Americans like Fuller spend about $48 billion annually fishing for fun, and they like knowing what’s in the water with their bait. To provide answers to that question and more, biologists are conducting a study where they use “electrofishing” to stun fish in Tennessee Valley Authority lakes. Momentarily incapacitated by a weak electrical charge that’s fed into the water from a boat equipped with a humming generator, fish large and small floated motionless to the surface during an electrofishing trip last week. They were scooped up with a net and placed into an aerated holding tank.
Eyes wide and mouths agape, stunned fish were measured, weighed and checked for illnesses and parasites. Within a few minutes the animals snapped out of a zombie-like state, and workers put them back in the water to swim away.
Fuller was among nine area anglers who went along on a TVA research trip last week on Wheeler Lake near Rogersville, and he grinned as one big fish after another floated to the top in a reservoir where he thought there were far fewer and much smaller bass based on his fishing experience.
“I’ve learned there’s a lot of fish in here,” Fuller said after a day on the water.
Another fisherman, Roger Morris, laughed as a big bass popped to the surface.
“They’re pulling some 3- to 4-pounders regularly and all day we may catch three or four that size,” said Morris, of nearby Courtland.
John Justice, a fisheries biologist with TVA, said fish rarely suffer any lasting effects from electrofishing.
“Generally speaking they recover within a few seconds to a couple of minutes,” he said.
Justice said data collected during successive years of electrofishing provides biologists with valuable information about how to best manage the lakes, which are some of the most biologically diverse in North America. The statistics show whether adjustments need to be made to things including water flow, catch limits, stocking programs and water levels, he said.
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