Quote:
Originally Posted by wishin i was fishin
great post guys, getting down to business, how would you go about getting facts to support the benefits of a 25 fish limit? seems we got a bunch of pro fishermen that can produce plenty of data on fish caught, and we have a MathGeek to crunch the numbers... In the end, he with the most data wins.
just a thought here.
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There are several approaches to acquiring and analyzing data for "stock assessments" which is how biologists determine how a fishery is doing. Unfortunately, the experimental designs and randomization for CPUE (catch per unit effort) type studies are very complicated and unlikely to be fulfilled by anglers keeping their own records. Carefully measured lengths can be useful for generating length frequency distributions, but only if a captain measures the length of every trout caught in his boat for a period of time. Measuring only the bigger fish biases the data.
My wife Amy and I will be in LC from 11 June until at least 21 June. We'll be conducting a length-weight survey where we need to carefully measure and weigh (using carefully calibrated scales) as many speckled trout, redfish, and black drum as possible. These careful weight and length measurements will allow computation of a relative condition factor (a measure of fatness which indicates how well the fish have been eating). This study design allows an assessment of the stocks relative to their available food much more simply than CPUE (catch per unit effort) assessments and is generally more accurate than length frequency histograms which are biased by sampling methods.
We'll probably be concentrating at Calcusieu Point, because getting enough black drum measured was the big challenge last year, and very few drum are landed at Hebert's. The relative fatness or thinness of these three species can be very informative, especially when compared to the data from previous years. We'll be posting times and locations here at Salty Cajun. We especially need black drum, as they are a sensitive bioindicator of the oyster situation. We also struggle to get enough bull redfish in the data set.
Other valuable data would be the top ten tournament weights from previous years and any stock assessment data LDWF is willing to share.