Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
Open River, Upper Mississippi River 2004 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 2004. Information on changes
in fish catch over all years can be obtained from the Graphical
Fish Database Browser.
- 218 fish collections were conducted using five gear types (Table
2.5).
- Side channel border, main channel border-unstructured, and main channel
border-wing dam strata received the most sampling effort. The tributary
stratum received the least amount of sampling effort (Table 2.5).
- In 2004, water levels were lower than normal during April and early
May (typically the peak flood period), but considerably higher than
normal during late May and June. Sample allocations were affected by
water levels because some side channel sites and one tributary fixed
site were inaccessible in sampling periods 2 and 3 (Table
2.5; Figure 1.5).
- 5,420 fish were collected representing 58 species and 1 hybrid (Table
3.5).
- Historically, 129 fish species have been collected from the Open River
(Pitlo et al. 1995).
- The LTRMP species total for Open River before the 2004 season was
105. No new species were collected during 2004.
- Species collected that are Missouri-listed species of special concern
included: one blue sucker, one weed shiner, six silver chub, 13 flier,
and two mooneye (Table 3.5). One species of
rare occurrence, rainbow smelt, was collected.
- 12 grass carp
and 121 silver carp were collected. These are two species of Asian carp that were accidentally
released into the Mississippi River system.
- Mean catch-per-unit-effort and standard error for stratified random and fixed-site sampling for each stratum are shown in the Open River tables. Length distributions for selected species of fish are shown in Figures 1 to 17.
Content manager: Jennie Sauer
Page Last Modified: April 17, 2018