Improved trawling setup for sampling pelagic juvenile fish communities in small inland bodies of water

Trawling juveniles is an effective method to estimate 0+ fish assemblages in inland bodies of water. Trawlers are usually moved between bodies of water by ground transport, which restricts the size, weight and type of the equipment able to be transported, and as such do not always come equipped with machinery for trawl operation. Having to lift the trawl onto the deck of the trawler after each tow also makes small-scale juvenile trawling time-consuming and personnel intensive and deep water trawling is especially hard work. This study introduces a new two-boat setup for continuous trawling that enables faster and easier operation of the trawl, even in deep water layers, and more accurate distance and depth measurements.