"Sea Grant Agent Lynn Frederick chooses whitefish for thesis study" from the March 30, 1978 Door County Advocate
By KETA STEEBS
Sea Grant Agent Lynn Frederick chooses whitefish for thesis study
By KETA STEEBS
Whitefish to the average person is something you order on Friday night when the perch is sold out.
Whitefish to the commercial fisherman is paying the mortgage on time.
Whitefish to Lynn Frederick is a key to a PH.D.
Lynn is a Sea Grant field agent, a title which encompasses a variety of duties. Theoretically, it means providing technical assistance and information on issues relating to the Great Lakes. Actually, it means utilizing the diving skills of a Jacques Cousteau with the sleuthing prowess of a Columbo.
A modest young woman with the look of the outdoors about her, Lynn is inclined to downplay her Sea Grant role. She is quick to point out that if she can't provide information on a specific problem, say erosion, the question is referred to an expert. Lynn's forte is the highly prized whitefish and her three year study of that valuable species is what this story is all about.
Lynn Frederick, Sea Grant field agent, examines a small lamprey caught in Lake Michigan waters. This predator is often called an eel but is actually a member of the [jawless] fish family. Endowed with a jawless sucking mouth and rasping tongue, the lamprey attacks trout, whitefish and other species. Lynn has encountered many larger specimens during her three year whitefish study.
Lynn has been in Door county for the past three years and during that time she's been suspected (by commercial and sport fishermen alike) of spying for the DNR, cutting in on charter boat territory, and surreptitiously seining baby whitefish.
Northern Door fishermen, to put it mildly, did not exactly welcome Lynn into their innermost circles with open arms.
Lynn shrugs amicably when this is mentioned. "I've been accused of all these things and more but now that fishermen know me better and understand what I'm doing here their attitude has changed."
This calm appraisal of her gradually growing acceptance is borne out by others. One commercial fisherman's wife said Lynn is one of the best things to happen to Door county.
"She's become a cohesive force and probably knows more about whitefish and their habits than most fishermen. My husband even attended a course she taught and, though he was reluctant to go at first, really learned a lot."
This sentiment is echoed by a number of weathered fishermen who have plied their trade since boyhood. Although whitefish is the mainstay of the commercial fisherman's livelihood, surprisingly little has been known of its habits or habitat.
That's why Lynn chose this elusive species as the subject of her thesis. An ardent fisherman since childhood (she grew up in Fox Lake) Lynn chose to major in water resources and fisheries after receiving a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
"The University of Michigan had an excellent water resource course," Lynn reflects, "and at that time, the late 1960s, none of the Wisconsin schools offered what I wanted. Since then, however, a comparable course has been initiated at the UW-Stevens Point.
Lynn obtained her master's degree from Michigan in 1970 and promptly put her newfound knowledge to work at the National Water Quality laboratories in Duluth, Minn. After one year she came back to Wisconsin to start digging in for a Ph.D. at the UW-Madison. She has, she smiles ruefully, earned about one half of the needed requirements but her thesis still has a way to go.
One reason that it's taking so long is that her studies were interspersed with substitute teaching during the early 1970s. It was during this time that students of Waupun and Shorewood high schools became the beneficiaries of Lynn's biology expertise. It's a subject she says is integral to her present studies and one which she is fond of teaching.
She's also fond of teaching classes on fish farming and sharing her whitefish findings with fishermen. Most courses, she grins, are a two-way street. Her students, especially those who are as at home on the Great Lakes as in their favorite rocking chair, are capable of teaching Lynn a thing or two.
"I've learned how to distinguish males from females," Lynn says. "Males have bumps on their scales during the spawning season."
The fact that whitefish spawn in the fall is no secret, nor is it a secret that female whitefish lay a prodigious number of eggs. From the time they are deposited under ice reefs, however, these miniscule eggs and their subsequent development remained a mystery.
"We know whitefish eggs, literally, thousands in each batch, are spawned in October or November," Lynn says thoughtfully. "They generally hatch out in April and currents carry them into shallow bays such as at Cana Island and North Bay."
Noting that their survival ratio depends primarily on the weather, Lynn says the whitefish population is vulnerable to storms. If a severe storm descends before the ice is formed, the fatality rate is high.
Two views of the same newly hatched whitefish are shown in this photo, taken by Lynn Frederick. The top is a side view of the baby fish and the lower photo is a view of the back structure.
Young whitefish have remained an enigma for years, according to Lynn. She explains that fishermen see these little silvery fish swimming around and think they are herring.
"What they are probably seeing is a combination of whitefish and herring swimming together," she says.
Until she came on the scene, hardly any of these miniature fish had been caught. For the first year of their lives whitefish are so small they easily escape a fine smelt net. By using a super fine plankton net, Lynn has been able to catch fish less than a month old, study and release most of them. A few are dissected and the contents of their stomachs analyzed.
Lynn has learned that at this stage in their young lives, whitefish live on plankton. When they are a little older and bigger, this diet is supplemented with mosquito and fly larvae and fingernail crabs.
When they're a couple months old, whitefish can be scooped up in a seine or trawl net but by July or August Lynn has to resort to a gill net. At all stages, she says firmly, the majority of fish are released with only a few kept for biopsies. Lynn does admit that the gill net has a punishing effect on young fish (which are by now four or five inches long) but it's the only way to catch them.
Lynn has also determined that little fish stay pretty close to home but adults have a tendency to migrate all over the lake. Death's Door is an especially well traveled route and whitefish tagged at North Bay have been found in Upper Michigan ports and as far south as Sheboygan.
Although adult fish prefer a cold water temperature, Lynn learned that their babies can tolerate a water temperature up to 60 degrees. Because whitefish are not as oily as trout and do not eat other fish, their accumulation of PCBs (poly chlorinated biphenyls) is so much lower than that of trout it remains within the accepted FDA standards.
"I'm getting answers that haven't been known before," Lynn says seriously. "I've also learned that there's a lot still to be learned about Lake Michigan and it's fish population. Take lawyers, for instance, nothing has been done on them or chubs. Even trout remain pretty much an unknown quantity."
Content to let others zero in on trout and salmon research (now being done in Kewaunee by sport fishermen and DNR personnel), Lynn is engrossed in studying her own particular microcosm of the Great Lakes. When she isn't catching and analyzing whitefish or diving in the drink for food samples (and occasionally coming up with planks from old shipwrecks which she converts into furniture) Lynn takes parties fishing.
She's been a licensed charter boat operator since 1975 and is the owner of a handsome 28-foot boat named "Montegro" which can be found docked at the Baileys Harbor Yacht Club during the summer.
Scuba diver, charter boat captain, researcher, sleuth, furniture maker, student, teacher, biologist, writer and field agent, Lynn is all these things and more. Blessed with an insatiable curiosity and a willingness to share whatever of Lake Michigan's secrets she uncovers, Lynn is truly, as the fisherman's wife claims, "one of the best things to happen to Door county."
Two views of the same newly hatched whitefish are shown in this photo, taken by Lynn Frederick. The top is a side view of the baby fish and the lower photo is a view of the back structure.
Lynn Frederick, Sea Grant field agent, examines a small lamprey caught in Lake Michigan waters. This predator is often called an eel but is actually a member of the [jawless] fish family. Endowed with a jawless sucking mouth and rasping tongue, the lamprey attacks trout, whitefish and other species. Lynn has encountered many larger specimens during her three year whitefish study.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Links to things written, at least in part, by Lynn Frederick:
The opening pages of the thesis: https://www.proquest.com/openview/e8c75ed166e772cfce15047fdd40314b/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
Thesis abstract: https://books.google.com/books?id=KjMOTdMEYUcC&pg=RA3-PA48&lpg=RA3-PA48&dq=%22Frederick%22
How to select lure colors for successful fishing
https://web.archive.org/web/20100616063035/https://aqua.wisc.edu/publications/PDFs/LureColors.pdf
Preparation and Use of Compost from Fisheries By-Products, page 19 / 191 within
https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/45680/noaa_45680_DS1.pdf
Other posts about fish and fishing
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/fish-and-fishing
Articles by Keta Steebs