Trout Management

[shortfish]

A friend of mine just got back from a few days at Montauk. He was in Loop 4 and one day noticed some boats being put in down by the cable. He got curious and went down and watched them. Two jon boats and a canoe. They were attracting they fish somehow and scooping them up in nets and measuring them. He went over to them and they said they were trout management and they were taking data for something or another. They say they do this a couple of times a year from the park down to Baptist or Parker. He was more interested in how they were attracting the fish. He said they used some type of rod and possibly shocked them.

Anybody see this or know what they are doing?

[Gene K]

There's at least one forum member who has assisted with this. Maybe he will chime in...

[3wt]

Yup, electroshocking. I believe that they also do it to move some of the browns further down so they don't end up treble hooked with power bait in the park.

And I'm not the one that has participated.

[Trevor K]

I've done quite a bit of electrofishing before and it does look like the fish are "attracted" to the rod. Many times they will even run into it. So I would guess that is most likely what they were using.

[stlfisher]

Yeah it is electroshocking and pretty common on most lakes and streams. I have not participated in one either, but I just read an article on it not more than two days ago. The basics if I remember correctly are:

The MDC sticks a low voltage rod in the water that attracts the fish and slightly stuns them for a few seconds. This allows the fish to be scooped up easily. I think you have to be within a few feet of the fish. The fish are then placed in a makshift holding net/tank in the stream and then taken out one by one to be quickly measured, weighed, counted, and then released. The informatin is used to gauge the overall health of the fish populations etc.

[Gavin]

I've helped them sample down there before...They usually do it around this time of year...First sample stretch is from the Park down to Baptist..Second sample stretch is from the powerline crossing down to what I call the False Cave Bluff about 1.5 miles above Parker Hollow. They use an jon boat equipped with a gigging rail and an electrode to shock & scoop up the fish, and the canoe's follow with a net pen which they use to hold the fish until they can be measured and released..They do each stretch twice, marking fish with a tail fin clip on the first day, so the can estimate the population based upon their resample rate. It kinda screws up the fishing for a couple days..Here's a few pictures from a sampling in September 2006. Cheers.

[awhuber]

anyone tie or have a pattern for one of those electroshockers?

[ozark trout fisher]

I'd be interested to see what the results of the shock-up was. Last number I saw for the Current River's Blue Ribbon stretch was 294 per mile, but that was a couple years back. And I think that year the population was down because of low water.

[shortfish]

Thanks for the info fellows. It sounds and looks exactly like like described it. It would be good to see the numbers for the differnet areas.

My buddy also mentioned the fishing was pretty lousy even a few hours after they left.

[Kayser]

That last pic of the fish in the net- that's a nice smallie in there, and it looks like an absolute pig of a brown. Remember what the sizes were on those fish?

Rob