Star Tribune
How the DNR lures the crowds to its well-stocked fish pond at the Minnesota State Fair
The Minnesota State Fair is back this week to remind us what we like about our state and about each other.
Minnesotans, it turns out, really, really like looking at fish.
Every year, crowds gather in the cool oasis behind the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources building. A concrete pond filled with clear water from the fairgrounds well swirls with schools of fish, from silvery minnows to a scaly sturgeon so huge that children mistake it for a shark.
Some of the newest stars and gars of the 2023 fair are swimming in a tank at the state fish hatchery in St. Paul, getting ready for their debut.
“I’m biased, but I think the fish are the best thing at the fair,” hatchery supervisor Genevieve Furtner said. Judging by the huge crowds that circle the fish pond throughout the 12-day run of the fair, other Minnesotans agree.
She lifted the lid of a tank and studied some of the fish the staff pulled from the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers last week, looking for a good mix of sizes and species for the exhibit. Carp, smallmouth bass, a sinewy gar.
Some of the fish in the DNR pond have made more trips to the fair than your average Minnesotan. Returning the fish to the rivers after the fair would risk spreading disease, so the fair fish spend the bulk of the year relaxing in a secret DNR pond.
“They like living life without any of our interference,” Furtner said. “So that’s what we give them.”
Yes, somewhere in the Twin Cities, there’s a pond stocked 11 months out of the year with walleye, pike, trout, bass, catfish, paddlefish, muskie and at least one 50-inch sturgeon. No, the DNR will not say where.
Those are Minnesota’s fish. And some of them have names.
Smokey, Glutton, Sheriff and Mochi arrived at the DNR hatchery last week, sloshing stylishly inside a red Yeti cooler. It’s not just baby birds and fuzzy animals that state wildlife officials rescue.
The fish – bullhead, bluegills and a yellow perch — had been kept in a home aquarium for years by a young angler who was leaving for college. He couldn’t bear to eat or euthanize his pets and was responsible enough to know that dumping a fish out of an aquarium into a lake isn’t good for the fish or the lake. (That’s how Burnsville ended up with an invasion of goldfish the size of footballs in Keller Lake.)
Perch are not pets, generally. But Minnesota fishing regulations have a kid-sized loophole. Children aged 16 and younger are allowed to bring smaller game fish — under 10 inches — home to display in an aquarium. These fish were large and colorful and had been well-tended for the past six or seven years.
“These are going to look great in our central Minnesota tank,” Furtner said, admiring the magnificent stripes and coloring on Sheriff the bluegill.
T.J. DeBates, the east metro area fisheries supervisor, had made the trip to retrieve the fish and had used his own cooler to keep them comfortable on the trip back to the hatchery.
The two fish experts crowded close, watching the new arrivals. Looking at fish is fun even when you do it for a living.
“Underwater, it’s a completely different realm,” Furtner said. “When you go into it, you feel like you’re stepping onto another planet. The fish are like aliens and it’s just so fun to be able to interact with them and watch them.”
The State Fair fishpond brings that alien world to Falcon Heights. You could go your whole life without making eye contact with a sturgeon or watching a paddlefish chase a minnow.
If you can’t make it to the fairgrounds, you can tune into the DNR’s fishcam: dnr.state.mn.us/statefair/webcam/fish.html
Furtner, DeBates and other DNR staff members will be on hand to answer questions, share fun fish facts and listen to your fish stories about the One That Got Away. The DNR Building is on Carnes Avenue, near the Grandstand, across the street from the Star Tribune booth.
The fair opens on Thursday, Aug. 24. Grab a tube of this year’s crop art-themed Star Tribune lip balm and tell Mochi the perch we said hi.
“I honestly think he used to understand how tariffs work,” Cuban said. “Back in the 90s and early 2000s, he was a little bit coherent when he talked about trade policy and he actually made a little bit of sense. But I don’t know what happened to him.”
Speaking in Pittsburgh on Thursday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, pushed back against the Harris campaign’s claims that tariffs would hurt the economy. Vance described the tariffs as a way of discouraging imports and boosting American manufacturing.
“If you are a business, and you rely on foreign slave labor at $3 a day, the only way to rebuild American manufacturing is to say, if you want to bring that product made by slave labor back into the United States of America, you’re going to pay a big fat tariff before you get it back into our country,” Vance said.
Back in Wisconsin, Amara Marshell, freshman at UW-La Crosse, said she showed up to support Harris because she is concerned about what a second Trump presidency could mean for reproductive rights. Like her friend, sophomore Avery Black, Marshell is also excited about the possibility of electing the nation’s first female president.
“Women deserve to have power over their own bodies,” Marshell said. “We shouldn’t have to not be able to get an abortion just because of a president.”
Mary Holman, an 80-year-old retiree from Fort Atkinson, Wis., said she hasn’t been to a rally since former President Barack Obama’s first campaign in 2008. But Holman said she decided to get off the sidelines this cycle because she views the election as a fight to preserve democracy.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will auction off state lands in popular northern counties next month.
The public land — in Aitkin, Cook, Itasca, and St. Louis counties — will go up for sale during the Department of Natural Resource’s annual online public land sale from Nov. 7 to 21.
“These rural and lakeshore properties may appeal to adjacent landowners or offer recreational opportunities such as space for a small cabin or camping,” the DNR said in a statement.
Properties will be available for bidding Nov. 7 through Nov. 21.
This all can trim for print: The properties include:
40 acres in Aitkin County, with a minimum bid of $85,000
44 acres in Cook County, minimum bid $138,000
1.9 acres in Itasca County, minimum bid $114,000
Minneapolis city officials say razor wire, concrete barriers and fencing will be removed from around the former Third Precinct police station – which was set ablaze by protesters after George Floyd’s police killing – in the next three weeks. The burned-out vestibule will be removed within three months with construction fencing to be erected closer to the building.
This week, Minneapolis City Council members have expressed frustration that four years after the protests culminated in a fire at the police station, the charred building still stands and has become a “prop” some conservatives use to rail against city leadership. Most recently, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance made a stop outside the building and criticized Gov. Tim Walz’s handling of the 2020 riots.
On Thursday, the council voted 8-3 to approve a resolution calling for “immediate cleanup, remediation, and beautification of the 3000 Minnehaha site including but not limited to the removal of fencing, jersey barriers, barbed wire, and all other exterior blight.”
Council Member Robin Wonsley said the city needs to acknowledge that many police officers stationed in the Third Precinct “waged racist and violent actions” against residents for decades.
Council Member Aurin Chowdhury said the council wants the building cleaned up and beautified “immediately.”
“We cannot allow for this corner to be a backdrop for those who wish to manipulate the trauma of our city for political gain,” Chowdhury said.
Council Member Katie Cashman said the council shouldn’t be divided by “right-wing figures posing in front of the Third Precinct and pandering to conservative interests.”
“It’s really important for us to stay united in our goal, to achieve rehabilitation of this site in a way that advances racial healing and acknowledgement of the past trauma in this community, and to not let those figures divide us here,” she said.
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