Pudding Creek Hook and Line Survey: Questions For Yak-fishers

I appreciate you guys showing interest in this hook and line survey in Pudding Creek.  We are talking about doing the first one at the end of April or beginning of May on a weekend.  Maybe folks would like to fish on Sat and get abs on Sunday?  I'd be happy to go dive with anyone.

Sean and I are trying to figure out the logistics of this thing and there are questions only Yak fishers can answer, so any opinions would be helpful:

We need to catch fish, record the species, fork length, location, then pump the stomach (which i've never done, but I'm told it's easy).  The stomach contents then need to be stored in small sample vials filled with an ethanol - formalin mixture for preservation.

So the the question is this:  Do you think this is something that can be done by an individual angler aboard his boat?  Or should we have a skiff running around to process the samples and all the anglers have to do is keep the fish alive until we get there?  It would be way easier for us if everyone processed their own samples, so we didn't have to find and launch a boat (there's no launching facility).

I was thinking that guys could go out in teams to each selected GPS coordinate, so it would be more fun.

Any opinions?

Dave

If you run a skiff there there it's going to put all the fish down and you won't catch much. I think it would be better to fish in pairs with a rubber net that way we could keep them in the water. Waiting for a Skiff could endanger the fish the faster the release the better. Or we could form a wall and you guys could just paddle behind us. I don't think pumping the stomach is a big deal if you have 2 guys.

If you run a skiff there there it's going to put all the fish down and you won't catch much. I think it would be better to fish in pairs with a rubber net that way we could keep them in the water. Waiting for a Skiff could endanger the fish the faster the release the better. Or we could form a wall and you guys could just paddle behind us. I don't think pumping the stomach is a big deal if you have 2 guys.

Good point about the skiff scaring off fish.  I hadn't even thought of that.

I like the wall idea.  We could just progress through the pond with my crew behind processing fish in their yaks.

This pond is about 3 - 4 miles long, and I would like to get some idea of density throughout the pond, but if we only got the lower end that would be OK.

I will post a date early next week.