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Fish Reports

2005 Report

Pool 13, Upper Mississippi River 2005 Fish Collection Summary

This report is a bullet summary of the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program's (LTRMP) fish collection efforts conducted by the Bellevue Field Station on Pool 13, Upper Mississippi River during 2005. Information on changes in fish catch over all years can be obtained from the Graphical Fish Database Browser.

• 200 fish collections were conducted using six gear types (Table 2.3), with 172 from randomly selected sites and 28 from fixed sites.
  
  
• Backwater; main channel border, unstructured; and side channel border strata received the most sampling effort (Table 2.3).
  
  
• In 2005, water levels were lower than normal during much of the field season, but were considerably higher than normal during early October. Water levels did not affect sample allocations (Table 2.3; Figure 1.3).
  
  
• 14,188 fish were collected representing 54 species (Table 3.3).
  
  
• The LTRMP species total for Pool 13 before the 2005 season was 85; no new species were collected in the 2005 season (Table 3.3).
  
  
• Seven weed shiners were collected that are listed as endangered in Iowa. Also, fifty-three pugnose minnows were collected that are an Iowa-listed species of special concern (Table 3.3).
  
  
• Other species that were collected and are noted as uncommon, rare, or probably strays from tributaries (Pitlo et al. 1995) in Pool 13 were black buffalo, fathead minnow, green sunfish, quillback, silver lamprey, and smallmouth bass (Table 3.3).
  
  
• Mean catch-per-unit-effort and standard error for stratified random sampling and fixed-site sampling for each stratum are shown in Pool 13 tables. Length distributions for selected species of fish are shown in Figures 1 to 17.