[acabtp]

Originally Posted by buzzbaiter

You wanna know how many trout are in a stream(or bass in a lake)? Fish it! Sounds pretty easy to me and your not handling them unnecessarily. I never got the whole survey thing myself. Spend enough time fishing somewhere and you'll know what a place holds by what you catch(or don't catch). You can also look in the water and see spawning beds or young fish. Over in Pa, they actually clip the tips of the fins so that when they re-shock(second pass) the stream, they don't count those fin-clipped. Seems pretty harsh to me just for a routine survey. They do grow back but that's beside the point.

• Fishing does not show you how many trout are in a stream, it shows you how many trout in that stream are hungry or angry enough to swipe at at your lure. Electrofishing shows you everything.
• Fishing depends on lure size. Fish a small fly and the big lunker might not bother to move, run a big lure and the little ones can't get it in their mouth. Electrofishing shows you everything.
• Fish spend a lot of time hiding in cover, and if they can't see the bait, you can't catch them. But electrofishing still can.
• Even when they are out in the open, fish are camouflaged and many times you can't see them until they move. Electrofishing brings these fish to the surface as well.
• Fish are awake and trying to escape while being caught. This is more damaging to their slime coat and causes a build up of lactic acid in their system that electrofishing does not. You can think of it as the fish that was angled having run a marathon to the point of complete exhaustion (the fight) before being released versus being tasered, measured while knocked out, and then released.
• Who exactly is supposed to "Spend enough time fishing somewhere and you'll know what a place holds by what you catch(or don't catch)" so we know what is in the KLG? A state employee that is paid to fish all day? We need to *know*, not *guess* how many and what kind of fish are in there for management purposes. Not having accurate data like this is what has caused the closure of river herring in NJ.
• "You can also look in the water and see spawning beds or young fish", you only are seeing a small portion of the fish in there, and you can't count or measure them. With electrofishing, you will see, measure and count more or all of those.

blows my mind that anyone has a problem with this? hopefully mark b. can chime in and explain it some more.