Researchers studying fish movements conducted aerial surveys in August and November 2021 to listen for radio signals from tagged fish. Flying is the best way to quickly cover the vast study area, which is remote and mostly private land. (WGFD photo) WHAT'S NEXT? This year's field season will focus on capturing and implanting the remaining 45 tags in individual fish during the spring and summer. " We revised our targeted numbers for tagging each species after closely evaluating our chances of capturing shovelnose sturgeon and taking stock of our project budget, " Edwards said. " The big tags used for sturgeon are much more expensive than the others and we wanted to get the most bang for our buck. Based on our experiences last year, we shifted some money in our budget to buy more goldeye and sauger tags to implant in 2022. We basically want as many tagged fish out there as we can afford, so we put some strategy into our purchases. " The team also plans to increase aerial surveys to collect more movement data and will increase sampling in Clear Creek of smallbodied fish such as plains minnow, sand shiner, sturgeon and flathead chub that cannot be tagged, to begin building a picture of their movements and the possible impacts upstream barriers might be having on their ability to colonize the higher reaches of the creek. Final data collection and analysis will take place over the winter of 2022 and 2023 with a project completion report readied for spring 2023. However, Edwards said early results have already made the study worthwhile. " A lot of our knowledge has been based on assumptions about these fish, " he said. " Now we will have improved data to help us understand what really goes on with these fish populations. " - Christina Schmidt is the information and education specialist for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's Sheridan Region and a regular contributor to Wyoming Wildlife. Wyoming Wildlife | 37