Anglers can help advance research to enhance fishing for striped bass in tailwater habitats.
Editors Note: In this guest blog post, Oklahoma State University graduate research assistant Alex Vaisvil explains how OSU is working to better understand striped bass in the Arkansas River and how you can not only help, but also get a chance at $100. Catch a fish. Maybe win $100. Sounds good to us!
Background: This summer, Oklahoma State University (OSU) placed reward tags on nearly 500 striped bass in the Arkansas River, lower Illinois River (below Tenkiller Dam) and lower Canadian River (below Eufaula dam). These tags will help researchers collect several important types of fisheries data. Of particular importance to OSU’s research is information about the number and sizes of striped bass caught by anglers. This information can then be compared with OSU’s electrofishing data to better understand if anglers are catching each size class of fish in proportion to their abundance in the population. OSU is also trying to determine how often and how far striped bass travel. Reward tags can help provide location data when anglers report where they caught a fish.
How to report a reward tag: If you have caught a fish with a reward tag, please visit http://tinyurl.com/fishreward. Please note this is different from the form for black bass caught above Tenkiller Lake, which is another ongoing but unrelated OSU project. The link will take you to a Google form document. Answer the questions, and you will be entered into a monthly drawing for a monetary prize up to $100. Odds of winning are dependent upon the number of anglers responding each month. Thank you for helping to learn information to improve the quality of striped bass fishing in the Arkansas River.
-Financial support for this publication was provided by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation through the Sport Fish Restoration Program F18AF00898 (F-108-R-1) and Oklahoma State University. The Sport Fish Restoration Program is the federal program that provides 75 percent of the funding for this grant. The rest is provided by the state.