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Fish Reports

2004 Report

Pool 8, Upper Mississippi River 2004 Fish Collection Summary

This report is a summary of the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program's (LTRMP) fish collection efforts conducted by the Onalaska Field Station on Pool 8, Upper Mississippi River during 2004. Information on changes in fish catch over all years can be obtained from the Graphical Fish Database Browser.

 

• 268 fish collections were conducted using six gear types (Table 2.2), with 240 from randomly selected sites and 28 from fixed sites.
  
  
• Backwater, main channel border-unstructured, and side channel border strata received the most sampling effort (Table 2.2).
  
  
• 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. Water levels did not affect sample allocations; however, one paired hoop net set was missed in the TWZ in period 2 because propwash from a barge rolled a large tree over the nets (Table 2.2; Figure 1.2).
  
  
• 26,485 fish were collected representing 68 species and 4 hybrids (Table 3.2). Historical fish distribution records for the Upper Mississippi River (Pitlo et al. 1995) document 99 fish species from Pool 8.
  
  
• The LTRMP species total for Pool 8 before the 2004 season was 90; no new species were added to this total since 1997.
  
  
• Several species were collected that are listed on Wisconsin's rare fish list, including the following: 1 lake sturgeon (special concern), 1 silver chub (special concern) 1,779 weed shiners (special concern), 1,104 pugnose minnows (special concern), 1 black buffalo (threatened), 48 river redhorse (threatened), 4 western sand darters (special concern), and 16 mud darters (special concern) (Table 3.2).
  
  
• Mean catch-per-unit-effort and standard error for fish collected using stratified random and fixed-site sampling for each stratum are shown in Pool 8 tables. Length distributions for selected species of fish are shown in Figures 1 to 17.
  

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Page Last Modified: April 17, 2018