Paddle Fish Study

Taking A Look At The Paddle Fish May 5, 2010 Reporter: Patrick McMurtry Videographer: Brad Rice

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EYEWITNESS ONLINE WEBCAST VIDEO

Take a fishing trip on the Ohio River, and chances are you'll come away with something big on your line. If you're really lucky, you'll find one of these..the prehistoric paddlefish.

The DNR is right in the middle of a two pronged effort involving the paddlefish on the day we caught up with them.

Chris O'Barra, DNR Biologist says, "We're trying to collect fish for our brooding stock program in our hatchery and we're also going to see if the fish that we've stocked over the last ten years are back in the rivers and each one we've stocked is tagged in a way we can tell if they are one of our fish."

This is a look at how the DNR tags these fish. They basically inject the fish with an identifying marker that, hopefully, will show up in paddlefish caught in this study. We've shown you how the DNR uses electricity to catch fish, but this time they're going old school: they're using gill nets.

Chris O'Barra, DNR Biologist says, "They're basically long strings of line woven together into mesh. We're using 5" mesh, the opening is 5" and they're 300 feet long either 6 or 20 feet deep depending on the water."

Sometimes the nets have paddlefish, sometimes they don't. These guys start out tiny, but some grow to be one hundred fifty pounds. A lot of hard work has gone into the stocking program, but Chris and his crew hope before too long, everyone will get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Chris O'Barra, DNR Biologist says, "We're also looking at population trends. We can age paddlefish by size and structure. Our goal is to get them back to a population where we can allow recreational fishing of paddlefish in WV."
That's something we're all hoping for. For West Virginia Wildlife, Patrick McMurtry, Eyewitness News.

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