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Fish Reports

2002 Report

Open River, Upper Mississippi River 2002 Fish Collection Summary

This report is a bullet summary of the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program's (LTRMP) fish collection efforts conducted by the Open River Field Station on the Open River, Upper Mississippi River during 2002. Information on changes in fish catch over all years can be obtained from the Graphical Fish Database Browser.

• 247 fish collections were conducted using five gear types (Table 2.5).
  
  
• Water levels did not affect sample allocations (Table 2.5; Figure 1.5).
  
  
• Of the 247 fish collections, 202 were from randomly selected sites. Thirty collections were from tributary fixed sites and 15 were from main channel border, unstructured fixed sites.
  
  
• Side channel border; main channel border, unstructured; and main channel border wing dam strata received the most sampling effort. Tributary strata received the least amount of sampling effort (Table 2.5).
  
  
• 11,804 fish were collected representing 63 species and 1 hybrid (Table 3.5). This total includes 27 unidentified buffalo (Ictiobus sp.) less than 150 mm long, 7 unidentified Lepomis (Lepomis sp.), and 116 unidentified larval fish (Unidentified).
  
  
• Historically, 129 fish species have been collected from the Open River (Pitlo et al. 1995).
  
  
• The LTRMP species total for Open River before the 2002 season was 105. One new species was collected during 2002: Blackside darter (5; Table 3.5).
  
  
• Species captured that are Missouri-listed species of special concern included: Mississippi silvery minnow (7), pugnose minnow (1), blue sucker (11), and river darter (4; Table 3.5).
  
  
• Three species of Asian carp were captured and included grass carp (6), bighead carp (84), and silver carp (13). These are exotic fish species that have been accidentally released into the Mississippi River system.
  
  
• Mean catch-per-unit-effort and standard error for fish collected by gears using stratified- random (Tables 4.5-11.5) and fixed-site sampling (Tables 14.5-19.5) for each stratum are shown.
  
  
• Length distributions for selected species of fish are shown in  Figures 2.5 to 19.5 .

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Page Last Modified: April 17, 2018