Todd Masson's article today on upcoming speck assessment

[Speckmeister]

Todd Masson had Randy Pausina today hinting that all may be well regrading the upcoming speckled trout assessment that will be delivered to the commission as promised by the LDWF staff.

Here's a link to Todd's story: http://www.nola.com/outdoors/index.s...kled-trou.html

Now then, I hope Randy Pausina is correct.

However . . . I do have some concerns and would love feedback from Smalls and Mathgeek.

#1. I hope Randy Pausina will include the results of gill net and trammel net sampling data since 2011 when the presentation is made about this. There still could be a problem . . . With improved catch/harvest rate data due to LA Creel, the LDWF could have underestimated such data in prior years. Also, with no biomass indication, we still can't compare even LA Creel data to the biomass. Harvest/catch data is not necessarily positively correlated with indicators of biomass of speckled trout populations. In fact, we could be actually over-harvesting speckled trout if we don't have a good estimate of the biomass. Let's hope we get real data about biomass as well.

#2. By the way, this type of differences in data collection is a common statistical phenomenon whenever better sampling takes place of whatever we measure . The better and more samples taken - a clearer representation of the population occurs. But in this case, they may have considered LA Creel data only - and that's harvest/catch rate only. This could just be an artifact of improved sampling. And that still doesn't have anything to do with sampling the biomass of speckled trout out there. Catch/harvest rate data is an apple, and biomass indicators arising from gill and trammel net sampling are oranges as far as what is measured here statistically.

Hope to get some feedback from the Salty Cajun crew since this is so important for Big Lake anglers.

[Speckmeister]

Note...Todd just texted me and said this year's stock assessment coming up is based on the old MRIP models . . . so you may have to disregard much of the above.

[ckinchen]

Bump

[MathGeek]

It's hard to offer much speculation without data. Personally, I'm not yet convinced that LA Creel will offer better data for stock assessments than fishery independent sampling (with nets). It is hard to implement a creel survey that is sufficiently randomized to provide an accurate assessment of biomass or population.

Inevitably, compromises are made by the need to survey when and where you can have employees, and from what we've seen, survey results are likely to depend both on the particular personnel and on the anglers whose catches are surveyed. It's hard to consider data reliable if the surveyors don't actually see the fish.

Most fisheries programs that employ both fishery dependent data (creel surveys) and fishery independent data (net sampling) use them in a complementary manner. A good creel survey can add confidence if findings agree with the net based sampling and decrease confidence if there is disagreement. There are also a number of trawl samplings that occur in LA waters both by LDWF and federal agencies. Systems where the estimates for spawning stock biomass correlate well with age zero population from nekton sampling give more confidence than those that do not. (Lots of spawners should produce lots of young and vice versa.)

Unlike many freshwater lakes where most of the area is actively fished, LA waters have lots of places for trout to be that are seldom fished. Fish move over large areas and poor angling success may be due to factors other than a statewide population dip. Erosion, weather, tidal patterns, and major shifts in available forage often the fish in different places than produced easy success in earlier years. When the forage base shifts from shrimp to menhaden, the trout may be chasing the menhaden and be harder to catch.

Certainly, we'll all be better informed with more data provided by LDWF. But we've seen nothing to cause us to doubt that the speckled trout population is in very good shape statewide. Shifts in forage base, habitat, and weather patterns have made them harder to catch this year, but that likely indicates that there will be more to catch next year for the anglers with the skill to find them and get them to bite.

["W"]

All that money increase on fishing licenses will not do a damn bit of good as are as stock assessments !

This should be #1 on WLF agenda