trends throughout an individual season, and 

 would give less accurate information regarding 

 changes in the species makeup of the catch dur- 

 ing the seasons and the relationships of physical 



factors. 



2/ 



Summary 



1 . Creel census was carried out on the 

 section of the Upper Mississippi River between 

 Red Wing, Minnesota, and Dubuque, Iowa, 

 through 2 summer seasons and 2 winter seasons, 

 1944-46. The censuses of the summer of 1945 

 and the winter of 1944-45 covered 225 miles of 

 river; those of the summer of 1944 and the win- 

 ter of 1945-46 were conducted at one and three 

 key fishing areas respectively. 



2 . A total of about 40,000 fishermen 

 were interviewed in the summer, about 15 per- 

 cent of the total fishermen were women; in the 

 winter, about 5 percent. 



2a . Over 90 percent of the fishing is 

 done by "still fishing" techniques, using live 

 bait. 



3. The fishery is varied and involves at 

 least a dozen species of warm -water fish. Blue- 

 gill sunfish and 2 species of crappie make up 

 over half the catch, however. In some areas 

 walleye and sauger are important. 



4. Over a 5 -year period (1945-49), fol- 

 lowing the census, an estimated 150,000 fisher- 

 men per year caught an average of about a half- 

 million fish per year. Both the fishing pressure 

 and the catch increased markedly during this 

 period, over their amounts in the period 1944- 

 46. 



5. According to the census figures, the 

 average angler had fished about 3 .2 hours in the 

 winter, and 3.7 hours in the summer, when 

 interviewed . 



6 . The average catch per hour for 3 of 

 the seasons was close to 0.5 fish, being about 

 2/ Best and Boles (1956) present some pertinent 

 information and conclusions regarding methods 

 of subsampling. 



0.7 for the summer of 1944. TTie average catch 

 per fisherman-trip thus was around 2 fish. 

 About one -third of the fishermen caught no fish. 



7. The catch varied considerably, in 

 species composition, from place to place . Some 

 localities yielded almost exclusively walleye and 

 sauger; others crappie and bluegill. 



The winter fishery is more specialized 

 as to kinds of fish than the summer fishing. 



8. Fluctuations throughout each individual 

 season were great and often abrupt. The summer 

 fishing, in 1945, showed a tendency to improve 

 after mid-July, although many localities did not 

 follow the general trend. The winter fishing 

 tended to be best in the early part of the winter . 



9. There was some correspondence in 

 the fishing trends through 2 successive winters, 

 but a mathematical correlation is difficult to 

 establish. The 2 summer censuses covered 

 different extents of territory and hence are not 

 strictly comparable . 



10. The fishing success was not influ- 

 enced greatly by the fishing pressure. 



1 1 . Worms produced better fishing than 

 minnows, in terms of fish per hour . There was 

 a great difference in the kind of fish caught; 

 worms took mostly bluegills, minnows took crap- 

 pies, walleyes, sauger s, northern pike. Artificial 

 baits did not rank high in catch per hour . 



12. Fishing was better in the early morn- 

 ing and the evening than it was durmg the midday, 

 in both the winter and summer. 



13. Women were less successful anglers 

 than men . 



14. There is some evidence that water 

 temperature was correlated (positively) with 

 catch, at least within a restricted temperature 

 range. Apparently different species respond 

 differently to the water temperature . 



15. Changes in water levels probably 

 influenced the catch success, but the relationship 



57 



