Counting Sheep may put you to sleep, but counting fish will keep you awake –that is if you’re part of the annual fish count by Virginia’s Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Every year, DGIF does a count on one of the state’s rivers. Robbie Harris caught up with them on the New River and she filed this report.
Off they go, a fleet of 12 Johnboats carrying pretty much the whole staff of DGIF's fishery researchers, some university students, and volunteers who come out to help at these daylong fish tallies.
“It’s not a race, but it does have the look of some kind of tournament as fish in a designated section of the river are netted hauled up to be counted.”
“We have electro fishing boats that put a current out into the water. The fish are stunned they drift to the surface we dip them up and put ‘em in live wells…”
Bill Kittrell is DGIF’s South Western Virginia’s regional manager
“We put them in these tanks and we hold them for 3 runs. In the first run we expect to get a lot of, for example, small mouth bass. In the second run we’ll get a smaller and the third run even a smaller number so we can estimate, with very good confidence intervals, how many smallmouth bass of a catchable size would be out in this section of river. Plus we get the added benefit of being able to get all this good information on age and growth on not only game fish but we really get a good idea of relative abundance of a lot of our non game fish that most people never see.”
A few are kept for further study, but the idea here is not to do anything to decrease the fish population.
Quite the opposite. If this fish count’s numbers come back low, they’ll consider raising the allowable weight for fishing here, but if populations increase DGIF will typically relax those catch and release regulations the following year. Scott Smith is chief of aquatic research.
“If people were keeping fish like they used to 30 years ago, there wouldn’t be nearly as many fish in the river as you see now.
Over the 30 odd years they’ve been studying and stocking these rivers, the populations show a natural ebb and flow. That gets some people worried about what all’s going out there in the water. That’s where DGIF comes in to help ride the waves.
“ Two things we found is that from the public’s perspective is number one, they just want to know that we’re aware of the situation and we’re on top of it an we’re actually out there and we can tell that yeah, we see this coming and it’s going to happen and so that’s part of it and the other thing they want to know it’s not a pollution thing or something like that. It’s a natural occurrence and it’s temporary and it will get better as soon as flows go back to normal.”
Researchers think the New River may have more small mouth bass than any other river in Virginia. A separate study to confirm that is now underway. The popular game fish brings anglers here from far and wide. This river also boasts a special species of Walleye John Copeland, Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries biologist leads these river fish counts every year.
“ One of the things about this New River strain is that it produces really large individuals. A 16 lb. Walleye is an uncommon thing so people come a long way to fish for them here and we want to keep that going.
Copeland points out, when people travel here to fish they spend money in the region.
“ We know here on the New River that downstream on Claytor Lake we have a multi-million dollar fishery as an annual business. But upstream on Claytor Lake the fishing pressure is lighter and this Walleye by working with it and improving its population, attracts more interest from anglers and we get more travelers to the area to fish with us.
This year the study of the New River checked sections in Mouth of Wilson, Foster Falls and Austin Virginia. When the final count came in, it found an average 40 % increase in the fish population here; the kind of numbers you can take to the bank.
You can find more information about Virginia Rivers in your region here.
To see John Copeland's reports on fish populations in the New River, click here.