Using MyCatch Tournament to Estimate the Population of Largemouth Bass in Newman Lake, WA.

In the lead-up to the 2022 American Fisheries Society annual conference in Spokane, MyCatch partnered with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) to test a new approach for estimating a population of fish in a small lake. This pilot project adapted the Chapman variation of the Petersen method to generate daily estimates of the population over the course of the 19-day event. Results of the project are currently being finalized and will be submitted for publication early in 2023. As a teaser, here is how the event worked and some high level results.

The first step in carrying out this project was to tag largemough bass. Newman Lake was selected for this project due to its abundance of largemouth bass and its proximity to Spokane, however the project could also have been applied to many other species and/or waterbodies. Figure 1 shows research partner Daniel Garret from WDFW tagging fish captured from electroshocking. This is part of a YouTube video published by WDFW in the lead up to the event to help motivate anglers to participate.

The event launched August 1, 2022 and ran for 19 consecutive days. Anglers could fish anywhere on the lake at any time throughout the event. The research rules applied to this event were that all fish must be reported on the app, and any tagged fish be reported with their tag number.

Overall, 60 anglers participated in the tournament, taking 343 trips and catching 1,536 fish. The average catch rate was 1.14 fish per hour. Figure 1 illustrates these stats and shows a bathymetric map of Newman Lake. The total area of the lake is 445 Ha (1,100 acres) and is relatively shallow with a maximum depth of 14 metres (45 feet).

Overall, the distribution of catches in the event compared well with catches from electrofishing (see Figure 3). Since the event was carried out over 19 days, it allowed a time series analysis to be conducted which revealed interesting trends in angler behavior. A paper is currently being prepared on this project which dives deeper into angler reporting, and once it is published we will update this page with more in-depth information, so stay tuned!

For more information on running events with tagged fish, please reach out to Sean Simmons by email ([email protected]).

_{Header image of tag reported during event by Angler’s Atlas member Portch}