Data x 262,212

With help from two of my labmates, I retrieved and uploaded my data last week. The water was a frigid 13C (55F), but we pulled the receivers quickly and without issue (unlike when they were first deployed and I may have entered the first stages of hypothermia). It took me a couple of days before I got around to actually uploading the data, but when I did I was pleasantly surprised.

The 16 tagged muskies, eight surgically implanted and eight externally attached, gave me 262,212 data points! We have a temperature spread of over 15 degrees, which would be higher but an alarm was activated on one of our thermal loggers preventing temperature data from being recorded above 26.375C (almost 80F). I will likely group the temperatures into extreme high (above 26C), high, medium, low and extreme low (below 10C). I will need to take a closer look at the data before I decide exactly what I'll do, but that's just a thought.

I'm excited to start parsing apart patterns or trends in our data as they relate to activity during the day vs. night vs. crepuscular periods (dawn/dusk) and at different water temperatures. If time allows, perhaps I'll take a look at activity as it relates to lunar phase or barometric pressure; all things anglers have associated with increased catch-per-unit-effort.

We are still going to continue angling and hopefully catch a few more muskies before season's end to boost sample sizes for our physiological data. And, if we can get hold of some, we may sucker fish for muskies as part of a side project attempting to assess the viability of alternative J-hook live-bait rigs.