Monday, I just did my first full day of serious (as in targeted) paddlefish sampling on Bayou Nezpique. We catch them for broodstock to use for our fish in the classroom program, where we give paddlefish fry to schools around the state so they can raise them and watch them develop before releasing them. We had a warm winter and early wet spring this year, so it looks like they had an early spawn. We caught one spent female, and spent 12 hours on the water to end up with six good females and nine males. We could've used a few more males, but hey, what can you do? We set six gill nets at three different proven sites, and checked them every two hours. I'm not going to go into specifics on gear and site selection here, but if you have good reasons for collecting them and want any advice, I work with some people that have caught thousands over the past 15 years or so, and are about as good as anybody at finding them. It made for a long boring day with very exciting accents and a few shenanigans (what do you expect when you spend most of your day going from parking on one edge of the swamp to another?). We catch paddlefish in gill nets quite a bit out here, but it still hasn't lost it's novelty for me. All my time spent catching fish all over TX I never caught one, and now in LA, they're pretty common, so I have a blast snagging them.

Stay tuned, I'm trying to get my hands on some field shots, and Monday we'll be spawning them up at the hatchery. Fish porn, totally fish porn.

I'm really interested in hearing more about your classroom program.

What age students? Is it a Vo-Ag program? What's the goal and who sponsors it?
What size/age fingerlings are provided and when? I assume in the fall?
How are they maintained? In aquaria, aquaculture vats, etc? What size?
Do you provide written cultural information (feeding, filtration, water quality guidelines, etc)? If so is it available to the public?
How long are they kept and at what size are they released?
Are they released into waters of the state?

This sounds like a great program and no doubt such a peculiar species captures the interest of students.

I would love to see some photos of the ongoing project.

Many thanks!

I'm with the LA Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries, and we sponsor the :Native Fish in the Classroom" program. Education/outreach really puts on the program, but Inland Fisheries and the hatchery (which isn't technically part of IF, believe it or not) do the legwork as far as capturing and spawning them. Since I'm on the capture/spawn end of the deal, I'll answer your questions as best I can.

The students are middle and high schoolers. They watch us milk the fish and strip eggs from a walkway above the vats we keep the fish in. They just go to public schools that choose to participate in the program. The fry are sent to classrooms soon after hatching so they can see the whole development process, so they'll be getting them very soon. They're kept in aquaria inside classrooms. The teachers receive literature and training as part of the program. I'm really not sure when they release them, but it is after they develop their rostrum and "adult" characteristics. They are released in suitable waters around the state (I'm not sure exactly where).

The purpose is just education, so we're not raising paddlefish out here to repopulate anything (for the most part, they do that just fine on their own down here). Here's a link to a press release, and I'll try to post some pics after we spawn them Monday.

Here's a link to a news release. There are contacts at the bottom if you want more information than I can provide.http://www.wlf.louis....gov/news/34774

That sounds like fun. Gotta love pulling up to a gillnet with a bunch floats down or a splashing fish.

The best thing is that we're working in between 40 and 60 ft of water with a big mesh, so the only bycatch we got all day were buffalo and a couple of goo. Paddlefish are amazingly cooperative when it comes to releasing them from gill nets. They even come equipped with convenient handles and no sharp edges. It's almost like they were designed for people to hold them. Amazing fish.

Oh yeah, and we'd watch those floats bobbing... It's a great way to fish.

That's some deep water are yall floating the net on top or sinking it?

Floating, and running them tight. You'd never get a net back if you dropped it too low with all the sunk trees (they're enough of a problem as we approach the edge, which is also a severe dropoff). The Mermentau system has some amazingly deep spots for how shallow it is. I've been in spots on that little river that are 100'+ deep. When the fish are running, they are pretty close to the surface, but we've seen them waaaay down on a fish finder when they're not moving. We pull the nets tight and set a float halfway. After we tie off, we can either keep the float or remove it depending on how we're catching.

All the rice farming in the area has really done a number on the system as far as turbidity goes. I'd kill to see it before there was ever a rice field out there, and the numbers and quality of fish it must've held.