The Eagle River Beer Fest in Wisconsin

Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the Eagle River Beer Fest in Wisconsin.

The Eagle River Beer Fest in Wisconsin Bennett Watt: In Wisconsin’s North Woods the lumber industry is still a significant employer that in some communities like Eagle River, tourism is the driving economic force winter and summer. This is a snow mobile capital of the world and its here since 1964, the world championships snowmobile derby is held attracting crowds in excess of 50,000 snow machine racing fans. Eagle River has become synonymous with snowmobiling. There are over 500 miles of snowmobile trails around the Eagle River, snow machines pass coming at the town are complete with stop signs, speed limits and no vehicle warnings. In the summer the vast network of interconnected lakes and ponds attract out door enthusiast from all over the area. To raise funds for the Eagle River Museum the community historical society has combined Wisconsin’s rich tradition of malted beverages with tourist in the fund raising event at the annual Eagle River year fest. Doug Breit: Today is the second annual Eagle River Beer Festival to benefit the Eagle River historical museum. We have 24 breweries and included in that is one winery. Each brewery may have anywhere from two to six different kinds of beers. In fact we have a book in the museum that talks about all the history of beer making in Wisconsin how far it dated back, how the German’s and different immigrants came to this part of the country and pretty much we’re self supporting, growing your own food grain and everything they needed to brew beer. Bennett Watt: We have a blonde ale that we just renamed dirty blonde, we have a pale ale, we have a seasonal IPA or right now called the fangled up ITA of fudge, nut brown ale and a porter, just high quality prop beer from Wisconsin. Doug Breit: We tend to spend a little too much time perfecting our beer. We do it in a small batch, our company has usually a soda producer and we brew beer because we love it. Stephanie Hojan: It’s probably the true definition of Wisconsin all about; it’s all about hunting, fishing, pure drinking everytime and relaxing. It’s the way to get away and we need to wait and of course the customer care. Bennett Watt: Anywhere you find more than two anglers you’ll probably also finds some sort of contest to see who’s the best. Jeff Miller: The 26th annual one for our chapter, we have a 150 boat centered in this 300 men. We started at 7:30, they fish all day they fish till 5:30 then after that they’re done for the day we’ve periodically run the twin hours, free registration stations and we pour it all in our information and we post that on the board so at the end of the day when they come back they could see the stand and everything. But if you do a survey for a type of bullet, this is the place for the worker, you’ll step there and you’ll see aluminum volts and fiber glass and big boats and little. They all necessarily don’t have to be the same thing and there’s no real set boat from us to be efficient. We’ve had people within board, out board type boats and they ski stop on the back of it and they still go out and fish. You’ll do, you’ll get a big variety of it. Not like a bass tournament where they’re all exactly in the same paper boat. What they can afford is what they come to get a shot off. We use to start them right of the dock one at the time and we bake to 45 minutes to get them all out and by moving into the middle of the way using the fund cone is a starting point, you can run them down on both sides so you’re actually starting two at time and we go to 75 boats doubles in 15 minutes or less. And it really floats pretty easy we do not allow to get up to speed on this lakes if it could not fighting big waves. Other currents that we fished in, you get almost slack and the guys are taking off. Bennett Watt: The Musky is Native American specie which is very grassy and can grow the weight in excess of 65 pounds and over five feet in length and some of the environments. Jim Heffner: You can tell a difference they are really temperamental, they like follow lures everything have the presentation has to be perfect. The water temperature has to be a number of degrees and it has to have sometimes they’ll hit the lure because they’re feeding sometimes, they hit the lure just to be mean about it but you know when you got one I’m just normally when you set the hook the first thing you’ll do is usually jump out of the water and then you’ll charge try to get slack and they’ll keep jumping at lot of tens you’ll see with the lure. And they’re just such of the aggressive fish that there’s imbed kind of and pretty descent size mostly that an initial strike they almost jerk the rod right out of your arms. So you do want to be paying attention when it’s big one anyway. Bennett Watt: The Department of Natural Resources and the tournament sketch and releases education programs have made significant progress in increasing size and numbers of husky’s throughout Wisconsin. Jeff Miller: Last year we had over 50% of the fish were over 40 inches and it used to be it was 34, 35, 36 so we can see the by the size wouldn’t it be an increase to fisher and getting bigger there and they are being caught and that’s the whole idea so if they’re trying to get a trophy fish. They got to leave in they’re long enough to grow and become a trophy size and I know there’s spontaneous where I know for example I know for example, I know at one piece it has been cut three times, First I’m on the Scott was around 36 or 37, the second time was around 43 and the last time I was caught with around 49. So I made this and it does pay off the release this fish. Bennett Watt: Fishing is a very popular sport in Wisconsin, nearly one million Wisconsin residents went fishing last year and those anglers spend up billion dollars. That means about 20 % of Wisconsin’s entire population went fishing last year. About double in national average of 10%, sport fishing is an extremely important economic force in the state and in America. From the vast north woods to the rolling hills of America’s dairy land, Wisconsin is really wonderland and beauty in bounty. Not the least of which are its people. Thanks for watching Discoveries of America, Wisconsin.