Russell J. Johnson

Multiple Survey Evaluation of a Kentucky Commercial Trotline Fishery

The commercial trotline fishery on the Kentucky portions of Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley was evaluated by a telephone survey, an onboard survey, and from market data. Results indicate that the telephone survey was a reliable source of economic information based on high correlations (r ≥ 0.89) of effort and harvest data among the 3 data sets. Data obtained from the onboard survey overestimated economic impact of the fishery because of bias toward full-time fishermen. However, the onboard survey did yield accurate species composition information. Thirty-five percent of the respondents in...