A myriad of biologists, administrators, basin stakeholders and students attended the Missouri River Natural Resources Conference in Nebraska City, in March. The conference offered an outlet for biologists to share information collected on pallid sturgeon and the River.

Columbia Fisheries Resources Office took the lead in preparing a database and summarizing pallid sturgeon recapture information from stocked pallids captured over five years by seven crews in the lower 800 miles of river.

The presentation, given by Wyatt Doyle and also prepared with both Nick Utrup and Andrew Plauck, provided the first look into the stocking success and general trends in the dispersal behavior of hatchery raised pallid sturgeon.

The data showed that only 0.06% of the 70,000 pallids stocked were being captured each year by the pallid monitoring crews. Interestingly, age three fish were returning at a rate three to five times higher than yearling age fish.

Additional information showed that pallids in the lowest portion of the River did not significantly disperse from their stocking site while the pallids in the upper-most portion dispersed significantly downstream and fish in the middle of the river moved only slightly downstream.

In all cases, the data showed pallids had an affinity to their stocking site but with different home ranges and did not disperse throughout the river. The database created through this exercise will enhance our ability to get stocking success summaries back out to the team and the information provided in this presentation will be a catalyst for how mangers analyze population changes and decide on future stocking sites, sizes and numbers in the future.