Voluntary angler diaries provide statewide information on recreational fishing trips and catches in Maine. An estimated 600 anglers report on 35,000 trips annually across more than 400 water bodies. The program is managed by SCIOPS and continues indefinitely.
Use Cases
- Analyze catch rates (fish per hour) by species and waterbody using hours fished and number of fish caught.
- Study the contribution of stocked fish to recreational harvest by analyzing the origin (wild or stocked) of kept fish.
- Model species composition and size structure of the catch using lengths and weights of fish kept by species.
- Assess angler effort distribution by correlating water and date fished with the number of trips reported.
Strengths
- Reports from an estimated 600 participants provide a volunteer observer network.
- Covers a wide spatial scope with data from more than 400 waters statewide.
- Includes specific catch metrics like legal vs. sublegal fish and kept vs. released.
Limitations
- Data is self-reported by volunteers, which may introduce recall or reporting bias.
- Participant recruitment is opportunistic, not random, which may bias the spatial and temporal coverage.
- The exact number of rows (individual trip records) and time range of the dataset are unknown.
Provenance
- Source
- SCIOPS, via NASA Earthdata.
- Collection Method
- Data is solicited from anglers who keep diaries of their fishing trips, which are mailed to and retrieved from participants.
- Time Range
- null
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- Lakes and rivers statewide in Maine, USA.