How Can You Help?

What can you do?

As an angler, you can provide some very useful information for my project! Our goal is to assist TWRA in understanding movements and habitat use of walleye in the reservoir, and provide information that can be useful to improving stocking practices for the species.

Photo credit to the Wisconsin Fishery Cooperative Research Unit (WFCRU)

Each of these fish have an acoustic tag, which allows us to track the fish as it moves through the reservoir. The longer the fish with the transmitters are in the water, the more information we can get that will be useful.

If you capture a walleye that has a loop tag, this is what you can do to help contribute to the project (and get your photo on this website as an acknowledgement)!

Step 1:

Try to keep the walleye alive. This is critical because we encourage you to release the fish once you’ve contacted us!

Step 2:

Call myself (Brittnany) first, and if you are not able to reach me for any reason then you can call TWRA, but I will be the first point of contact! We will have a series of questions for you such as general capture location, length, and weight of the walleye you caught!

If for any reason the walleye is dead or if you have to harvest it, no problem! We still ask that you remove the acoustic transmitter that is located in the belly of the fish and return it to the university. These are expensive pieces of equipment, and we would like to get them back! These tags will also have sensors on them that we need to download, so getting them back is a huge help to the project. It is also helpful for me to know the fate of the fish!

Snap a photo of the loop tag, which will have my phone number on it so you can refer to it later!

Step 3:

Snap a photo with your catch and email it to us! We want to see some pearly whites and anglers having fun fishing!

Step 4:

We would greatly appreciate it if you would consider releasing your walleye. The longer these tagged fish are swimming around in Watts Bar, the more information we can get, providing TWRA with information that can help continue to improve the walleye fishery! Please leave the loop tag attached to the fish when you release it, as it will be used to identify the fish again later!

When returning the Walleye back to the water, please leave the loop tag attached. This will be useful in identifying the Walleye again if they are recaptured at a later date!