Well after two days (nights) the results are pretty impressive. Contestants have harvested/checked-in a grand total of 1142 burbot, 4 of which have been tag recaptures. A total of 504 burbot were tagged in the reservoir. Tag recaptures are eluding to some pretty significant movement in the reservoir, including one fish moving up reservoir over 1-mile in just 8 days and another moving down reservoir about 1-mile in 9 days. The other two burbot were stationary, recaptured where they were tagged back in early November. Big fish so far is up to 31-inches and 6.37 lbs. Small fish (youth category) is a tiny 8.75-inches and 0.14 lbs. One-night catches have ranged all the way up to 38 fish per team.
Other than in some of the mid to lower lake bays, ice has now deteriorated below Holmes Crossing and anglers should use caution around edges and pressure ridges (as always). Up to this point, most of the fishing pressure has been on the west side of the reservoir. Fish were spread down both sides of the reservoir.
There's still time to register for the tournament which ends this Saturday, January 29th. Contact the Green River Chamber of Commerce (307)875-5711, Flaming Gorge Chamber of Commerce (435)277-0709, or Rock Spring Chamber of Commerce (307)362-3771 for more information and to register during the event.
Good luck! Ryno
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Not bad fer 2 nights of ling fishing !!! How many teams er entered at this time?? And is most of the fishing pressure from buckboard up to lostdog ??? Thanks for the update and info ...
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I believe there's 134 teams right now, but there could've been some more registrations. Fish have been checked from Anvil Draw all the way up to Firehole. Seems like most of the pressure is right around Buckboard and Holmes Crossing. Good luck.
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hey ryno if this helps, me and my friends caught 25 burbs in holmes crossing area but we did not sign up for the bash but I do want to help if I can. the longest was around 24 inches the rest were smaller than that. let me know if you need any more info.
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Look out for that hole[
] It was nice to meet you Jeff. I can't remember how small Hunters fish was but I think he is in the running for the smallest.
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Okay Ryno, what is the formula that you guys use to estimate the population using the recapture method. 4 tagged fish out of 504 works out to be about 7% of your tagged fish. Is that enough to get an estimate of the Burbot population up there ???
I think it is actually closer to .008%[
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okay..... .0079365% if u wanna be precise!!
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Well if we are concerned about close it is .8%[
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(if you use the % sign you have to move the decimal 2 places)
At any rate...if the distribution of tagged burbot is anywhere close to standard, there is whole bunch of burbot in that lake!
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Hey, I failed math, what can I say !!! Just wanted to know if there was enough data being collected to get an idea of how many burbot are in the Gorge !! There is amethod to their madness !!
Let's see, without any other considerations (and there are many) If we had 1142 fish caught and 4 of those were tagged, then:
1142 divided by 4 equals 285.
That means for every fish we caught that had a tag there were 285 that didn't have a tag.
We could then venture a "guess" that:
504 tagged fish times 285 fish that aren't tagged equals 143,600 burbot.
That is simple and nonscientific, but a pretty good "guess" at the numbers. (someone check my math[crazy])
With the number of burbot consistently pulled out and the relatively small fishing areas compared to the whole lake...there are alot of burbot up there.
The derbies provide great data, and raise money for great causes, but I don't think we are putting a very big dent in the burbot population...is my logic messed up???
IceAndFly
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Nice estimate! It will be interesting to see how things change as more fish are checked-in. Today's catch pushed the total up to 1472 which would increase your population estimate by about 40K. One day and more fish makes a lot of difference.
I'm personally more excited to see the harvest total so far. To me that's a lot of burbot especially when you put it into terms of their reproductive potential, consumption rates, etc. The harvest yeild alone is impressive, approximately 1,960 lbs of burbot......gone.
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I hate to be a get you downer here but statistical analysis is based upon percentages. So your math from above would actually work this way:
4 fish tagged out of the total catch = 4/1142 = 0.0035 meaning that less the 1% - 0.35% to be exact, of your catch was tagged.
SO we now take the population number, 1,142 and divide that by the tagged ratio .0035 shown as 1,142/0.0035 = 326,285 total burbot.
With the new catch added, and no new tagged fish that would put our new totals at 541,714 burbot in the lake.
So you see why WY said who cares if you keep and kill all burbot, you will NEVER kill them all with convential fishing methods. The only way to maybe make a dent in the population is to find where they spawn, and selectively poison out the spawn areas during the spawn, which is right now.
Love the Burbot Bash thing, but you guys are wasting your time if you think you will truly affect the population. However, they taste good, so KILL 'EM ALL!!
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Actually, if you consider Wednesdays catch, you have a population estimate of 326,995 burbot. Problem is that the most common population estimate formula is full of assumptions. Certainly the distributions of fish are not equally spread out, tags are not spread out evenly, and sample effort is not being spread out evenly across the sample area. This all creates sampling error. Assuming the bash sample satisfys the assumptions (which it does not) you could apply a 95% confidence interval to the derived population estimate numbers. The number of burbot, as of Wednesday night could be anywhere from 125,283 fish to 528,707.
Certainly the Fish and Game guys will use more sophisticated computer analysis tools that also look at some population modeling and other factors. Each day is also a seperate sampling effort, which further complicates things. No easy task, to say the least. I look forward to seeing what the official estimate is including the associated confidence intervals.
Regardless, there are tons of burbot in there! The guy that dumped them in the Green River drainage needs tar and feathered, and lashed to a pole and beaten with sticks and pelted with stones.
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[quote Berg]The guy that dumped them in the Green River drainage needs tar and feathered, and lashed to a pole and beaten with sticks and pelted with stones.[/quote]
send him my way, its almost a daily occurance... i say shoot him. im not a ling or ice fisher but these things have made their way into the rivers now. rant off
awesome to see people really getting into them. i might try to catch one of these things to eat since everyone rants and raves about the taste.
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Wow I had no idea their could be that many in there. Does anyone know how big the burbot can get in there? or whats the biggest caught so far?
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there is a video to the right of this message i posting, showing a forum members son catching an 11 lb burbot
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Where is the 11lber from?
Biggest I caught this year was almost 8lbs. What is the biggest that has been caught at the bash?
I agree with those who think we can't do squat do fix the burbot problem. There are way too many of them for anglers to make a dent. It is good to try and catch as many as we can but that is a huge lake and they are crawling all over it.
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The 11 pounder says it is from the Gorge, 2 weeks before the burbot bash. And the largest that has been caught at the bash through wednesday jan 26 is 33" and 7.27 lbs.
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Thanks pookiebar! Someone had to know more about math than me. I knew with the numbers of fish being pulled out that there had to be huge numbers of fish in the lake.
I agree there is no practical way to control the burbot population. Just too much habitat to effectively control. It is
to see how much of our natural resource is effected by the selfish act of a single individual. Only time will tell the effect this will have on the entire drainage...
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