A DISTRIBUTIONAL ATLAS OF UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER FISHES 
GROWING CONCERN OVER POLLUTION and 
habitat alteration in the Mississippi River prompts us 
to publish information we have assembled on the present 
distribution of fishes in that river. Since 1962 a concerted 
effort, under the aegis of the Upper Mississippi River 
Conservation Committee (hereafter UMRCC), has re- 
sulted in a vast quantity of distributional data, and its 
publication can provide a criterion that will aid in the 
detection and measurement of future changes in the en- 
vironmental quality of the river. 
The upper Mississippi River, as defined in this re- 
yort, extends from river mile 0 at the mouth of the 
Jhio River near Cairo, Illinois, to river mile 854 at 
st. Anthony Falls near Minneapolis, Minnesota. River 
niles are indicated on the navigation charts (Middle 
ind Upper Mississippi River, U.S. Army Engineer Di- 
ision, North Central Corps, 1963), and they are promi- 
ently posted along the river banks so that the numbers 
re readily visible as a navigation aid to boat and barge 
ilots in the river channel. 
Most of the upper Mississippi River consists of navi- 
ation pools separated by numbered locks and dams 
Fig. 1). Each pool takes the same number as its down- 
tream lock and dam. Pool 1, for example, lies between 
t. Anthony Falls and lock and dam 1; pool 2, between 
ck and dam 1 and lock and dam 2, etc. Since there 
no lock and dam 23, there is no pool 23. The lower- 
10st combined lock and dam is number 26; lock 27 and 
am 27 are at different locations on the river. In the 
sheries literature the pool between lock and dam 25 
nd lock and dam 26 is termed pool 26, and the river 
low dam 26 is called B-26. Below dam 27 the river 
unimpounded. 
In the Mississippi River, commercial and sport fishes 
ave received considerable attention from researchers 
JMRCC 1945-1968; Barnickol & Starrett POD lee Car- 
nder 1954; Starrett & Barnickol 1955; and Nord 1967). 
ther fishes, which comprise well over half of the total 
mber of species known to occur in the Mississippi, 
we received less attention, and detailed information 
| their distribution and abundance in the river js not 
nerally available. Many of these fishes are small and 
ficult to identify, but they can serve as indicators of 
ological conditions in the river when the assemblage of 
ecies and their numerical relationships are known. 
HISTORICAL RESUME 
Prior to the establishment of the present UMRCC 
1943, knowledge of the fish fauna of the river was 
sed largely on the work of Meck (1892), Forbes & 
chardson (1908), Greene (1935), specimens deposited 
This paper is published by authority of the State of Illinois, IRS 
127, Par. 58.12. It is a joint contribution from the Fish Technical 
tion of the Upper Mississippi River Conservation Committee and the 
Philip W. Smith, Alvin C. Lopinot, and William L. Pflieger 
in the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan, 
old reports of federal and state fish commissions and the 
U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and scattered publications citing 
records from the Mississippi River. For an excellent 
summary of early investigations, see Carlander (1954). 
With the establishment of the UMRCC, its Fish 
Technical Section inaugurated field operations early in 
1944. These investigations continued through 1946 and 
involved personnel and financial support from the con- 
servation departments of Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois 
and the Illinois Natural History Survey. The 2-year in- 
vestigation of the river between Caruthersville, Missouri, 
and Dubuque, Iowa, culminated in the publication of 
Commercial and Sport Fishes of the Mississippi River 
(Barnickol & Starrett Sea) 
Aware of the need for a list of all of the fishes in 
the upper Mississippi River, the UMRCC asked Dr. 
Reeve M. Bailey of the University of Michigan to com- 
pile an official guide for common and scientific names 
for all species. Bailey’s mimeographed preliminary list, 
a remarkably accurate prediction of species that have 
since been found in the river, was based at least in part 
on specimens submitted to him for identification by 
Barnickol and Starrett and other UMRCC collectors. 
The list appeared in the proceedings of the eighth annual 
meeting (UMRCC 1952). A table showing the dis- 
tribution of fish species for pools 3-11 also appeared in 
the proceedings of the eighth annual meeting and was 
revised the following year (UMRCC 1953) by Drs. John 
Greenbank and Raymond E. Johnson. 
Subsequent issues of the mimeographed UMRCC 
proceedings added a few new distributional records, and 
Robert C. Nord canvassed old literature and the mem- 
ber agencies of UMRCC for all fish distributional rec- 
ords for the river. In 1962 we proposed to the Fish 
Technical Section of the UMRCC that a cooperative 
small-fishes survey of the river be undertaken in 1963 
by personnel of the member agencies of the committee. 
It was our hope that a number of intensive minnow-seine 
collections would provide information on the small fishes 
and would supplement the information on commercial 
and sport fishes in Barnickol & Starrett’s (1951) bulletin. 
In 1963 biologists from the Illinois and Iowa conserva- 
tion departments made over 100 minnow-seine collections 
and a few otter-trawl collections, and biologists from 
the Missouri Conservation Department sampled inten- 
sively a dozen sites in their part of the river. The Wis- 
consin and Minnesota departments of conservation sub- 
sequently sent in a few additional collections, but the 
need for more sampling was obvious. 
In 1964 and 1965 staff members of the Natural 
History Survey made a few more collections in the 
Illinois portion of the river. Dissatisfied with the species 
representation in many of the collections, we again ap- 
proached the UMRCC Fish Technical Section and pro- 
posed that mouths of preselected tributaries be sampled 
the following summer by seining and electrofishing. Col- 
