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Fish Reports

2006 Report

Pool 4, Upper Mississippi River 2006 Fish Collection Summary

This report is a bullet summary of the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program's fish collection efforts conducted by the Lake City Field Station on Pool 4, Upper Mississippi River during 2006. Information on changes in fish catch over all years can be obtained from the Graphical Fish Database Browser.

• 163 fish collections were conducted using six gear types (Table 2.1), with 136 from randomly selected sites and 27 from fixed sites.
  
  
• Side channel borders, backwaters, and main channel borders received the most sampling effort (Table 2.1).
  
  
• Gear allocations among strata were the same for both sampling periods except for a variation between strata for tailwater trawling during period three.
  
  
• In 2006 water levels were higher than the average mean during mid April and mid May. (Typically when flood waters rise)  Water levels from early June through the end of October were significantly lower than normal.  Water levels remained low into December.  Sampling was difficult in backwaters and some side channels.  Alternate sites were necessary during this low water period (Figure 1.1).
  
  
• 32,061 fish representing 60 species and 3 hybrids were collected (Table 3.1). Historical fish distribution for the Upper Mississippi River (Pitlo et al. 1995) documents 99 fish species from Pool 4.  To date the Lake City Field Station has collected a total of 89 species and 5 hybrids.
  
  
• The three fish species with the highest total catch were 17,481 emerald shiners, 5646 bluegill, and 2265 gizzard shad (Table 3.1).
  
  
• Twenty one shovelnose sturgeon, fifteen pugnose minnows, three lake sturgeon , five black buffalo, one pirate perch, and one blue sucker, all Minnesota species of special concern, were collected (Table 3.1).
  
  
• Mean catch-per-unit-effort and standard error for fish collected by the LTRMP using stratified random and fixed-site sampling for each stratum are shown in Pool 4 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