Hi, I'm Kellie Kramer.

And I'm Scott Siepker.

Welcome to Southern Iowa.

And our latest edition of Iowa Outdoors.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Coming up on this episode of Iowa Outdoors -- We paddle through history with intrepid grade schoolers.

Travel the Missouri River in search of an impressive fish.

Take to the skies of Western Iowa.

Join up with a pack of avid bald eagle fans.

And explore another Trail in a Minute.

We'll have all that and more.

So sit tight, Iowa Outdoors is about to begin.

Funding for Iowa Outdoors is provided by the Claude P. Small, Kathryn Small Cousins and Williams Carl Cousins Fund at the Lincoln Way Community Foundation in Clinton County to support nature programming on Iowa Public Television.

And by the Alliant Energy Foundation.

Many of Iowa's natural wonders you'll find on Iowa Public Television can be found in Iowa Outdoors magazine, the Iowa DNR's premier resource for conservation, education and recreation activities.

Subscription information can be found online at iowadnr.gov.

The story of Iowa is an intertwined narrative of people, this beautiful place and its wildlife.

Today's chapter of the story will see us angling on the waters of the Missouri River for ancient fish as well as taking a field trip to Northeast Iowa to celebrate Decorah's famous bald eagles.

But first, we'll take to the Mississippi and paddle in historic style.

In 1673, Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet became the first Europeans to set eyes on Iowa.

Part Christian mission, part fur trading expedition, these two Frenchmen led a small band of explorers down the Mississippi River from Wisconsin paddling massive canoes now commonly referred to as voyagers.

While time saw these canoes replaced with large boats and eventually barges, they will forever hold an important place in Iowa's history.

And today, thanks to Clinton County Conservation, students and historians alike can paddle in the same place, and craft, as Iowa's original adventurers.

These canoes that we're about to travel in would have been filled to the brim with muskrat and beaver.

♪♪ This was a business endeavor.

They were trading with the Native Americans for the pelts.

These are 29-foot long boats.

There are a few different kinds that the voyagers used.

Some of them were really large, about 35 feet long.

Jessica Wagner: So kind of today our theme is water.

We invited the sixth graders out to try out these voyager canoes.

These are kind of newer canoes that Clinton County Conservation purchased and so we brought the sixth graders out to kind of be our guinea pigs and test them on the waters, get them paddling, learn a skill, to enjoy the outdoors, also some water safety.

These kids live here by the river.

Try to keep your hands stacked on top of each other when you start.

Wager: Making sure that they know how to be safe, wearing that life jacket.

The water can be powerful and we just want to make sure that they're safe and they're aware of how to be safe on the water.

♪♪ Much like riding a bike, as soon as you learn how to paddle a canoe or boat, that skill will never leave you.

For many of these sixth graders, this field trip just cracked open the door to a lifelong passion.

And yet, there is so much more beyond this paddling excursion.

Beyond providing a fun adventure on South Sabula Lake, these voyager canoes are an important piece of Iowa history.

Chuck Jacobson: Well, the name Voyager comes from the Frenchmen that did most of the work when moving these boats across the wilderness.

Most of them were indentured servants, they got across the Atlantic by signing into contract and sort of worked off their passage by carrying the trade goods and then bringing furs back from the wilderness.

As early as the 1530's, voyager canoes were used to explore rivers all over North America.

But by the mid-1670's, pioneers were exploring up and down the Mississippi River as well as its tributaries.

Jacobson: They came right down through here.

They were in canoes, they had a small party of Frenchmen with them and some native guides and that happened in 1673.

Clinton County's boats are an excellent representation of what you might see traveling up the Mississippi River years ago, including the field trip paddlers.

While the canoes can hold up to 14 adults, space was paramount on these expeditions and crew needed to fit specific requirements.

Jacobson: If I were to want to become a voyager I would not be accepted.

I'm too tall.

They wanted people close to five feet tall.

The reason being that those voyagers were taking up room, valuable room in the boat, which would otherwise be used for trade merchandise or the furs coming back.

So they wanted small framed men.

But the men had to be very strong, they had to be able to pack a 90 pound pack across portages, which were sometimes miles long.

Some of the sixth graders might be the right size, but certainly not strong enough.

During their time on the water, Chuck and Jessica steer the crew up to the edge of the Mississippi current, giving them a taste of what real voyager treks were like.

Jacobson: You're not going to turn on a dime in these.

Anybody that has paddled a canoe in current knows you have to plan ahead.

With these boats that is even more important.

But you're paddling on one side of the boat constantly, probably for an hour.

Now, the voyagers would take a break about every hour or so.

If they were in current they'd probably just let the boat keep drifting because they were making at least some ground that way.

It's a very different situation.

Needless to say, today's field trip is nowhere near as strenuous as anything the voyagers encountered.

And while the children are learning about voyager history, Chuck doesn't see that as the main takeaway from the children's time on the water.

Jacobson: Well, we hope they pick up a bit of that history.

But when it comes right down to the basics, they're forced to work as a team.

If they're not paddling in unison the paddles will be clacking together.

It just doesn't work.

Nice job guys.

Wagner: Teamwork is definitely important in a canoe when you've got a paddling buddy, but it's definitely important when you've got 10 to 14 kids trying to paddle at the same time in sync, propel that boat forward or backward and so teamwork is pretty important with these things.

Jacobson: And what we've discovered, and I think very interesting, is that when we put young students, paddling students in these boats to start with, once they've had that experience they step out of this big boat and they get into more individual boats, say a two-man canoe, and now they have this experience behind them.

They've already seen it work, they've been involved in making it work, it has just been so much easier to deal with students in other canoes and in kayaks.

To the teachers and conservation officers, today is a day of learning, but don't tell that to the kids.

To them, this field trip is primarily about fun.

Get set!

Go!

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Wagner: Not only are we getting them out on the water in the voyager canoes but we're also doing some macroinvertebrate studies and learning about what is the water quality here in their community.

The water affects us all.

Is it appropriate for us to be swimming in it, boating in it and utilizing it?

But also is it quality enough for the fish that we're fishing from here and other organisms that live here in the river?

Of course when the canoes are packed up and the school buses take off, Jessica hopes today's adventures are only the start of an enduring admiration for nature and the water.

Wagner: I love that I'm able to get the kids outside.

At the end of the day I was like wow, 40 kids, we just went and spent a beautiful fall day outdoors, paddling out on the lake, and hopefully just instilling them kind of a love for the outdoors as I have myself.

Angling in Iowa is a tradition dating back centuries as our state's rivers and lakes are habitat to a wide variety of species.

Iowa's border rivers, the Missouri and the Mississippi are major water systems teaming with a cornucopia of angling opportunities.

Out west, the Iowa DNR has reopened fishing season for a mysterious species known for its prehistoric look, the long-snouted paddlefish.

♪♪ Along the western rim of Iowa, at the doorstep of the Loess Hills, rests the Missouri River.

Its channeled and controlled path meandering far less than its brethren, the Mississippi to the east.

♪♪ But underwater, the Missouri is still home to many surprises, including a fish with ancient origins.

It's a long-billed river species many Iowans have never seen with their own eyes.

Ryan Hupfeld: It's just a really cool experience.

It's a super unique fish.

They have been around for millions and millions of years.

It's just a rare opportunity that you don't get to see everywhere in the state.

For Ryan Hupfeld and Jon Christensen, both part of the Iowa DNR Fishery staff, the Missouri River is both an ecosystem and their job site.

Jon Christensen: The habitat and everything on the Missouri has changed a lot from what it was historically so it's a challenging resource definitely to work on compared to some of the other resources in the state.

It's very fast moving water so definitely you've got to respect that when you're out there working on it or any of our users in Iowa that are using the river, there's a danger there that you need to be aware of.

In late winter and early spring, DNR Fishery's biologists navigate the river's eddies and bends in search of habitat brimming with paddlefish.

The distinctive fish are known for their elongated snouts, long gill rakers and bodies resembling a shark.

Their most common habitat in Iowa is along our state's major border rivers, the Mississippi and the Missouri.

(boat engine sound) Forward a little bit.

It's a really unique looking fish, kind of a prehistoric fish.

They have this rostrum that sticks out on the front and they actually have what they call ampullae of Lorenzini which help them track plankton, which is what they eat.

The modifications on the gills are what they use to strain mostly plankton and other small aquatic invertebrates into their back of their mouth and that is mostly primarily what they feed on is plankton.

These little spots all the way up on their rostrum, that's what I was talking about what's called ampullae of Lorenzini.

It's kind of a sensory organ for them I guess.

Sharks have them.

And it kind of just helps them detect the plankton so it allows them to be more of an efficient feeder.

Hupfeld and Christensen set out a series of gill nets for quickly capturing any fish that comes in contact with the 50-foot lines.

For our production crew, it was a well-rounded tour of fish along the Missouri River.

So this is a longnose gar.

Crazy teeth on them there.

They're kind of a pain to get out of the net too.

Here's a common carp, a non-native species.

This is one of the smallmouth buffalo.

This is a native fish.

There's another species called the bigmouth buffalo but the smallmouth buffalo has been more prevalent.

Their mouth points down.

Christensen: Gill netting gives us an opportunity to catch these fish and monitor their health and see how they're utilizing some of these habitats on the river.

(water splashes) This is kind of a new invader, it's the bighead carp, very similar to the silver carp, which is the ones you see on TV jumping all the time.

They have real fine gill rakers, just like a paddlefish.

The silver carp's gill rakers actually look like a sponge so they're able to filter different sizes of plankton.

Asian carp, like these temporarily captured by the Iowa DNR gill nets, are a relatively new concern for fisheries' biologists.

Their voracious appetites can change water habitat and squeeze out other fish populations.

It's just one of the many reasons Hupfeld and Christensen are monitoring native species like paddlefish through extensive banding and electronic tagging efforts.

Another kind of key characteristic is their tail, they have a heterocercal tail.

There's actually really no bones in this fish but it is pretty solid and a hard structure and actually inside of these it's almost kind of a little jelly type structure and I think that's part of their sensory system that they use.

Paddlefish with their grayish-blue exterior and unique snout line, slowly mature into adulthood over a six to seven year period.

The state record still rests from 1981 when a 107-pound paddlefish was caught in these very same Missouri River waters near Onawa.

That's nearly triple the size of some paddlefish caught on this gill netting expedition.

But shortly after that state record fish was caught in 1981, an open fishing season on Missouri River paddlefish was shelved for nearly 30 years, when it reopened in 2015.

Hupfeld: Anglers do really enjoy going after these fish and also harvesting the fish to eat them.

They're very good fish to eat.

DNR Fishery staff have carefully monitored interest in the late winter and early spring paddlefish season over the past three years as anglers, utilizing a snagging method, have harvested roughly 500 specimen.

♪♪ The main channel of the Missouri River is too rapid for snagging efforts.

But anglers often find success in side pools or deep overwintering holes.

It's where DNR Fishery staff direct their efforts as well.

♪♪ Hupfeld: We also take length and weight to look at new year classes coming in.

6.96.

Hupfeld: Or changes in relative weight.

With the onset of Asian carp we're concerned about their relative weights and condition factors.

And then also on the tagging fish looking at movements, individual growth rates and then potentially down the road you could get a population estimate.

♪♪ Hupfeld: It's an important species to protect and make sure it's sustainable for future generations to enjoy as well.

♪♪ Cruising along the Missouri River's border with Nebraska, deep piles of leftover sand and debris are still visible from the historic floods of 2011.

♪♪ While the record flooding event was disastrous for crop land and infrastructure, paddlefish were rejuvenated by additional spawning grounds.

♪♪ It's one of the many reasons the Iowa DNR continues to monitor fish populations, behavior and habitat along the river system best known as our state's western border.

♪♪ Some Iowa scenes are too immense to capture in one single photo or even from one single vantage point.

For example, the Loess Hills.

220 miles long, 15 miles wide, to capture something that expansive your only shot is to view Iowa by air.

♪♪ On the northern edge of the Loess Hills State Forest, a scenic overlook trail is a must-stop hike.

The scene from above, breathtaking.

♪♪ ♪♪ From the overlook, visitors can see a great deal of the forest, prairies, the Missouri river bottoms and Nebraska.

From above, all that and somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 square miles of Loess Hills.

Hard to believe that's only 10% of the entire Loess Hills expanse.

♪♪ Take a moment to consider what we're seeing here.

Beyond trails, farms and highways, these majestic hills are the product of 20,000 years of windblown silt and glacial melt, an impossible thought to process, even from 400 feet in the air.

♪♪ The Loess Hills, a western Iowa treasure that takes on new levels of appreciation when viewing Iowa by air.

♪♪ The eagles of Decorah have captured the attention of nature lovers across Iowa, the country and the world.

Many people watch the eagles from afar via webcams mounted near their nest.

In 2017, Friends of Iowa Public Television held the first ever Eagles of Decorah viewing event.

It gave fans an opportunity to view in person where the eagles call home and to learn more about these famous raptors.

♪♪ This is where the eagles of Decorah call home, Northeast Iowa's beautiful landscape as a backdrop and roads and trails that lead public onlookers right to them.

Mark Barto: I think I saw it somewhere on TV.

Corinne: Iowa Public Television.

Mark: Yeah, and then told us about it so we decided to come check it out.

We had no idea it was this, there was this much here as far as the hatchery and all that stuff, we had no idea.

Cynthia Hanson: They're so accessible here.

You've got easy visibility from the trail or from the road.

When the leaves are down in the fall and winter you can see them from the hatchery.

And once they start flying they're all over the place.

Only a fraction of those who often watch nature's own webcam reality show starring these eagles have actually traveled to Decorah to see them with their own eyes.

Corinne: It would be awesome obviously to see them eat a fish or catch a fish, but other than that just to be able to see them is pretty incredible.

Mark: I think seeing the babies, that's what you want to see, right, the little ones.

Yeah.

Bob Anderson: I'm just interested in wildlife in general.

But yeah, it's pretty neat to see them go from the egg laying until you actually see the chicks.

It's another thing to come up here and actually see the nest in person.

Jim Rozen: God created all these creatures and they're so neat to watch and we watch them on camera all the time.

It's neat watching the new ones being born.

An eagle's wingspan is about six feet across.

The width of our raceways is about eight feet.

At this Friends of Iowa Public Television picnic viewing event, visitors not only had the chance to see the eagles, but they got a chance to explore and learn more about the neighboring Decorah Fish Hatchery.

Brian Malaise: A lot of these people that came to this event are eagle people but they don't make that connection of why the fish hatchery is here and why the eagles are here next to our fish hatchery, because they have literally that unlimited food supply.

Of all of the facilities I've ever worked at, and I've worked in nine different fish hatcheries in my career, this facility in hatcheries is the most unique because it truly has become a destination point.

In 2011 was when the Decorah eagles went viral -- We also pulled back the curtain about a special behind-the-scenes look at mission control for the eagle nest webcams, something the public doesn't always get to see.

They knew that you guys were coming here.

Maureen Rozen: John told us a lot we didn't know.

So that's kind of neat to see the behind-the-scenes with the cameras and the computers.

Yeah, we love it.

John Howe: I guess it's a huge opportunity to tell the story of the recovery of these raptors from the DDT devastating effects and how we can make a difference and how we can right some things that go wrong with chemical usage and things like that and learn and make a difference and help out.

Dorie Wurth: I've always been interested in eagles.

I just think they're a majestic bird and it was exciting to learn that they're making a comeback, that they're coming off some of the lists that they were endangered.

The experts answered question after question about the eagles and educated visitors about some of the environmental and ecological issues that impact these raptors and other wildlife.

Fans had already opened their hearts to the eagles of Decorah, now their minds are open and curious too.

Malaise: An event like this just basically opens a lot of people up to ideas.

Howe: A lot of thank yous, thanks for doing what you guys are doing.

So I can see there is a need for what we do and the appreciation is there for people who get to see the eagles and get into that intimate part of their lives and see the details of what happens in nature.

It's just, it's something that people really want to see.

It's time for IPTV's Trail in a Minute where we show you a firsthand view of a different Iowa hiking, biking or water trail each episode.

It's a great way to relive a previous outdoor experience or plan a future adventure.

And it's a pretty cool way to view the Iowa outdoors.

Take a look.

♪♪ On the south side of Council Bluffs sits Lake Manawa State Park, a boating, fishing and recreational favorite for western Iowans.

If you hop on your bike and trace the lake counter clockwise you'll experience a six mile leisurely view of what the park has to offer.

♪♪ As you reach the south end of the park, you'll cross paths with Boy Scout Island, a tiny peninsula that is the launching point for many of the park's adventures.

On the eastern shore is a large deck perfect for fishing, birding or simply enjoying the day.

On the western side is one of many boat slips to drop a canoe, kayak or paddle boat on the water.

♪♪ Continuing the ride you discover a nest of trails exploring the southern end of the park, connecting the lake to the surrounding community.

♪♪ The eastern edge of the lake loop cuts right through residential communities, obscuring immediate views of the water.

♪♪ Our loops starts to close once you pass the fish and game club and cross paths with a few more on foot Manawa opportunities.

Lake Manawa State Park, if you're not sailing, boating or fishing, maybe grab your bike and explore it all.

That wraps up this episode of Iowa Outdoors.

We encourage you to get outside and explore Iowa's parks and recreational opportunities.

If you're planning any outdoor travel, check out our extensive video archive of adventures at iptv.org/iowaoutdoors.

While our episodes will continue to bring you outdoor adventures over the Iowa airwaves, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for extra features and bonus content.

And be sure to tag Iowa Outdoors in your online posts.

Who knows, you might make it onto the show.

For now, we'll leave you with more images of Iowa's outdoor environments.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Funding for Iowa Outdoors is provided by the Claude P. Small, Kathryn Small Cousins and Williams Carl Cousins Fund at the Lincoln Way Community Foundation in Clinton County to support nature programming on Iowa Public Television.

And by the Alliant Energy Foundation.

Many of Iowa's natural wonders you'll find on Iowa Public Television can be found in Iowa Outdoors magazine, the Iowa DNR's premier resource for conservation, education and recreation activities.

Subscription information can be found online at iowadnr.gov.