Fishing science?

[OhioFisherman]

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2015/06/04/Freshwater-fish-evolution-may-be-affected-by-sport-fishing/1321433434942/?spt=hs&or=sn

[AKRISONER]

ive always wondered about fish being caught multiple times.

 

E.g. when ive caught a 15 year old walleye, something tells me that somewhere along in its life its probably been caught and released.

 

I still dont see how they measure "metabolic rate"

[EC1]

Interesting. Well this isn't a big positive or negative thing I suppose. Most importantly are the fish staying alive and keeping the ecosystem in balance.

 

As to pressured fish, ask the 6-8lb simcoe smallies how many tubes they've seen over their lifetime.

[adempsey]

 

I still dont see how they measure "metabolic rate"

 

The basically place the fish in a tank of water and measure how much oxygen was used [removed from the water] over a period of time.

 

The data to support their conclusions is very weak. I wouldn't put much weight in this study.

 

They need to sample far more lakes than just 4. Even within lakes you will have genetic drift that occurs naturally.

 

Their stats look weak to me as well. Temperature [as part of the RMR measurement, not the lake temp] had a large influence on RMR and with an increased sample size any influence by "exploitation" may simply go away. Regardless, they need far more lakes than what they used to draw any solid general conclusions.

 

Good effort though. I know how difficult it is to design and perform studies. It can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to design the experiments properly.

[OhioFisherman]

Most of our lakes here receive a lot of fishing pressure, especially for bass. On some a bass weighing 4 pounds was almost a lock on big bass for a tournament on others a 5 pound bass wasn't. Some lakes were numbers lakes, on others every bite counted a lot more.

 

I fished a pond around eight acres in size, it had very limited access to it for fishing. It was basically futile to go there and fish with lures and expect to catch a bass, day or night. Use a 6-8 inch chub or golden shiner? You might only get one bite a day, but that fish was usually 20 inches plus.

 

A couple - few years ago one of my friends show me an article that was written by a well known bass fisherman from this general area for a magazine about smallies on Lake Erie. It was his conclusion that people didn't start catching numbers of big smallies on Lake Erie until the late 1980's , just maybe it wasn't advertised as much?

[Dave Bailey]

I like this, it gives me another excuse to explain getting skunked.