Jan 2015 DNR Pool 4 Update from Walleye Searchers Meeting

As promised I have attached a pdf version of the presentation I gave at the Jan 4, 2016 Walleye Searchers meeting in Rochester. Each slide has some description of what I discussed while showing it as well as a basic explanation of how we use the data shown.

Folks who actually are reading the whole document each year may notice the lack of Young of Year (YOY) Walleye and Sauger monitoring data from 2015. We typically electrofish at night in the first week or two of November looking for abundance of YOY Walleye and Sauger. In 2014 we were frozen off the lake and warm water in 2015 delayed the sampling and then high, dirty water made it impossible forcing us to miss the second year in a row of this sampling.

There were a number of questions that were asked by folks at the meeting that were similar to questions from last years meeting. The following link should take you to my post from last year that contains answers to those questions towards the end of the pdf file.

https://www.in-depthoutdoors.com/community/forums/topic/status-of-pool-4-presentation-for-walleye-searchers-meeting-with-notes/

I know these documents are often long, but I appreciate those that take the time to read them and ask questions.

As always feel free to contact me if you need clarification or have a question.

Nick

Attachments:

1. 2015-Lake-Pepin-Update-with-Notes-from-Walleye-Searchers-Meeting.pdf

Really appreciate you taking the time to present this information and posting it online, Nick.

I chatted with a couple of the DNR guys this summer while out fishing about that paddlefish/sturgeon bycatch event. I had come across a couple of the dead ones. Real sad deal. Glad you guys were on top of it.

Nice report and write up Nick…I was wondering if the same kind of study has recently been done Pool 2 or any plans to do so in the future?

It would also be interesting to know if the 2011 and 2013 strong P4 year classes of Walleye would also be present in P2? Seems like bigger Walleyes (>27″) have been down on P2 the last couple years. This is only based on my fishing experience and not any scientific data.

Not sure which part of the “study” you are talking about. They have had some tracking work similar to the Paddlefish going on for the last several years in Pool 2 and the Croix.

As for general fisheries surveys Pool 2 was scheduled for Sept 2015 according to the East Metro Fisheries website, but they probably are limited in gear types because of the higher flow vs Pepin. I will check and post back if there are some comparable results.

Even without results I can make an educated guess on reduced numbers of very large (>27″) Walleye in the river. I mentioned this in last years presentation in depth if you are interested, but the hot summer of 2012 likely caused considerable mortality on our large adult Walleyes in Pepin and I would expect Pool 2 would have likely experienced somewhat similar conditions.

If temperature related mortality is the cause (and barring a similar hot summer or other mortality influencing changes) you will likely see an increase in larger fish over the next several years as the smaller individuals that were less affected by the warm summer of 2012 grow into those larger sizes.

Great information. I always look forward to this type of data. SCIENCE!