Longshot

Longshot is adopted by the New England Kayak Fishers. He was caught in the trap at the Ipswich Mills Dam on April 23, 2007--the first day the trap was opened after the rain storms the week prior. The water was still over the trap, so Carla and I had to remove each of the 22 fish that had entered the trap with the lid partially closed (to prevent escape).

Longshot was last seen on April 24, 2007 at Site 9 (our final receiver in the study area) at 11:11pm.

April 23: Longshot is tagged and released at 6:00 pm, near Site 2

April 24: Maybe because the water was high, it seems Longshot was able to swim past the receiver at Site 3 undetected (Sneaky!)

April 24, 11:17 am: Longshot arrives at Site 4, an area where the river is flowing fast, and passes upstream and out of range in about 15 minutes.

April 24, 1:06 pm: Longshot zips past Site 5 in only 2 minutes!

April 24, 5:38 pm: Longshot is spotted above Willowdale Dam at Site 7, the third tagged fish spotted this high in the river. Technical problems at the receivers at Willowdale Dam (Site 6) prevented us from knowing exactly when Longshot made it past the fishway, but we can see it didn’t take him too long!

April 24, 8:08 pm: Longshot navigates his way through the Wenham Swamp (a large, spread out wetlands) and passes by Site 8 along the main channel.

April 24, 11:06 pm: It's been a pretty packed day! Longshot arrives at our final receiver, Site 9, late at night, and quickly continues past it in less than 5 minutes. This is the last time we were able to hear Longshot. We conducted several kayaking trips in the area he was last seen in hopes of locating him with a manual receiver, but we have so far been unsuccessful in finding where he went. There may be suitable spawning areas above Thunder Bridge in Middleton that Longshot entered.

Longshot, where did you go?! Despite searching the upper areas near the Cedar Swamp and Thunder Bridge, we were unable to locate Longshot for the duration of the study. Longshot was one of several river herring that appeared to zip right upstream, barely deterred by any of the barriers or large winding bodies of water; he had a mission to move upstream, and he did just that. We know from the telemetry data that he was with a few other tagged fish; we released 5 untagged fish on the same day and they may have been in that school as well.