Conservation Department performs a catfish study

Sunday, July 31, 2005

Area anglers flock to the banks of the Marmaton River each spring and summer hoping to catch their limit of fish; however, this summer fishing has not been very good.

Anglers are not catching fish on the Marmaton because the fish are not there in big numbers, Tom Prizendorf, a Missouri Department of Conservation biologist in El Dorado Springs, said Thursday.

"We have shocked enough of the river to know that," he said. Prizendorf is in the first year of a five-year study to tag and release flathead and blue catfish on a 35-mile stretch of the Marmaton River from H highway north of Deerfield to near the Four-Rivers Conservation Area.

Next week they may be working in the Pump House Bridge area. Prizendorf is using a 16-foot boat equipped for electro-shock that they will have on display during the National Night Out activities on the Nevada Square, Aug. 2.

According to Prizendorf the electro-shock equipment can be set to primarily affect the kinds of fish they want to study. The settings they are using have little impact on channel catfish, buffalo or bass, he said.

"We've had good luck using low voltages around 100 volts, sometimes as low as 80 volts," he said.

The low voltage does not have much affect on fish in deep water, with most of the impact on an area close to the boat, he said. Prizendorf said that he wanted to put a myth to rest that using electro-shock on a river affects anglers' ability to catch fish afterwards.

"There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of people catching tagged fish shortly after they were released," he said. He said that they are not looking at channel cat in this study.

"We're trying to get a handle on what blue and flathead catfish do on a day-to-day and year-to-year basis," he said. The goal of the study is to find out where the fish go.

"They could go to Truman Lake, or even go through Truman Dam. We don't know where they will go," he said.

Each fish they find has a permanent tag attached under the dorsal fin. Anglers who catch a tagged fish can call a telephone number on the tag to find out how to claim a $25 reward. These fish could live for 10 or 15 years and over that time the study will give the conservation department a good idea of how far and where the fish travel.

So far this year, Prizendorf and his crew have tagged about 75 catfish and they were hoping to tag about 200 this season, which will last about another month. They are usually only in this part of the river during spawning season, which is almost over, and the flooding on the Marmaton in June followed by the drought in July has cut down on the number of fish that have come up the river, he said.

He said that most of the blue and flathead catfish that would normally be in the Marmaton are probably in the larger rivers like the Marais Des Cygnes or the Bates County Drainage Ditch. There are stretches of the Marmaton with very little water. In addition to electro-shock, the study employs hoop nets and limb lines or trot lines to catch fish.

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