Calcasieu Croaker Science

[MathGeek]

LDWF has been kind enough to share all their fishery independent stock assessment data in Big Lake with us for the past five years. We're just digging into it with the intent to correlate it with our original relative condition factor data from our annual creel surveys where we have weighed and measured 1800 specks, reds, drum, and gafftops. The idea is to see which forage species in the food web are more strongly correlated with the predator species.

If a predator gets fat when there are lots of croaker, it suggests that predator species is more heavily dependent on croaker than other forage species which show little correlation with the plumpness of the predator.

Here is the CPUE for croaker from Jan-Jun for the past 5 years.

OK, experts, which bioindicator species (specks, reds, drum, or gafftops) will have its plumpness most strongly correlated with the croaker stock assessments?