antenna and receiver on the Missouri.
but not many moving
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks
I stayed back this week to take care of a lot of unfinished business in the office, but my guys are out there braving the sunshine and warmth and are on the lookout for radio-implanted fish in the Missouri River Adopt-A-Fish program.
We found a lot of fish last week, but the water temps are still pretty chilly so there wasn't a lot of movement. Missouri River temperatures were still in the mid to high 40 degree range, while the Yellowstone was in the low 50s.
We know that when the temperatures start going up and the waters start getting muddy, that makes our native fish want to cruise the river a bit more.
All of our ground based telemetry stations are in place and are in good working condition. That should help us in the weeks ahead in keeping track of our adopted fish.
There is a ton of Canada geese on nests already this year, lots of wood ducks, a few snow geese and way too many beavers. Beavers are cutting a lot of trees on the river bottoms.
To understand how we track the fish, you can go to the Internet and check on the Adopt-A-Fish pages on The study. They describe how fish are caught, implanted with radios and how we track them with floating base stations and with hand-held receivers.