Lake Champlain United - Forums

A reminder that the talk on this is tomorrow, Thursday, at 6:30, in Grand Isle.

http://www.uvm.edu/seagrant/news/save-d ... ed-bass-go

I remember reading about this when they were first starting the study, looks interesting.

I am not going to make it but keep me informed.

I'm not going either. Cas you going? Anyone else?

I'll be going up with Wayne Laroche. I'll try to get a link up here about it later Friday or next week.

Gerry - I will be there, curious what they have to say. Someone will be sure to get a summary report up here.

A long story short, there was no conclusions to any of the data they have collected. It was just a meeting to show what they are doing, how they are doing it, and what they have found so far. Not so much on why they are doing it.... Its still an ongoing study as we speak. If you catch a smallmouth or largemouth with a floy tag (yellow or orange) be sure to call it in. As we speak there are bass in the lake with telemetry devices in them so they can be pinpointed. There will be another meeting on this sometime in the future with much more data and observations. Overall i thought it was very interesting, and will attend the next one. I recommend that anyone interested in LC, fisherman or non go next time! There was some very interesting stuff presented, and sure to be much more in the next meeting.


FishStalker

Yeah - like Fishstalker (nice talking with you, by the way) said, they were quick to point out that it's preliminary results, and to not walk away with any sort of mindset. It was more of what they've done so far, how they're doing it, etc. I thought it was interesting to see some of the maps they made which showed were the fish was caught which enabled them to know how far it was from it's "home base", along with various points where they were able to track it with their telemetry data. That gave them an average distance of travel per day, along with total distance (approximate). He said there was little to no re-catching of tagged fish for the tournaments.

He stated that the bass tournament anglers were extremely cooperative. He wasn't sure that they'd be willing to state where they caught the fish, even though they were asking for general vicinities, but they were very forthcoming, willing to give them the GPS coordinates.

He also noted that the bigger tournaments are probably better than the small local ones, mainly because they have their release boats, where they take the fish after they'd been weighed and bring them out away from the docks into deeper water where it's cooler, therefore more dissolved oxygen and better for the fish.

Their studies also include looking at stress factors in the fish, and there are definitely some, but nothing that jumped out at them as life threatening. They're planning on getting out soon and start with the telemetry data to see if they can track the fish from last year. The telemetry data should still be functioning, the cheaper clip on tags usually fall out after 8 months or so.

schodackbassman on the other forum was mentioned by name. In the intro, they showed a couple screen shots of some forums where this was mentioned, one was that forum and his entry was quoted as he was asking about who was doing the study, that was their lead-in to explaining who they were and how they are funded. Not PETA as schodackbassman had asked.

Clearly I am late to the show here. The two above me did a good job summing it up. What I find worrisome is that they described this as an "observational study" with no particular hypothesis or question being asked. How can you draw an unbiased conclusion is you look at the data before asking the questions?

I look forward to their conclusions.

One quote that stood out-

"One thing I can say for sure is - there are a hell of a lot of fish out there!"

Eric L wrote: What I find worrisome is that they described this as an "observational study" with no particular hypothesis or question being asked. How can you draw an unbiased conclusion is you look at the data before asking the questions?

Maybe they are just gathering statistical data, and will provide that data...without concerns about drawing conclusions???
Leaving that up to us...or somebody else?

Eric L wrote: One quote that stood out-
"One thing I can say for sure is - there are a hell of a lot of fish out there!"

Heck yeah!

FishStalker, Cas, and Eric-Thanks for the report guys!
But...no mention of the goodies/munchies usually displayed at the LCBP

The maple walnut cheesecake was delicious