The Start Of My Graduate Work

[jman]

Hello everyone,
I hope you are all having an awesome season thus far. As some may or may not know I am currently in graduate school at Plymouth State University getting my masters in biology. My thesis is on smallmouth bass spawning behaviors and how recreational angling may influence them. All of my work will be conducted on Squam Lake started this week and lasting until the end of the spawning season. This work has been cleared by NH Fish & Game and by FLW where my work maybe featured in an article in one of their late summer/early fall magazines this year. I hope to gain more knowledge on the dynamics of spawning, and to educate angles on proper educate when fishing for bedding bass.

I will have a handful of study sites around the lake where beds maybe marked with numbers bricks, and the guarding males will have a bright color coded t-bar tag on their dorsal fins. Now, I am asking EVERYONE if you happen to come across these fish PLEASE pass them by. I know I can't prevent everyone person from catching these fish, but the less others are catching them, the easier it will be on me and my field work this summer. I thank you all for your support and please pass this information on to anyone you know that will be fishing Squam in the next two months.


Thanks everyone,

Justin

[Henry E.]

No way!!   But thanks for marking the spawning sites and the fish for me!! LOL!!  Seriously though, that request may be tough for some, but I'll do my best to comply with your wishes, for the good of the species.  Good luck on your studies and your work!!

[wengland]

 good luck on your graduate work and thesis, how are things going so far? hopefully most are being respectfull of your sites, keep us posted,looking forward to that article

[jman]

UPDATE: Hello everyone it's been a while, but I just wanted to thank everybody who spread the word about my project this summer. I have finished for the year and will be doing the same thing again next year. I am now in the middle of analyzing data on 40 fish and hope to double or triple that number next season. So far I have been able to pick out some trends that I found interesting...

- Every fish seemed to be unique in how they dealt with the sunfish that was in the plastic cage. Some fish preferred ramming the cage while others slowly circled around tapping the walls lightly. The average number of "hits" and "rushes" were close to the same and "bites" to the cage was lowest. This made sense to me because a bite (like in other animals too) is used as a last resort to intimidate a treat.

- Out of all 40 fish I was only able to cause 2 to abandon their nests...needless to say these fish are very hardy!

- The aggression level of smallmouth males 24 hours after a treatment was significantly higher then the aggression level 1 hour after the treatment. This tells me that the fish do require more then one hour of time to settle down after a catch and release event, but I will have to read into this more to see if the literature follows the same trends (or not).

- After 24 hours ALL the fish that were brought either 50,100,or 500 meters from their nest returned/defended their offspring. Also, 8 fish out of 10 total returned to their nests within the first hour!

- When comparing aggression levels, smallmouth males that were defending offspring in the black fry stage were the most aggressive. The aggression level was slightly lower for males defending offspring still in the egg stage, and interestingly males that were in the area with offspring at the green fry stage almost all zeroed and wouldn't touch the plastic cage. Even when taking the averages there is still a lot of overlap (standard error) but I think this may be because of the small sample sizes, and also because the fish reacted so differently from one another.


Thanks again everyone for your support and cooperation!