15 Trout Limit Discussion PUBLIC

[MathGeek]

Originally Posted by BIG RED 1983

So what you are saying is that top ten fish in the state are useless. Except in the eye of the beholder because they have no significant effect in doing a big trout study? What if all of the top ten fish were caught in the same area would that help with a study, or would it just be coincidence?

It is hard to say. Smaller windows of time and more quantifiable levels of effort make it easier to interpret the significance of the top ten trout, especially if the top ten trout weights are also available from other years in the same month with comparable windows of time and levels of effort.

The meaning of the top ten fish ever in a state are much harder to interpret, because they are likely spread over a period of 50 years or more, and it is unlikely to have more than one or two measurements from the same year.

State records are outliers, far out on the tail of the "normal distribution." They also depend on a combination of optimal conditions to produce the fish and an angler being at the right place at the right time to catch it.