Barotrauma Leads to Crappie Ice Fishing Woes

Fishy Fridays

Weekly spotlight on fisheries science journal articles

 

Jeff Kopaska
AFS Executive Director
jkopaska@fisheries.org

I looked at a couple of other papers for Fishy Friday this week, but when I see a study about one of my passions (ice fishing), that usually seals the deal.  This study looked at Black Crappie survival after release, and assessed depth at catch and handling time impacts on survival. Fish caught at depths less than 6.5 m exhibited few barotrauma symptoms, while fish caught at depths equal to or greater than 6.5 m most often did. The study confirmed that fish caught at depths equal to or greater than 8 m were far less likely to survive post-release. They also used underwater cameras and forward facing sonar to track fish post-release, a cool use of new technology. I would have loved to be part of the sample acquisition crew for this project! Enjoy!

The effects of capture depth and handling time on barotrauma response and postrelease behavior of ice-angled Black Crappie