8005 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

One northern pike was observed in a small, relatively shallow backwater during 'scare and snare.' The fish surfaced in front of the net immediately after the mouth was blocked. The fish had apparently detected the net and avoided moving into it. Considerable time was spent covering the backwater and trying to drive the fish into the net. Two investigators started at the upper end and drove toward the net causing considerable commotion and thrashing through the available vegetation. Two complete drives were made through the backwater, but the pike was not captured even though the mouth was completely blocked. Apparently it was able to avoid the people in the backwater and not be driven into the net. No electrofishing boat was available on that day to shock the backwater. The smallest northern pike captured was 35 cm long and the largest was 86 cm long. Most of the fish were between 50 and 75 cm long (Figure 4). This size structure was very similar to that observed by Burdick (1995). Burdick PIT tagged seven of the 15 fish that he collected within the 95-96 study area. Only two tagged fish were recaptured during this study. All pike collected in this study were captured from the same areas as Burdick (1995; Figure 5) except that none were captured above Hartland Diversion because it was not sampled. As mentioned above, Burdick collected 13 pike in a 3.1-km-long reach below Hartland Diversion. Ten of those fish were caught in or near a large backwater at RK 86.7. Most of the fish captured in this study were also collected near that backwater. Other species captured during this study included bluehead sucker Catostomus discobolus, flannelmouth sucker C. latipinnis, roundtail chub :Gila robusta, brown trout Salmo trutta, rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss, common carp Cyprinus carpio, black bullhead Ameiurus metal, green sunfish Lepomis cyanellus, white sucker C. commersoni, and hybrids between white sucker and bluehead and flannelmouth suckers (Tables A-1 and A-2). The introduced white sucker was the most common species captured in both electrofishing and fyke net collections. The two salmonid species were most common in electrofishing collections immediately below Hartland Diversion and were rarely collected in the flood plain. Green sunfish and black bullhead were exclusively collected from floodplain habitats-they were not captured in mainstem electrofishing collections. All green sunfish and black bullhead encountered were humanely sacrificed and removed from the river. The 9