Adopt-A-Fish update – April 6, 2006
ground stations to track fish
By DAVE FULLER
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks
FORT PECK – Ah yes, the prairie streams are flowing. As a result, the rivers that they flow into are getting muddy. And with that, the native prairie fish are beginning to stretch their fins after a long winter.
This can only mean one thing – the Missouri-Yellowstone Adopt-A-Fish program is up and running for the year and the fish trackers are out in force.
The Missouri and Yellowstone rivers are now ice free and crews were out this past week tracking native fish species including our blue suckers, channel catfish, paddlefish, pallid sturgeon, paddlefish and shovelnose sturgeon.
Tracking includes setting up the ground-based telemetry stations which augment the manual tracking done by biologists in boats going up and down the river. The ground-based stations tell us exactly when a fish passed by them and which direction they were going.
We have these stations spaced throughout the two major rivers and at the mouths of tributaries such as the Milk, Powder and Tongue rivers. From these stations, we know when a fish entered a tributary. We can also determine what the critical flows or water temperatures were at the time when the fish responded and moved.
This provides very valuable information, which may have not been detected with just our boat tracking.
For instance, we manually track the entire study area every week. One time, we relocated a fish in the same area below the Milk River two weeks in a row. No movement, right?
It wasn’t until the winter when I was sitting down at my desk compiling the manual data and comparing it with the ground station data that I realized this fish was up the Milk River for the seven days that had passed in between manual runs. During those seven days, we were in other parts of the study area and never would have known the fish moved.
Looking further, sure enough, there was a rain event that caused the Milk River to rise and triggered the fish to respond.
We can’t say for sure just how far this fish went up the Milk, but we do know that some critical flow caused this fish and others to make a migration up there.
We also have ground stations placed at diversion structures like the low irrigation dam at Intake. This allows us to determine how many of those fish bonked their nose on the structure, putting a halt to their migration. Those fish then must decide if they want to turn around. Or, it may show us how many had the swimming ability to get over the dam.
Perhaps a particular flow was needed for the fish to get over the structure.
Since this week’s time on the river was our first tracking run of the season and water temperatures are still rather frigid, there is not too much movement to report but stay tuned as we will keep you updated weekly through the months of April and May.
We did find most of our fish this week and they are updated on the Missouri-Yellowstone Adopt-A-Fish Web site at www.pikemasters.com/adopt-fish/home.html. Just click on the Find your Fish button on the home page.
School classrooms, youth fishing clubs and home schoolers can sign up for the program and adopt and name two fish. Just go to the Web site and click on the How To Adopt Button or send us an e-mail at flatlander@montana.com.
Adopt-A-Fish correspondents Dave Fuller, at Fort Peck, and Matt Jaeger, at Glendive, are fisheries biologists with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. They’ll post weekly updates every Thursday throughout April and May on this site and in the Outdoors section of The Billings Gazette.
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