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Fish Reports

2005 Report

Pool 8, Upper Mississippi River 2005 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 2005. Information on changes in fish catch over all years can be obtained from the Graphical Fish Database Browser.

• 180 fish collections were conducted using 6 gear types (Table 2.2). Of the 180 collections, 160 were from randomly selected sites. Twenty collections were made at fixed TWZ sites.
  
  
• Water levels did not affect sample allocations. A high-water event during period three may have altered catches somewhat, but sampling continued routinely.  For most of the sampling season, water levels resembled those depicted by the historical hydrograph. (Figure 1.2).

• Backwater, main channel border-unstructured, and side channel border strata strata received the most sampling effort (Table 2.2).
  
  
• 14,879 fish were collected representing 60 species and 2 hybrids (Table 3). This total includes 149 unidentified sunfishes (Centrarchidae) less than 30 mm long (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 2005 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:  3 pallid shiners (endangered), 2 lake sturgeon (special concern), 1 silver chub (special concern) 1,205 weed shiners (special concern), 159 pugnose minnows (special concern), 41 river redhorse (threatened), 1 western sand darter (special concern), and 2 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