I took off work on Wednesday and helped the VA Dept of Fish and Game do what's called a River Depletion. Basically they find stretches of rivers in the area specific to the particular study they're doing, start downriver and shock the river going upstream into a natural lock-point where the fish can't swim upstream anymore.
Wedenesday they did the James right outside of downtown Lynchburg. This particular stretch I would guess was less than a half mile. Probably 25-30 shocking boats all lined up in a row. They push upstream together so no fish can get in between. They drop the leads in the water and it paralyzes the fish. I was a "dipper" so I stood in the bow of the boat and tried to net as many fish as I could and place them in the live well. Any size, any species (except for carp). Then we bring them back, seperate by species, count, weigh and measure, then put them in another live well and release them upstream at a point where we can't re-catch them before the day is out. They do the same stretch at least 3 times or until they reach a certain percentage drop.
In a half mile we caught 50 ba-trillion eels, a mess of catfish, probably over 60, over 30 muskie, a bunch of long-nose gars, surprisingly very few bass, a handful citation size, and a bunch of suckers.
About 2% total of all the catches die on average. Wednesday was pretty hot, oxygen was low so I think they had somewhere around 4% deaths. It kind of made me feel bad to see such a pile of dead fish, but it was mainely the suckers that were having all the trouble.
I don't feel so bad that I couldn't catch any bass out of this stretch of river, but I definately know I need to go for cats and muskie. Some were so big, it took 2 guys to put them in the boat. One popped right the hell out of the livewell behind me. Scared the crap out of me. Here's some pics:
Channel Cat- actually was pretty big but the angle and the way it curled doesn't make it look as impressive.
Muskie. I think the biggest one was over 5ft long. I crapped so hard..... I just grabbed this one out of the live well though.
Muskie live well. They look like alligators. They gots funky teeth too.
My ass that my friend was kind enough to take a picture of (I think he has a thing for me, can you blame him?)
The fleet docked
another
shocking boat setup
I copied and pasted this post from another board I post on, so if you read both, I'm saying it here
Anyway, just thought you guys would be interested
Wedenesday they did the James right outside of downtown Lynchburg. This particular stretch I would guess was less than a half mile. Probably 25-30 shocking boats all lined up in a row. They push upstream together so no fish can get in between. They drop the leads in the water and it paralyzes the fish. I was a "dipper" so I stood in the bow of the boat and tried to net as many fish as I could and place them in the live well. Any size, any species (except for carp). Then we bring them back, seperate by species, count, weigh and measure, then put them in another live well and release them upstream at a point where we can't re-catch them before the day is out. They do the same stretch at least 3 times or until they reach a certain percentage drop.
In a half mile we caught 50 ba-trillion eels, a mess of catfish, probably over 60, over 30 muskie, a bunch of long-nose gars, surprisingly very few bass, a handful citation size, and a bunch of suckers.
About 2% total of all the catches die on average. Wednesday was pretty hot, oxygen was low so I think they had somewhere around 4% deaths. It kind of made me feel bad to see such a pile of dead fish, but it was mainely the suckers that were having all the trouble.
I don't feel so bad that I couldn't catch any bass out of this stretch of river, but I definately know I need to go for cats and muskie. Some were so big, it took 2 guys to put them in the boat. One popped right the hell out of the livewell behind me. Scared the crap out of me. Here's some pics:
Channel Cat- actually was pretty big but the angle and the way it curled doesn't make it look as impressive.
Muskie. I think the biggest one was over 5ft long. I crapped so hard..... I just grabbed this one out of the live well though.
Muskie live well. They look like alligators. They gots funky teeth too.
My ass that my friend was kind enough to take a picture of (I think he has a thing for me, can you blame him?)
The fleet docked
another
shocking boat setup
I copied and pasted this post from another board I post on, so if you read both, I'm saying it here
Anyway, just thought you guys would be interested
