Recreational Fishing Use of Live Sonar

Fishy Fridays

Weekly spotlight on fisheries science journal articles

 

Jeff Kopaska
AFS Executive Director
jkopaska@fisheries.org

Last week AFS hosted a webinar regarding Forward Facing Sonar, with an expert panel discussing a variety of issues like catchability, tournaments, current research, and more. There were well over 200 people who attended, so I thought a great next Fishy Friday entry would be to follow up on that topic. Today’s paper was published in Fisheries in January 2025, and is a perspective piece touching on the state of the technology, catch rates, catch composition, catchability, tournaments, and ethics (a lot of the topics from the webinar!).  The article also addresses the potential for regulations, opportunities, and research needs. It is a good overview of the topic, and this topic is going to be with the profession for the foreseeable future. Enjoy!

Emerging live sonar technologies in freshwater recreational fisheries: Issues and opportunities