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A Population Study of a Limited Area in a Michigan Trout Stream, September, 1940
Author(s) -
Shetter David S.,
Leonard Justin W.
Publication year - 1943
Publication title -
transactions of the american fisheries society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.696
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1548-8659
pISSN - 0002-8487
DOI - 10.1577/1548-8659(1942)72[35:apsoal]2.0.co;2
Subject(s) - trout , fishery , tributary , population , catch and release , fishing , fish <actinopterygii> , streams , geography , environmental science , biology , recreational fishing , cartography , demography , sociology , computer network , computer science
A population study was conducted on 580.5 feet of Hunt Creek, a tributary of the Thunder Bay River, in Montmorency County, Michigan. Hunt Creek was open to public fishing over its entire length during the 1940 trout season. A combination of stream diversion, blocking and seining, and finally poisoning with rotenone, enabled the investigators to obtain a capture of all fish in 0.131 acres of stream. The total fish population consisted of 605 brook trout weighing 12.36 pounds, and 188 muddlers weighing 1.27 pounds. From these data it was computed that Section C of Hunt Creek was supporting 4,619 brook trout (weight, 94.40 pounds) and 1,435 muddlers (weight, 9.68 pounds) per acre. Of the 605 brook trout captured, 2.3 per cent (14) were legal‐sized (7 inches, total length or longer); 22.0 per cent (133) were between 4 and 6.9 inches; and 75.7 per cent (458) were between 2 and 4 inches long. Two and one‐half times as many legal‐sized brook trout were captured in the deeper portion of the area as in the shallower region. Analysis of the data indicates that seining as a method of capture, even in blocked‐off portions of trout streams, has an efficiency of no more than about 80 per cent, as far as number is concerned. Data on the growth of brook trout, derived from a random series of scale samples, indicate that the brook trout do not reach the legal size of 7 inches until their third or fourth summer. Calculations based on the data available from the scale readings, and the length‐frequency distribution of the total population, indicated the distribution of the age‐groups among the actual population was as follows: O–46.7 per cent; I–30.8 per cent; II–19.8 per cent; III–2.7 per cent. The calculated survival from 1,000 young‐of‐the‐year brook trout was found to be as follows: 0–1,000; I–659; II–424; III–58. The average coefficient of condition (K) of the brook trout population was determined to be 1.469 (144 specimens of a size range of 4.0 to 9.5 inches, total length). This value is somewhat higher than those reported by other authors, possibly because of the time of year when the investigation was conducted.