Sport Fishery — Mississippi River 



An extensive literature search yielded very little quantitative 

 data on the pre-construction sport fishery of the upper Missisippi 

 River. Although several studies provided recent information, it was 

 impossible to perform a quantitative comparison of pre- and post- 

 construction sport fisheries due to the lack of data from the earlier 

 period. An excellent qualitative, historical account of the sport 

 fishery of the upper Mississippi River can be found in Carlander 

 (1954: 71-81). 



Green (1960: 6) reported that impoundment of the Mississippi River 

 created 3 distinct habitat zones: (1) an upper pool, exhibiting essen- 

 tially normal river conditions with deep sloughs and wooded islands, 

 (2) a middle pool, with large areas of comparatively shallow water and 

 adjacent marshes, and (3) a lower pool, with deep, open water and no 

 marsh. Barnickol and Starrett (1951: 313) found that the upper reaches 

 of the navigation pools provided a more favorable habitat for sport 

 fishes than the middle and lower sections and that sport fishing was 

 conducted primarily in the pools below the dams. They attributed the 

 concentration of sport fishes in the upper reaches of each pool to the 

 availability of preferred food items, such as aquatic insects and min- 

 nows, and to the occurrence of deep holes and shallow sand bars. 

 Cleary (1961: 143) and Helms (1969: 33) also found that tailwater areas 

 immediately below each dam attracted the most sport fishing pressure. 

 In addition, fish which move upstream at certain times of year, such as 

 white bass, will aggregate below the dams. Sport fishermen are well 

 aware of this concentrating effect of the dams. 



Since 1946, a regular count of both boat and shore fishermen using 

 the dams has been made by lockmasters at each lock and dam (Carlander, 

 1954: 80). Nord (1967: 108-109) presented these counts for 1959-1963. 

 His tabulations revealed that Lock and Dam 26 ranked first among all 

 26 impoundments in the shore count, with an average annual use by 

 13,500 fishermen. However, this site ranked 23rd in the boat count, 

 with only 380 boat fishermen per year recorded. The shore fishermen 

 are probably people from the neighboring St. Louis area with relatively 



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