard it considered as part of that.

So I've always considered Lake St. Clair as part of this kind of connecting channel piece. But I don't want to get anybody, any Lake St. Clair people upset. That's how I've always known it.

[Megan Gunn]
I mean, Pluto was a planet and then it wasn't. Is it like homes where we can add in some extra lakes into the acronym? Or should it just stay homes?

[Dana Castle]
Who even decides? I don't even know.

[Megan Gunn]
I don't know.

[Dana Castle]
Yeah, so I would be totally fine with it. But yeah, I don't know what technically defines, you know, the Great Lake piece. But, you know, I know like the Great Lakes are quite a bit bigger than Lake St. Clair even is, which Lake St. Clair is a big lake too.

[Carolyn Foley]
Right. Yeah. And just to be clear, I don't think anyone will be upset.

Lake St. Clair lovers, I'm guessing, will be like, yeah, an episode about Lake St. Clair, rather.

[Dana Castle]
Yes.

[Carolyn Foley]
So, all right, so let's talk about your study. And so what was the motivation? So this was a study that you completed as a graduate student, as part of your graduate work at Central Michigan University.

What was the motivation for it? Well, I guess I should back up and say, okay, what was the main question you were seeking to study?

[Dana Castle]
Yeah. So kind of our main question. So I had worked at USGS since I graduated in undergraduate for the Great Lakes Science Center in Ann Arbor.

And we were, in that time, we did a bunch of work on the system itself. So I was out doing larval fish surveys, doing some of the shoreline restoration work that we'll probably talk about, and analyzing the shoreline restoration work that was done. And so I was well connected to the region just from doing that work.

And we knew we were investing all this money into the system. And we were like, okay, we know we have evidence that the fishery is improving, that there's more fish around, and that they're recruiting into the system. But are anglers responding to that?

And so that's what we really wanted to get at with this paper was, are anglers changing their angling activity based on the restoration that occurred on the system? Yeah, so we kind of looked at it like a, we did like a pre restoration versus post restoration. So like a lot of the restoration work occurred in like the late, like, like the, how do you even describe that?

Like 2008-ish to like 2015-ish. So like there was a lot of that restoration work occurring during that time. And so, like we said, we knew the fish populations were doing better, but we didn't know if the angler community was responding to that at all.

[Carolyn Foley]
Okay, first off, what type of restoration work were you doing that was helping the fishery recover?

[Dana Castle]
A lot of, at least what's talked about in the paper are these like rocky limestone reefs that were placed into the rivers. They're huge. So they're kind of designed to target like what are called lithophilic spawning fishes.

So they're kind of these fish that aggregate over a big area and just kind of spray things everywhere, if that makes sense. And so their eggs then settle down into the substrate. And so these rocky reefs are designed to have like deep interstitial space where the eggs can get very good oxygen flow and water flow and be clean of sediment.

And so the idea was we thought there was a lot of habitat limitation in the system. And if we put in these big rocky reefs, would this help these lithophilic spawning fishes have more habitat to spawn on? So that like the lithophilic spawners, like the big ones we were targeting are like walleye, lake whitefish, and lake sturgeon, and suckers.

The suckers, you like them too.

[Megan Gunn]
That's really cool.

[Dana Castle]
Yeah. And then the other thing we did too was on the St. Clair River in particular, there was all this shoreline restoration work. So if any of you have been like around like Marysville, there was a site, where else?

I can see it's been so long, I can't remember the area that you're at. But Marysville for sure had a site. So there was these areas like on the actual shoreline that they restored to kind of like be more resilient to wave action to add more larval habitat for fish, for more juvenile fish species.

And so we did some shoreline construction too, to try to make this area better suited for like nursery habitat for fish too. So that was part of it as well.

[Megan Gunn]
Did you add in like vegetation or riprap? What kind of structures did you put in place there?

[Dana Castle]
There was a lot of riprap, but then they also put in like kind of these like pooling structures. They try to like kind of like create areas in which wouldn't be as affected by wave action. So like if you put like structures in front, and then they were protected.

So like some of them had like kind of these big like wooden, like big posts. And so like they kind of protected from wave action. And then the area behind it was more like still from that.

So like there are some areas where they were more protected for nursery habitat that way.

[Megan Gunn]
Okay, like barrier islands is what it sounds like, like little artificial barrier islands.

[Dana Castle]
That's kind of, yeah. And then there was, one of them was in Port Huron too. Port Huron had a big section of restoration there too.

So that's a good spot to look at too, if you're interested in following up.

[Megan Gunn]
Sounds like a field trip when Stewart gets back.

[Dana Castle]
Exactly. Yep. And they did a lot of cool work too, just to like bring the community together too.

Like plant native flowers, made it look very pretty and like appealing for people, walking pads and things like that. So it wasn't just like we want to help the fish, but also we want to bring the community to this big resource that's here, right here by your house. So.

[Megan Gunn]
Was that something that you looked at too, like how the community responded to coming in, utilizing those resources and not just the anglers?

[Dana Castle]
Not in this paper, we didn't, although I'm sure some of that's been looked at. Like there's been a lot of papers based on some of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative work and stuff like that, that kind of look at what we've invested and how that kind of translates to how people use the area more. I love it.

[Carolyn Foley]
So for your study, how did you assess like our anglers? Because essentially you were trying to say like, okay, we know the fishery is doing better. We're putting in these super cool reefs and things like that.

We've done all the work to say, okay, yes, the fish are using them and the populations are growing and things like that. How did you then try to connect with the angler communities to be like, hey, are you seeing this? Are you coming and gathering fish or things like that?

Well, fishing for fish, gathering fish. Anyway, but yeah, what did you all do? Like what kind of steps did you take?

[Dana Castle]
Yeah. So the beauty of me kind of walking into this master's project and kind of knowing, like I knew I would be interested in this question as somebody that already had an interest in kind of social science type things. But the great thing was that Michigan DNR has already had a very robust creel program that they've been doing for many years.

And so we really took pieces of that creel program and used it for our purposes for this and use the data. So I'm like trying to think of like what details people would be interested in for Michigan DNR's creel program. But so they always do, they kind of split it up in two shifts every day.

So they have like a nine to two or no, a 6am to 2pm shift. Then they have a shift from like 2pm to 10pm. And so they randomize that.

So you don't know if you're gonna be working the day or night shift. And then they also randomize what day of the week they're going to be going out and asking these questions. So then that way, you know, you're not just seeing, you know, the weekends are obviously gonna be busier for anglers.

And so they want to make sure they're getting a full picture of this fishery. And so they're kind of using a lot of randomized ways to do that with the Michigan DNR. And then also, the creel clerks have like, they either went like north or south, and their starting points were randomized as well within that.

So in my mind, the amount of randomization that's put into the Michigan DNR creel program makes it very like scientifically sound, because there's so many pieces that are put into that to try to make it as reliable as possible, because we use that data within Michigan DNR for a lot of things. So it's done really well. And it already was there when I got there.

So I didn't have to do too much. But we did add a couple of extra questions when I started coming onto this project. And one of those was, are you staying in the area, like in the area that you're fishing?

And if you're staying, how many nights are you planning to stay? Because we knew we wanted to kind of get an economic estimate from this. And so we needed to know how long they were kind of planning to stay in this region, especially those that were out of state and spending probably a lot of money to be here.

So we were very curious about like how long people were coming and staying and fishing this region.

[Megan Gunn]
It wasn't just the local people that were being surveyed. It was everybody that was contributing to the harvesting of the fish in the system. Yeah, for sure.

[Dana Castle]
And then kind of a caveat, which you can read about in the paper too, is that so some of the early data that was collected, they had only like where they only interviewed shore anglers. And then now the more focus is on boat anglers, because those are easiest to target at boat launches and things like that. So we know we're missing that in a lot of ways, because shore anglers and boat anglers are very different dynamics too, in terms of how they fish, what they fish for, and things like that.

So we know we were missing that, but we just couldn't get, we couldn't get a way to get that data at the time either.

[Carolyn Foley]
Okay, first off, I'm imagining in my head, I've always thought about the Creel Clerks, I would be a terrible Creel Clerk, because I guess at the boat launch, you have like a captive audience, and you're like, hi, I'm the person with the clipboard, you're used to answering questions. But like, if someone's just like busy fishing off a pier or something, it's like, I don't want to bother them. They're happy.

So a shout out of appreciation for Creel Clerks everywhere.

[Dana Castle]
Seriously. Yeah, and they're kind of too, like, for us, like the people that get kind of, they're on the front lines a lot. So like anybody who wants to air their grievances, or like, well, usually it's grievances, like, I'd like to say the other side comes out too, which I'm sure it does.

But they're kind of get the front line of like, this is why I don't like this and this and this. And so yeah, shout out to Creel Clerks, because they do a great job at what they do. And they're kind of like our front facing people for the agency.

[Carolyn Foley]
So how did you then look at the data to try to assess because you were trying to look at, okay, have the number of anglers changed, the type of fish they're fishing for changed, what types of things were you specifically looking at over time with this Creel data?

[Dana Castle]
Yeah, so Creel data is tricky for a number of reasons, because you have people that are kind of coming multiple times too. So you can't always just count one angler as one angler, because they might be coming back a lot. So a lot of times we measure it and either like angler hours fishing, or what we did in this paper was look at catch rates, specifically to try to get a gauge of like, have catch rates at least change?

Are they catching more fish? So when I looked at it, we had all these individual interviews. So we kind of used, instead of thinking as one angler, we used one interview as like a data point, knowing that there might be somebody that gets questioned more than once in our data set.

But kind of keeping those as like an individual interview. And that's how we calculated our catch rates and our harvest rates for this as well.

[Megan Gunn]
What did you find?

[Dana Castle]
You're like, I gotta get to it. So we did find that generally, catch rates increased from the pre restoration to the post restoration period. And that was at least on Lake St. Clair in the Detroit River. But we could not compare the data for the St. Clair River because of that caveat I mentioned earlier, where in 2012, when we did Creel interviews, they were all shore anglers. And then this more recent data was boat anglers. So they weren't comparable.

So we didn't try to compare those ones. But we know that catch rates increased for at least Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River system or the Detroit River. And that was like assessing like popular sport fish species like walleyes, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, white bass are a big one on the Detroit River that people love or love to hate.

It depends on what they're catching. And things like that. And so but the harvest rates, interestingly enough, were a lot more variable.

So they didn't necessarily like some of them went up, some of them didn't. But there's so many things that could contribute to why somebody chooses to harvest a fish or not. Like, one thing is it might not be a legal, a legal harvestable size to keep.

So you might not legally be able to keep it. It might not be your target species. So you might throw it back for that reason.

And also like angler ethics have changed over time too. So like smallmouth bass, now the bass angling community has gotten more on like release fish. They're kind of more on the side of like, we want to release fish to keep them in the system to catch them more.

They're not harvested as much. So like we see changes like that socially too. So we don't, we don't, we can't really assess why harvest rates were more variable.

But there's lots of reasons why they could be. But we don't actually know why. So we did see those more variable, but the catch rates at least showed evidence that the fishery was better for anglers too.

One other thing that we found that we analyzed was like the distance traveled through time. Like were people traveling more from further areas to come fish this fishery? And that was, that was confirmed through our analysis as well that, and we use zip code data for that.

So like you're supposed to provide a zip code when you get interviewed. And so we took the zip codes and kind of compared where they're from to like where they were interviewed and then that way we could get a distance traveled for that. And so from what we found when we compared the pre-restoration, the post-restoration data was that people were traveling further distances to come fish this fishery.

[Megan Gunn]
That's awesome. I mean, that just shows that there is something there for them.

[Dana Castle]
Yeah.

[Megan Gunn]
Something exciting.

[Dana Castle]
Exactly. Yeah. We also, we did some, and I don't know if this, I don't think this was included in the final paper.

Maybe it was that we kind of asked about the quality. We assessed the quality of the fishery and asked if people thought it was better or the same. And I think in that most people answered that it was the same.

But we also asked if they, if they were fishing by a restoration site and most people didn't really know where those restoration sites were. So we started providing a map and then like, Hey, where are you fishing around this site? And so it was interesting because like a lot of the rocky reefs, when they're being installed, they have these big barges out, right?

And they're just like dumping rock into the river. So they're pretty noticeable, but I think a lot of times people don't know, like, they're not connecting like what that is. So we tried to provide that as well, but there wasn't a whole lot of, like, we couldn't pull a lot of data from like those that were fishing restoration sites and if they did better, because there wasn't a lot of data points for that particular part.

Right.

[Megan Gunn]
That's- And I wonder if- Go ahead, Megan. I wonder if people had even been like around, like, were they even fishing before the restoration sites were put in? Like, would they have known that was happening or did they just travel in after the fact?

And then we're like, Oh, we just heard this was a better fisheries, a better fishery system and we want to fish here.

[Dana Castle]
Yeah, I don't, I don't know the answer to that. I mean, like now with social media, I think, I think at least with Lake Erie walleye in particular that run up the Detroit River in the spring, that has become such a destination for catching your limit of walleye and like a huge food opportunity too, right? People do tend to keep walleye when they catch them.

And so I think like just social media and anecdotally wise, like people definitely like target the Detroit River system for walleyes in the spring. So, and it's also like, so in Michigan, a lot of inland fisheries closed for walleye on March 15th, but because the Detroit River is considered part of the Great Lakes and connecting channels, it doesn't close during that time. So people can actually fish for walleye during that time, which is unique as well.

[Carolyn Foley]
That's really cool.

[Dana Castle]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Carolyn Foley]
I get kind of excited when, you know, like Culver says like the walleye is back. I'm like, okay.

[Dana Castle]
Yeah.

Yeah.

[Carolyn Foley]
Okay. So there's a couple, a couple of kind of, so I won't do much.

I'm originally from Canada. I won't do my typical, but how would you get the Canadians involved? So we'll just, but there are a couple of like federal or international pieces of legislation.

So like laws that you mentioned have sort of really helped support the restoration of this fishery. Can you tell us a little bit about those?

[Dana Castle]
Yeah. So like there's the international joint commission that Canada and the US have decided to kind of manage the Great Lakes jointly in this very bi-national way, which has been an incredible partnership throughout, you know the St. Clair Detroit River system history, especially because we do share a border with Ontario throughout that system. And so actually when we did, so we already had a lot of great relationships built with Canadian biologists within USGS where I was currently working and kind of doing this research for.

And so a lot of the conversations that started happening, we're like, Hey, we really want to figure out what does the overall economic, like we're investing all this money. What are we getting out of it? And how can we figure that out?

And so we actually got Canada to agree to at least Ontario to agree to doing the same methodology for our Creel survey for the Lake St. Clair side on the Canadian side of Lake St. Clair. So that's how we were able to get that data is that they agreed to, they already had their very own robust Creel system, but they did agree to it for one year to also change their whole methodology to just be able to have comparable data with us, which was awesome. So that's how I was able to get that data and that it was comparable for our purposes for this paper.

So it was fantastic, but yeah, it was based, it was not my involvement. It was relationships already much established by both the international joint commission and the biologists that were already working on the system jointly. They've had a great relationship throughout their careers.

[Carolyn Foley]
Cool. And so like one thing that Canadians have been kind of, I'm going to go ahead and say they've been jealous of for years. And there's some investment is the great lakes restoration initiative.

So I know some people who work on that side and they're like, if we could just get this kind of investment the same way. So the great lakes restoration initiative, it's like an investment by the federal government into restoring the great lakes, right? So how has that played into the work that's happened in this, this connecting system?

[Dana Castle]
Yeah. So the great lakes, yes. Great lakes restoration initiative has been huge in terms of literally every piece that I've talked about is pretty much funded by the great lakes restoration initiative.

So all that restoration work largely funded by the great restoration initiative and obviously partners too, that had to do like match amounts and things like that. A lot of local governments also invested in some massive match amounts. But I mean, it was such a huge influx of money and it's had very great bipartisan support over the years that like, it's just done so much to really understand the system we're operating in and provide the habitat for those lithophilic spawning fishes like lake sturgeon and walleye and lake whitefish to really see a change in the whole system with the fishery response.

The St. Clair River system is like, I think it's the number one for the population of lake sturgeon and it's like the smallest area, but they have like genetically those fish have the highest population I think in all the great lakes. So at least from genetic research, I think that's still the case, but I'd have to double check, but I'm pretty sure that's still the case. But yeah, I think that's just, and there's been a lot of research then too on like, we invested all this money, like billions of dollars, and what have we gotten out of it?

And I think there's numerous things you could say that came out of it. I mean, this paper is one thing that you definitely tie to the restoration initiative, but also the, you know, getting lake sturgeon to spawn on a reef immediately after it's in the following spring was pretty remarkable to witness. I had the pleasure of witnessing myself.

And then, yeah. And then like this paper is kind of showing is that if you're investing in an area, there's likely going to be another, there's going to be economic vitality that comes out of that. Right.

So with anglers, more anglers traveling there, spending more time there, that's going to create more economic viability to the area. And there's a paper, I think by Jim Harding that talks about every dollar invested from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative equates to like something like, I think it's three something. Every dollar invested equates to like three more dollars that come out of it from the economics.

And so like, it's just been a huge influx, not only to like these areas, but like it's ballooned outwards. So when you invest in something, I think it really shows like, it's going to create a bigger boom from that. It's going to create, it's going to bring attention, I think too, to the area.

There's so many people, at least like from my interactions working at USGS, there's a lot of people that didn't even like, you know, we'd have a lake sturgeon at one of these, like, we did a lot of school events when we were at USGS, and we'd have a big lake sturgeon, like, where'd you get that? And we're like literally like right in this river. And people didn't know, like they didn't know these things when they lived like right there, you know?

And so I think people just continue to think like the Detroit River was like this gross, horrible, like waterway, but it like supports so many like incredible fisheries and things in the river. Mud puppies is another one we came across a lot, and like people have probably no idea what a mud puppy is, but they're awesome and indicate good water quality.

[Megan Gunn]
They actually were cute.

[Dana Castle]
Yeah. So I was just going to add to, I think like the Great Lakes Restoration, not only like just the fish, but the water quality, people have better drinking water because of it, I think, just from cleaning up the area, from investing that money in. So it's not just for the fish, but for the people too, and connecting and tying people better to the area, I think, has been a huge investment from Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

[Megan Gunn]
You get to see a lot of the work that you did in your master's program, like, translate or intersect with the work that you do now as a fisheries biologist?

[Dana Castle]
I don't, unfortunately. So I live, I work now more than Northern Lower Peninsula, so I'm far from the St. Clair Detroit River system, but in some ways they tie together. I work a lot now on dams, so, and hopefully dam removals.

But I think of like, if I could tie like the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative to like what I do now, it's like, if you look at investing in like a large scale dam removal, it's a huge amount of money to spend on removing a dam and then also restoring a river system behind it. And I think, but when you look at what comes out of it, one, you don't have to maintain a dam anymore. They're expensive to maintain.

So that's a huge cost savings. And also you're, anecdotally, we're seeing from dam removals that people are more attracted to areas, you know, kayaking has become huge in Michigan, paddle boarding has become huge in Michigan. So we're seeing some evidence that when you do invest that kind of money in these areas to remove a dam, you see a similar result.

You're going to get more economic viability from doing that big work. So that's how I kind of connect what I used to do to this now. Yeah.

And I'd say like always when I'm out in the field, I'm having a lot of conversations. So, you know, working in the creel, like it's nice for me to kind of have that to talk about with people is like, you know, what are you catching? Like, how are you doing?

Like, tell me what you're getting. So I think that helps kind of connect me to the, for people in the areas too that I'm working in.

[Megan Gunn]
I love it so much.

[Dana Castle]
Yeah.

[Carolyn Foley]
Yeah. It's fantastic. Okay.

Well, Dana Castle, this has been a lovely conversation and I'm really excited to hear about the successes that you've been able to document and measure and see, I, you know, I kind of wanted to ask you like, okay, you got to see a lake sturgeon spawning. Are there any, were there any other moments like that where you were like, ah, this is it. I did good.

And I'm seeing the results of things. But you can dance that question if you want, but this is where we have to do this steward thing where it's like, that's not why we asked you on to teach me about the great lakes. We asked you to join us on teach me about the great lakes for two questions.

And so where are you? Like, where do you work out of Cadillac right now? Is that right?

[Dana Castle]
Correct. Yep. Yep.

[Carolyn Foley]
Okay.

So before, before we go to Cadillac, if you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose?

[Dana Castle]
So I have a huge sweet tooth. So I'm like, I'm like, I love anything sweet like a donut, but I'm not a big breakfast person. So I think I'm going to have to go with the great sandwich.

[Carolyn Foley]
Nice. Yes. Yeah.

[Dana Castle]
Yep.

[Carolyn Foley]
That's okay.

[Dana Castle]
That's not an easy decision.

[Carolyn Foley]
And I, I kind of enjoyed that. It was like, if it was donut at any other time of day, donut might've won.

So if we go to Cadillac, to see the, like for me, Cadillac is like where you turn off to go north. And there's that lake in the middle and things like that. Where can we go get, and you know what, since you really, you had difficulty, you can tell us both.

Where can we go to get a really great donut at any time of day, or where can we go to get a really great sandwich?

[Dana Castle]
Okay. I'm going to go far north for this because I, so I used to work near Petoskey and Johan's bakery Petoskey, not only for donuts, but bagels as well. Their bagels are fresh every day, so they're incredible, but so are the donuts, so also incredible.

And then for a great sandwich, there's so many good places. So if I'm going to go straight with Cadillac, I'd have to say Clam Brewing Company, fantastic for sandwiches. But I also used to live in Manistee for a long time.

I love, love, love the Painted Lady Saloon in Manistee. So that's a great, it's a, I used to live right by the Painted Lady and it's very close to Manistee Lake, which is very close to the Great Lakes. So you could get closer to the Great Lakes by going to Manistee, but if you're in Cadillac driving through, definitely Clam Lake Brewing.

[Megan Gunn]
Awesome. Which are your favorite sandwiches to get there?

[Dana Castle]
Oh, they just came out with a new menu in Clam Lake and they have this Korean chicken sandwich and it is fantastic. I literally got it two days in a row once. So I highly recommend that sandwich.

[Megan Gunn]
I love it. My question for you is, I have to find my questions because I was looking up, I was looking up the restaurants and their menus. So is there a special place in the Great Lakes that you would like to share with our audience and what makes it special?

[Dana Castle]
So going back to the Manistee area, I love that area a lot because you've kind of got the best of both worlds. You've got great inland rivers, but you've also got Lake Michigan, which is right there. And for those of you that are listening to, I don't know if people are really familiar with, in Michigan we have these things called drowned river mouths.

So a lot of our rivers end up in a lake and then go into the Great Lakes and Lake Michigan. And so Manistee Lake is one of those drowned river mouths in Michigan. So it's also a really cool system for that reason, but then it has a channel to Lake Michigan as well.

So it's just like, if you want to see all the cool parts of water, like a river, a lake, a river, a lake, I really think Manistee has a lot of cool places to look at. And just in the town of Manistee itself, you could see a lot of water. There's lots of public space, lots of public land in the area.

So even like the drive from Cadillac to Manistee is like mostly U.S. Forest Service land. So it's pretty incredible. So you get to see a lot of just woods, which is amazing.

[Carolyn Foley]
That is fantastic. Well, Dana Castle, currently of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources for a long time, sounds like has been a fisheries biologist and loving it. Thank you so much for coming on to teach me about the Great Lakes and sharing your ideas with us and your thoughts.

And it was great.

[Dana Castle]
Thank you for having me.

[Carolyn Foley]
So that was cool.

[Megan Gunn]
That was cool. I mean, to me, it's always fascinating that once you restore an ecosystem, you can see the things coming back. And watching that process, fascinating.

[Carolyn Foley]
Yeah. And then I wanted to ask so many other questions, but I was trying to rein in and not be like Stuart and just let it go. Things like, OK, so was it people coming from Michigan or were they coming from farther away?

Because I feel like she's right that they all sort of like, oh, here's a good thing. I've seen all these pictures of people holding up fish on social media or like when the ice fishing is happening in the winter or different things like that. And the word of mouth is really interesting.

And I'll point out, I'm going to say it now, but I did not like at one point somebody because I did a lot of stuff with the Detroit River. People are like "It's technically a Strait." No, my whole life it's been the Detroit River, the St. Clair River. And that's a whole other episode we could do sometime.

[Megan Gunn]
Yeah, absolutely. We'll find experts on it and they will teach us. All about the Great Lakes.

[Carolyn Foley]
All about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois Indiana Sea Grant. We encourage you to check out the cool stuff we do at iiseagrant.org and at I-L-I-N Sea Grant on Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram and other social media.

[Megan Gunn]
Our senior producer is Carolyn Foley and Teach Me About the Great Lakes is produced by myself, Megan the Lake Lover Gunn and Rita Myles. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and fixer and our coordinating producer is Moti Abugunda. Our super fun podcast artwork is Joel Davenport and the show is edited by Sandra Sabota.

[Carolyn Foley]
If you have a question or comment about the show or would like us to apologize again for something, oh wait, I probably shouldn't offer that too much. Please email it to teachmeaboutthegreatlakes at gmail.com or leave a message on our hotline at 765-496-4474. Or if you want you can send us a postcard because we love postcards.

[Megan Gunn]
Thanks for listening and keep great in those lakes.