NORTH DAKOTA OUTDOORS MAGAZINE

Life's Been Good to Me

Interview with Greg Power

After 40-plus years working in the North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s fisheries division, the last 20 as chief of fisheries, Greg Power retired earlier this month.

When asked about finally calling it a career, Power said he was told that he’d know when it was time to retire and that was proven true.

“I never counted down the days or set a strict target date. But over the last year or so, I found myself thinking a lot about relevance and purpose — apparently a very common hurdle as we transition into our senior years. I’ve come to realize that the time is right, both for me to start my next chapter and for the organization to welcome new blood and fresh perspectives,” he said.

North Dakota OUTDOORS staff interviewed Power about his decades-long career, including the ups and downs of managing hundreds of fisheries on the often unpredictable Northern Plains landscape.

NDO: You’ve been in the Game and Fish Department’s fisheries division for more than 40 years. How have things changed during that long run?

Power: Where do I even begin? I’ve said this so many times, but I’ve been so blessed on so many levels. Life’s been good to me, from my family to a profession that has been my passion.

When I started, things were tough when it came to North Dakota’s fisheries resources. There were maybe 160, 180 waters, and today we are somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 waters.

We have 80 new walleye fisheries out on the prairie that didn’t exist back then. We have great quality out on the landscape, from pike fishing, perch fishing, to great walleye fishing right now. Then there is the fishing for smallmouth bass, the paddlefish snagging fishery and quality catfishing in the Missouri River and trophy cats in the Red River. There has been a pretty remarkable change on the landscape over the years, and I’ve been fortunate to have quite a table setting presented to me.

Anglers on a boat

NDO: What fisheries management changes have you seen, good or bad, over the last 40 years?

Power: There’s been a lot of change, and most of the change has been positive. With fishing regulations, for example, we’ve always had the belief that we wanted to keep things simple. And I think for the most part, the fishing public likes what we’ve done as our regulations are some of the most straightforward compared to anywhere in the country. Undoubtedly, we could have done things a bit differently over the last 40-plus years. But there’s always a negative to that. Even so, our regulations, I think for the most part, have been positive.

When you think about development, such as boat ramps, what a different world we are living in today. We have good roads, good parking lots, and concrete ramps in many cases. When I started, we had very few concrete boat ramps in the state. The trails into them were just that, trails.

Then there’s fish production. The species and numbers of fish we stock today compared to what we were able to stock back in the early years has changed significantly. So, on so many levels there’s been change. And again, I think most have been positive.

Greg Power during the spring walleye spawn on Lake Sakakawea.

NDO: Has the angling public changed?

Power: They’ve probably changed more than the resource. There are three types of fishing most anywhere — shore-fishing, boat fishing and ice fishing. You can go back 50 years, and the shore-fishing hasn’t changed much. But, wow, have we seen changes in boat fishing and especially ice fishing with all the technology, the toys and all the gadgets … and all the learning that’s gone on out there. The difference is night and day from when I started. We had the green box, and it was truly nothing more than a depth finder. Back then, more than a 50-horse motor was not unheard of, but pretty rare out there.

The expectations in the angling community have also changed. We have this vocal minority that can get kind of ugly at times today that I never experienced back in the day. But, you know, most people I think are appreciative. One other thing I should mention too is a shift in public engagement. There were a lot of fishing clubs when I started, engaged fishing clubs, and I know it’s been a struggle for many of these clubs nowadays to get more than three or four people to a meeting. The number of clubs has really dropped off because of the generational differences. So, that’s kind of been a downside in 40-plus years of considerable change.

NDO: Moving forward, what are your greatest concerns with fishing in North Dakota or fisheries management?

Power: As always, I have a list of about 10. One of the leading ones is public engagement. They’re competing today from a very, very active lifestyle back in the day to more of a passive lifestyle today, with screen time and all that goes along with it. You hear about the dwindling numbers with softball participation, bowling, whatever, and it’s also impacted fishing. So, keeping the public fishing is probably my biggest concern. Commercialization of the resource, that’s another that has changed so much over time. Water quality, that hasn’t gone away. Another problem out there, is biota transfer. Aquatic invasive species or aquatic nuisance species, ANS, those are terms, words you never heard of when I started. But the issue was still there. It was called biota transfer. There are a lot of issues with carp, zebra mussels and others. Moving forward, it’s going to continue to be an issue.

NDO: Under your leadership, the Game and Fish Department has created 60-plus community fisheries around the state. Is that about, right?

Power: These community fisheries gets back what we call the R3 deal — recruitment, retainment and reactivation of anglers. It’s one of the things I wish we could have done so much more, and it’s something we’ll need to do a lot more in the future to keep people fishing. One of the things we’ve tried, and will continue to do so, is bringing the fish closer to the people. A one-way fishing trip, on average, is 60 miles. Well, there are a lot of people who can’t afford the time and especially can’t afford the expense for a 60-mile fishing trip. Throughout the state, we have these little in-town community fisheries that are oftentimes nothing more than put-and-take fisheries, where we stock some fish in spring and hopefully people get to participate and catch some fish. And I think that’s helped a lot. It’s part of the long-term answer to public engagement.

NDO: What do you consider your biggest professional accomplishment in the last 40-plus years?

Power: That’s a tough one. More than anything, I’d say, was keeping a team of professionals in the Game and Fish Department as a whole and specifically with the fisheries division. We’ve been so blessed with having top notch personnel out there. They’re not storytellers but, holy cow, the work ethic, what they get done and some of the ideas that they come up with is impressive. I think this might be one of the best accomplishments because it is way more than me. It’s a team effort that’s gone on for basically my entire career.

NDO: And it’s not like the fisheries division has grown that much over the last 40 years, yet you’re managing more than twice as many lakes today compared to back in the day. Correct?

Power: Yeah. While the workload has increased significantly, you never hear the staff complaining about it. They just put their noses down and work with it. We are, I believe, the smallest fisheries division in the U.S. but you wouldn’t know it by what our fisheries crews get done year in and year out.

NDO: Any disappointment in the last 40-plus years?

Power: I’ve been disappointed at times in the apathy of the public. Fishing in North Dakota, for example, generates millions in collectible state taxes, more than $800 million is spent annually on fishing equipment, and so on. Fishing is kind of a big player and you’d think there’d been less apathy and more engagement, but there isn’t. On a fish species level, largemouth bass have been a disappointment. When I started, our largemouth bass fisheries were better than they are today, and we’ve tried a lot of different things. Water quality is another and that’s a big picture issue. We had a program at one time called Save Our Lakes that tried to address water quality issues. But again, it’s oftentimes just Band-Aids and it’s an issue that’s slowly hurting our fisheries. We continue to have blue green algae advisories that go on and we have sedimentation issues in some of our fisheries, especially our reservoirs, so there will continue to be water quality challenges in years to come.

NDO: Speaking of water. There have been years where we’ve dealt with everything from drought to flooding. How has Mother Nature influenced things over the years?

Power: When it comes to the fisheries in North Dakota, that’s what makes it special or unique. But when it comes to management, we’re managing extremes. You know, they talk about climate change and stuff, but North Dakota has always had dramatic climate change. So, we’ve seen the peaks and valleys. Those floods and those dry years, probably short term, are not a good deal. But in the long-term, when you get revegetation of shorelines during times of low water followed by flooding, you can get dramatic swings in the perch and pike fisheries as the inundated vegetation provides a nutrient boost to the fisheries, while providing places for fish to naturally reproduce.

NDO: The stars aligned with your career, as some of best fishing anglers have ever seen in North Dakota have come under your time as fisheries chief. Would you agree?

Power: Certainly. With pike and perch, you got to live with those peaks and valleys, and their day will come again. But one thing we can sustain over the longer haul, especially with our production capabilities, is walleye. I used to write a lot for the North Dakota OUTDOORS and I would often say the good old days are today. It’s a broken record, but that’s been kind of my career and that’s been a really nice thing. But again, I go back to the professionalism of the staff. I’m of that baby boomer generation where you worked hard, you played hard. But a lot of people say the younger generations, you know, there’s some challenges there. But I don’t see that within the Game and Fish Department. I tell you what, Gen Z, whatever they are now, the younger hires we have, their passion for the outdoors is high and I’m very optimistic about the future of the Department and the fisheries division. We have good young professionals who really care about the resource.

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