Abstrakt
Recreational fisheries statistics can provide valuable information on the dynamics of fish stocks and their exploitation. For some reservoirs in the Czech Republic, there are conspicuous synchronous fluctuations in catches of different species that might be caused by fishing skills and strategies.
This study describes a method that could detect signatures of such phenomena in individual logbooks. It classifies anglers by species reported during 1 year and compares the resulting angler groups by group size, fishing effort, catch per unit effort (CPUE) and annual catch.
The method is illustrated by data from one reservoir, showing that the number of generalist anglers who caught several species was higher than expected. Generalists also had higher catches and effort but lower CPUE than specialists who caught only one of the species.
The results indicate that generalist anglers with a low degree of specialisation and high effort could contribute to long-term correlations in species catches.