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<br />shoreline areas usually downstream of debris fans or other velocity breaks. Depth of <br />nests that we could see were 2-3 feet but some male bass were caught in probable <br />nesting areas at depths to 4 feet. No ripe smallmouth bass, spawning behavior, or <br />nests were observed at Lily Park. <br /> <br />Longitudinal distribution of smallmouth bass- Both Little Yampa Canyon and Lily Park <br />had high concentrations of bass and within each site there were some 1-mile sections <br />that contained larger aggregations of small mouth bass than others. We provide 2007 <br />data as an example of small mouth bass distribution because in that year we sampled <br />all1-mile sections at each site equally. Data reported show the number of fish captured <br />on all sample occasions. The highest catch per mile was at Lily Park where after six <br />sample occasions we handled between 200 and 400 adult smallmouth bass per mile in <br />3 of the 5 miles (Figure 6). At Little Yampa Canyon, after eight sample occasions, we <br />captured as many as 234 smallmouth bass in one section (RM 112-113) and otherwise <br />captured over 100 bass in two other sections at RM 104-105 and RM 108-109. High <br />relative densities of sub-adult smallmouth bass were often associated with high <br />densities of adult small mouth bass, except at RM 119-120 where large numbers of <br />YOY and yearlings were captured along a 1/4 mile long area of railroad rip rap just <br />upstream of Milk Creek. Concentration areas remained consistent within and among <br />years and were associated with complex habitat composed of islands with associated <br />riffles, deep eddies associated with boulder debris fans, and in the case of Little Yampa <br />Canyon, abundant cover from large boulders that eroded from steep talus canyon <br />slopes. <br /> <br />Movement of tagged smallmouth bass- We released 3,601 tagged smallmouth bass <br />including 3061 fish at Little Yampa Canyon and 540 fish at Lily Park during our study <br />period. A large proportion of tagged fish were never seen again including 58% of the <br />fish tagged at Little Yampa Canyon and 70% of the fish tagged at Lily Park. The lower <br />rate of recapture at Lily Park is presumed due to the smaller size of that reach <br />compared to the size of Little Yampa Canyon. Tagged fish were recaptured from one <br /> <br />16 <br />