The following schedule is from the 72nd Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies which was held October 21-24, 2018 in Mobile, Alabama.
AUTHORS: Robert Eckelbecker, Matthew J. Catalano – School of Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences, Auburn University
ABSTRACT: We compared different creel survey methods at three Alabama reservoirs (Harris, Jordan, and Mitchell) to identify approaches that could improve precision or reduce costs. We were particularly interested in whether time-lapse photos taken at boat ramp parking lots could be used as an index of fishing effort to improve the temporal coverage of sampling at relatively low cost. Angler effort was estimated independently through the use of roving creels, access point creels, aerial census counts, and fixed-location digital camera images of boat ramps. Roving creels followed a stratified random design with equal sampling probability using a count-as-you-go approach. Access creels mimicked Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources standardized creels; occurring on weekends and sampled seven and a half hours before sunset extending thirty minutes after sunset. Aerial census counts were conducted by randomly timed fixed wing aircraft flights. Digital cameras were installed at high-use boat ramps and were elevated to maximize plane of view to cover the majority of parking lot spaces with a single picture taken hourly. Evaluation of the accuracy of angler effort from time-lapse photos will be analyzed based on ramp specific access point creel surveys that occur simultaneously. Total reservoir effort of time-lapse photos of all boat ramps will be compared to the fly over census counts. If the relationships are strong between both the aircraft counts and access point creel surveys to the camera images, then these angler effort estimates from remote cameras could reduce the amount of effort needed for on-site survey samples.
