Creel surveys are simply angler surveys or interviews. The term creel comes from the old cane or wicker baskets anglers would keep their catch in.
Information collected
fish caught and kept
fish caught and released
fish lengths
hours fished
angler's fishing experience
Data is supplemented by counting the number of anglers on the shore or in boats on the survey days.
Tocumwal creel survey
A creel survey was undertaken on 50 km of the Murray River near Tocumwal, NSW.
The waters upstream are within the seasonal trout cod spawning closure which prohibits fishing from September 1st to November 30th each year.
The survey consisted of counting and interviewing fishers on a sub-sample of randomly selected days over the summer of 2018/2019.
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Fishing effort
Randomly assigned survey times and days were used to count fishers over 12 separate sampling days in the summer of 2018-2019. This data will be used to estimate the total fishing effort for shore and boat based anglers during this period.
Fishing catch
Approximately 500 anglers were interviewed during the 12 survey days. Over 50% of those surveyed had caught fish, but less than 5% kept fish.
Murray cod, trout cod and carp were the species most frequently captured by fishers.
Summary
Statistics on angler effort, harvest and catch-and-release rates will be generated from the data and where possible comparison between the data within the closure (upstream of the Tocumwal Road Bridge) and outside the closure (Below the Tocumwal Road Bridge) will be made.
Keep an eye out on the rec fishing research website for more details.