Work Fish

[CG_Fishes]

As part of my internship here in Sweden, one of the studies I have been working on is investigating the impact of reed harvest on ecological communities. In order to determine the abundance of Pike, the most accurate sampling technique is rod fishing. Meaning that I spent the entire week fishing for Pike as my job. While a week straight of 10 hour days of standardized fishing in the same location gets slightly tedious, especially when you know there aren't fish in certain locations, I don't think that work can get any better than this. 

I was able to land near 20 Pike this week with my largest 2 being 33" and 30" but the 16" Redfin Perch I caught was definitely the highlight for me! 

Extremely grateful to have opportunities like this in my field, science is awesome!

[Jim137a]

Living the Dream !!!!

[SwingAway]

That's awesome man. Fisheries work is definitely rewarding in so many ways! Hope the internship goes well and you get some more nice fish along the way!

Edited July 1, 2023 by SwingAway

[FishDr]

Getting to use “hook and line sampling” for work is always a bonus, and getting into solid European perch is awesome. Did you try topwater for the perch? Apparently they’ll hit small poppers and walking baits.

[CG_Fishes]

2 hours ago, FishDr said:

Getting to use “hook and line sampling” for work is always a bonus, and getting into solid European perch is awesome. Did you try topwater for the perch? Apparently they’ll hit small poppers and walking baits.

Thanks! I have seen them schooling to feed like that once since being here and that group was of 8-10" individuals. I also, stupidly did not bring any topwater. I know I could have had the time of my life fishing the lunker punker for pike earlier this season, but such is life!

[Jon P]

You should grab some genetic material from those big European perch and see if they hybridize with yellow perch! There's a lake near me that regularly produces pounder perch, lake record's 3.22 lbs! Imagine what some F1 strain yellow perch would be like

[CG_Fishes]

4 minutes ago, Jon P said:

You should grab some genetic material from those big European perch and see if they hybridize with yellow perch! There's a lake near me that regularly produces pounder perch, lake record's 3.22 lbs! Imagine what some F1 strain yellow perch would be like

Interesting idea, I wonder if anyone else has ever looked into it. I think we have enough stocked lab rats (Tiger Muskie/Trout, Splake, Saugeye, F1 Largemouth, etc.) running around our systems at the moment though personally, I'll take wild native fish over any of those test tube babies all day!

[Jon P]

5 minutes ago, CG_Fishes said:

Interesting idea, I wonder if anyone else has ever looked into it. I think we have enough stocked lab rats (Tiger Muskie/Trout, Splake, Saugeye, F1 Largemouth, etc.) running around our systems at the moment though personally, I'll take wild native fish over any of those test tube babies all day!

 

Managed to find this graphic from a project called "percatech" which experimented with hybridization of european and yellow perch. I think that european perch alone would be one hell of a noxious invasive species, their uber babies even moreso.

[CG_Fishes]

4 hours ago, Jon P said:

 

Managed to find this graphic from a project called "percatech" which experimented with hybridization of european and yellow perch. I think that european perch alone would be one hell of a noxious invasive species, their uber babies even moreso.

That growth rate is absurd, in 2 years those fish are bigger than most Yellow Perch in the states. Makes you wonder how big they could get!

[FishDr]

2 hours ago, CG_Fishes said:

That growth rate is absurd, in 2 years those fish are bigger than most Yellow Perch in the states. Makes you wonder how big they could get!

They would probably do decently well though they apparently stunt easily, much like our yellow perch do. They’ve seen this a lot in Australia, where they were introduced. I think a bigger problem would be their diet overlap with bass and walleye - they’ve got much bigger mouths than our yellow perch and are more piscivorous, so we’d have more predators chasing our bait.

Although I know better from a fisheries management standpoint, when it comes to hybrids I always wonder what a “zandeye” (Zander crossed with walleye) would be like. Zander get about twice as large as walleye so it might be like a super-sized walleye. They both hit swimbaits so that’s a bonus.

[CG_Fishes]

5 hours ago, FishDr said:

They would probably do decently well though they apparently stunt easily, much like our yellow perch do. They’ve seen this a lot in Australia, where they were introduced. I think a bigger problem would be their diet overlap with bass and walleye - they’ve got much bigger mouths than our yellow perch and are more piscivorous, so we’d have more predators chasing our bait.

Although I know better from a fisheries management standpoint, when it comes to hybrids I always wonder what a “zandeye” (Zander crossed with walleye) would be like. Zander get about twice as large as walleye so it might be like a super-sized walleye. They both hit swimbaits so that’s a bonus.

Zander are awesome, by far my favorite species that I have interacted with here. While I haven't been lucky enough to catch once, we did get quite a few over 30" in our pound net survey, with this 37" being the largest. Easily a 15-20lb fish, unbelievable!

[Bakerlounge]

Was introduced to a few different Euro species last summer and found the Zander and Asp to be really entertaining on top of awesome pike fishing (no pike in CA where I live). Nice catches and great work!