-
Drayden Bellamy and Brad Eifert struggle to pull a net full of fish into the boat for evaluation during the fish survey at Pioneer Trails Recreation Area.
by Chrystal Houston, Upper Big Blue NRD
It is overcast and cool on the lake at Pioneer Trails Recreation Area on the morning of June 1, as a team from Nebraska Game and Parks Commission (NGPC) readies their equipment: boats, buckets, long handled nets and measuring boards.
“I’m not sure what we’re going to find in there,” said NGPC southwest district fisheries manager Brad Eifert noting the lake’s cloudy water.
Eifert and his colleagues, fisheries biologists Alex Engle and Drayden Bellamy, are dressed in green chest waders and neoprene gloves. The trio motors across the lake to the first of four fish traps they had set out the day before to begin a survey of the fishery. The last time such a survey was done was in 2017. Public access lakes across Nebraska that are regularly stocked with fish by NGPC are surveyed rotationally to ensure that the conditions in the lake continue to be adequate to maintain fish populations.
As two of the team members work together to haul the nets up out of the water, it is clear there are indeed plenty of fish in the 40-surface-acre lake near Aurora. The flopping mass of fish inside the trap net are deposited into large buckets on the boat, then examined one by one.
Each wet and wriggling body is placed on a measuring board, then sizes and species are recorded on a clipboard. The biologists note the number of each species present and the condition of the fish, before releasing them back into the lake.
To read more, please see this week's print or e-edition.
