Electrofishing
Did a bit of it with the local conservation folks...Small scaled fish like trout dont get it that bad for the most part...It stuns them a bit but they tend to move out of the field if you dont net them right away...They come out of it pretty quickly.
Large scaled fish suckers and small minnows get zapped hard and float straight to the top...some of em spend a good deal of time under the electrodes and they dont make it. Out of 5-600 trout we sampled on the two days I shocked with them...I recall only one or two trout that we couldnt revive. Of course delayed mortality might be a bit higher.
The river we did it on is pretty small...bought 50' wide for the most part with a flow of 100-150cfs or so. The biologists shocked the same stretches two days later, and there resample rate was around 40%...Figure that most of the fish get away...Probably more get away on a bigger flow. It seems to hose up the fishing for a day or two, but after that it everything seems to revert back to normal. You would be surprised at the numbers of fish that roll out of a spot that produces 2-3 fish on average for you...Humbling Really.
Cheers.
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