MNDNR Metro East Catfish Presentation

Down loadable in a PowerPoint presentation.

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Pretty good stuff, although it would have been better to have been there to have things explained more.

What was with the optical illusion slide? I stared at it waiting for some text or pictures to fly in and woke up 3 hours later drooling on my keyboard.

That was the point in which Joel said, “after seeing all these graphs and charts I bet your eyes are doing this”

Quote:

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That was the point in which Joel said, “after seeing all these graphs and charts I bet your eyes are doing this”

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And he also put Blinky in the presentation. Sounds (or reads) like Joel has a sense of humor that fits in with that cat/sturgeon crowd.

Not true. I’m a biologist for the state. Not allowed to have a sense of humor.
Wish I would have taken the time to type up my speech in the presentation. But I basically got the slides put together and was just winging it, knowing the things I wanted to say and point out. If anyone has any questions about the slide show, I’m more than happy to answer them.

There was a mention of less cats in the St Croix.

What area were they referring too? Above or below the dam?

PS you guys don’t get paid enough to have a sense of humor.

Now enforcement on the other hand.

The part about less cats on the Croix started with angler complaints to a Conservation Officer about the big cats declining. It was a little unclear at the time if that was above or below Taylors Falls, or both. Eventually, the entire MN portion of the St Croix was surveyed in 2006, and we just didn’t get many catfish. However, there were some sampling issues as the timing of the trot line sets was in late summer. We’ve learned from other offices that trot line catches are best earlier in the year, say June, and drop throughout the summer. Plus we had some trot lines tampered with.

The best indicator we have that is consistent are the gill net catches from Lake St Croix. And the average channel cat per gill net lift has continued to decline. When you survey every five years, natural variability in the catch and 16 gill nets for all that water can be misleading, so we’re not positive the decline is real. And people that know how to catch them will tell you (or won’t tell you ) the big cats are still there. But it’s a good time to have a specialized catfish project up and running because that is exactly what we need to look at more thoroughly.

Now, if I could just consistently catch numbers of catfish on the St Croix to tag them, things would be moving along nicely. But the hoop nets have been a disappointment and the water conductivity is likely the problem reducing my electrofishing efficiency, especially for flatheads. If I could find some cold water concentrations of them in the St Croix, I could possibly do some deep water electrofishing. Problem is, it may take an hour for those fish to hit the surface. So I need to KNOW those fish are holed up there first or I will waste a ton of time waiting for catfish to come up that weren’t there to begin with.