Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
2003 Report
Pool 26, Upper Mississippi River 2003 Fish Collection Summary
This report is a bullet summary of the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program's (LTRMP) fish collection efforts conducted by the Great Rivers Field Station on Pool 26, Upper Mississippi River during 2003. Information on changes in fish catch over all years can be obtained from the Graphical Fish Database Browser.
- Additional funding from the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center allowed for complete LTRMP fish monitoring in Pool 26 (all gears, all sampling periods).
- 273 fish collections were conducted using six gear types (Table 2.4).
- Water levels did not affect sample allocations; however, one large hoop net was damaged in period 2 (apparently run over by a boat) and both the large and small hoop nets for that site were reset. One trawling run was missed in period 3 because the trawl became irretrievably snagged (Table 2.4; Figure 1.4).
- Of the 273 fish collections, 262 were from randomly selected sites. Eleven collections were made at a fixed site.
- Main channel border, unstructured; side channel border; and contiguous backwater, shoreline strata received the most sampling effort (Table 2.4).
- 18,371 fish were collected representing 61 species and 3 hybrids (Table 3.4). This total includes 101 unidentified suckers (Catostomidae) >90 mm long, 62 unidentified sunfishes (Centrarchidae) >30 mm long, 836 unidentified herrings (Clupeidae) >30 mm long, 42 unidentified minnows (Cyprinidae) >30 mm long, and 5 unidentified young-of-the-year fish >10 mm long.
- The LTRMP species total for Pool 26 before the 2003 season was 90; no new species were collected in the 2003 season (Table 3.4).
- One Illinois-listed, endangered lake sturgeon was collected (Table 3.4).
- No species were collected that are Illinois-listed threatened species (Table 3.4).
- Other species collected and are noted as uncommon, rare, or probably strays from tributaries (Pitlo et al. 1995) in Pool 26 were suckermouth minnow, fathead minnow, golden redhorse, wiper (striped bass x white bass hybrid), logperch, and smallmouth bass. Mississippi silvery minnow and grass carp were listed as rare and uncommon, respectively by Pitlo et al. (1995), but LTRMP collections in Pool 26 since 1995 suggest that they may no longer be uncommon (Table 3.4).
- Mean catch-per-unit-effort and standard error for fish collected by gears using stratified random (Tables 4.4–11.4) and fixed-site sampling (Table 21.4) for each stratum are shown.
- Length distributions for selected species of fish are shown in Figures 1 to 17.
Content manager: Jennie Sauer
Page Last Modified: April 17, 2018