John Lyons, a longtime DNR fisheries researcher and fish identification expert, had been hearing about the battle between the walleye and the bass for years. Depending upon who was doing the telling, the bass fishing was either very good and those anglers weren?t talking much. Or the fans of the walleye complained about their species looking anything like the top game fish champ. ?There were a number of initiatives going on,? Lyons said of the state?s researchers dedicated to fisheries. There was field work under way at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point?s College of Natural Resources, more at the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Center for Limnology and, of course, the DNR. ?We pulled everyone together into a team and each group has their own specialty.? Not so fast. First, there was the inevitable first hurdle — funding.
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