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Atlantic Canada's First-Ever "Official" Largemouth Bass
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Mar 26, 2025
Fish'n Canada contributor Jeff Wilson assists with a new research project on the St. John River. ► Subscribe http://bit.ly/youtube-fishncanada Don't forget to leave a COMMENT and give us a LIKE if you enjoyed what you saw. SUBSCRIBE for new videos and episodes released weekly! CONNECT WITH US -------------------------------- ► WEBSITE http://fishncanada.com ► FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/FishnCanada/ ► INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/fishncanada... ► TWITTER https://twitter.com/angeloviolafnc/ One of Canada's longest-running fishing shows, Fish'n Canada travels from coast to coast in search of trophy fishing opportunities. First started by brothers Angelo and Reno Viola in 1986, The Fish’n Canada Show has been on the air for over 30 years. Today, Angelo is joined by lifelong fishing buddy, Peter Bowman, and the pair continue to travel across Canada educating anglers using the experience they’ve gained over the years
View Video Transcript
0:00
hey good morning uh we're here at the
0:02
mackerd head pond
0:03
uh our mission today is to find some
0:05
largemouth bass
0:07
um really pleased to uh be here this
0:09
morning
0:10
i have to introduce my friend here sam
0:12
andrews sam good to see you
0:14
uh sam is a uh phd in biology sam what
0:18
what uh what is your background anyway
0:20
you can fill me in and all your
0:21
credentials
0:22
yes i guess i got here in 2014 to study
0:25
striped bass part of the mac quack
0:26
ecosystem study
0:27
and i've been working on striped bass
0:29
and st john river pretty much until now
0:30
just finished up my phd before christmas
0:32
nice and now i'm sticking around as a
0:34
research associate and a fisheries
0:36
uh scientist at the university of
0:38
brunswick nice so we're gonna go out
0:40
today
0:40
and we're gonna try and catch some
0:41
largemouth and you're going to put some
0:44
telemetry tags in those largemouth and
0:47
track them is that what we're
0:48
yeah so i had a few extra tags kicking
0:50
around and they're they're actually a
0:51
radio tracking tag
0:52
okay so we're going to even get a couple
0:53
largemouth to set aside put a few tags
0:55
in and see how they're moving throughout
0:57
the river
0:57
well that'd be great you know we this is
0:59
by far for sure the first time we've
1:01
ever seen
1:02
anybody do anything with largemouth bass
1:04
in eastern eastern canada
1:06
i'm thrilled to be involved this is
1:09
great we're going to try and come back
1:10
tomorrow if we get don't get some today
1:12
i could be here for years if we don't
1:14
get any largemouth bass today
1:16
actually got my good buddy ben moose
1:18
coming along with us so uh he's an
1:20
expert in largemouth bass i'll just uh
1:22
take the back of the boat you and i will
1:24
see how we can do with the science
1:26
anyway great to see everybody we'll get
1:27
back to you a little bit later with some
1:29
largemouth let's go
1:35
i just put in the very first largemouth
1:37
bass
1:38
to be entered into the atlantic anglers
1:41
challenge this week
1:42
thankfully we got dr anders here and uh
1:46
he's going to tag this nice fish
1:48
we're going to put him back we're going
1:49
to track and see where he goes is that
1:50
right sam
1:51
absolutely jeff awesome can't wait to
1:54
see what the government says when we
1:55
start showing them largemouth the
1:56
province of new brunswick
1:58
what are we doing here sam so we've got
2:00
a bike net here in the max pack
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headphone
2:03
so we're just going to pull up the cod
2:06
in
2:08
what's there
2:12
warm reverse yep
2:16
so that's the purpose of this net so
2:18
typically we use them for fish sampling
2:20
as you can see there's a lead line of go
2:22
to shore and then two v-shaped wings off
2:24
the box trap
2:25
and we'd usually use this to collect all
2:27
sorts of fish you purge sunfish bass you
2:29
name it
2:30
uh today we're just gonna use it to
2:31
store the fish that we caught this
2:32
afternoon and tag them tomorrow
2:39
i'm just putting them in the net
2:47
large mouth bass best
2:54
into the net they go where our
2:58
scientist friend could come back and
3:00
i'll go get you one more
3:02
perfect so what's the next step for
3:04
these fish
3:05
uh so tomorrow hopefully we're gonna put
3:06
some radio tags in and then
3:08
our summer students will be able to
3:10
track them around the headpond see where
3:11
they go
3:12
uh so these are the university of new
3:13
brunswick students who are working with
3:15
the canadian rivers institute on
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fisheries ecology
3:21
[Music]
3:24
so there's sam andrews and phil phil
3:25
what was your name again phil harrison
3:27
phil harrison and what do you do bill
3:29
i'm a research scientist at the canadian
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rivers institute
3:33
okay principally working on uh fish
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passage issues
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at the uh excellent excellent
3:40
so we've been out uh out having to catch
3:43
a couple of largemouth
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and this is the next morning they've
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been in the cage all morning
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or all night actually and i guess the
3:50
best thing here is because it's cold
3:52
uh sam that's why you want to do it in
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the morning like this yeah just avoid
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the heat of the day make it
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a little less stressful for the fish and
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have a better chance of surviving the
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tagging
4:00
okay so just pretend i'm a student as
4:03
you're doing that tagging and
4:04
keep telling us what what we're watching
4:07
okay
4:08
so we have the largemouth bass in a
4:10
sedative right now and we're just
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waiting for it to
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slow its uh opercular movement so it's
4:15
going to be healing a little slower
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and we'll also be watching for the fins
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to slow down so once the sky settles out
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a little bit
4:20
i'm going to pull them out we're going
4:22
to get a length and a weight off
4:24
and then we're going to be implanting a
4:25
radio bag so it's a surgical procedure
4:28
we make a small incision on the
4:29
abdominal cavity the tag goes
4:31
into the abdominal cavity we thread the
4:34
antenna of the radio tag out
4:36
and sew them back up let them recover
4:38
and after that you should be good to go
4:40
nice okay so that's why he's if you look
4:43
at the
4:44
thing right now you see he's he's a
4:45
little bit upside down and that's
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because the sedative is taking place is
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it yeah
4:49
so that calms them all down yeah you can
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count the rings on the scales just like
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the growth rings on a tree
4:53
okay and we'll be able to see how many
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yeah
4:57
so it's just like a growth ring on the
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scales just like a growth ring on the
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tree you just
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basically see the rings and you go it's
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one year per ring or something well
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it's kind of cool yeah they have
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multiple
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rings per year and you enjoy a check
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every time they spawn
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oh i see they uh you can count their
5:15
spawning checks
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oh okay this is for stable isotope
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analysis the fin clip
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we can use that to determine
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so we're going to use that to compare
5:30
the diet between uh small mouth bass
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and uh okay excellent that guy's
5:38
probably had a bit of a rough
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couple of days i was i was hanging
5:41
around the weed bed and make the quack
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arm
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he uh he bit a black seiko ended up in
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the live well
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put him in a cage overnight and now he's
5:51
had an operation
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he's probably going to go home and say
5:54
the aliens took me
5:57
will be he'll he'll this is area 51 of
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the magna quack arm
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this is the first one so once again yeah
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back absolutely fish a day catch them
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for us
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[Music]
6:31
there we go
6:45
radio that you're working
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and i just have a small antenna on it
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just for short range okay
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so all i'm doing now is just triple
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checking that that tag is actually
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on okay
6:59
so that tells you that okay it's it's
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transmitting
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yep just bass is gonna provide some
7:06
great data
7:08
now you were saying sam that you have
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the whole river from mac to quack down
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to the
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to the reversing falls with those radio
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transmitters
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we actually have it downstream with the
7:18
acoustic transmitters oh acoustic
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is more of a passive system okay we
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can't actively track them but we do have
7:24
receivers in the water right now they're
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gonna pick up any fish that comes by
7:27
okay uh the radio infrastructure for
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this area
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uh we don't have any stationary
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receivers but we will be uh
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actively tracking these fish we do we
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have some at the uh
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this guy's coming around fairly well
7:49
jeff would you like to put them in your
7:50
live well
7:51
yeah do that i got it all ready
7:55
yep jump right on there
8:01
i think he's coming around he's already
8:02
killing again yep
8:04
well the good thing is is that uh now i
8:07
feel feel that uh he's gonna just
8:09
have a visit with me before we uh let
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them breathe loose
8:14
well that was a that was a great uh
8:16
great day or so on the water here with
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uh sam
8:19
anderson and his buddy phil uh bill's uh
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we
8:22
uh talked to him a little bit earlier
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about the mcquack project he's working
8:25
on
8:26
so sam and uh so we caught seven
8:29
largemouth bass how many did we put eggs
8:31
in got five tags out so far
8:33
five tags yeah so we've got a couple of
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a couple of bass here in my live well
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that
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have got the tags on them you're gonna
8:40
we're gonna release them off the side of
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the boat
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and you're gonna track them with your
8:44
little tracking device absolutely
8:46
they're swimming around good i've had
8:47
the oxygen on hard sam
8:49
yeah so uh let's see if we can get one
8:52
of these
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they they seem to so this this would be
8:57
the smaller one
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that's the smaller one we're going to
9:00
release of the two so you want to
9:03
release just here off the side of the
9:04
boat he really
9:06
feels healthy eh yeah oh
9:09
i don't think there was any problem with
9:11
him uh the sutures are good
9:13
so there's one fish that was back into
9:15
the into the magna quack head pond and
9:17
hopefully over the next year how long
9:19
will they last
9:20
i'll last in those fish for a couple of
9:21
years a couple of years so you'll be
9:23
able to see where they move around here
9:24
in the arm and gather the data from that
9:26
absolutely okay well we got one more
9:30
this is remember we nicknamed this guy
9:31
jeff's bass
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i guess you know what this is the
9:38
smaller one that was the heaviest one
9:40
there
9:40
yeah we can drop both here drop them
9:42
both here yeah
9:44
okay so this is the this is the final
9:46
bass we're going to let go
9:48
really appreciate you sam let us come
9:50
out and be involved in this
9:51
no worries thank you so much for
9:52
catching them the wheels look he's
9:54
biting my thumb good look
9:56
there he goes two nice largemouth bass
10:00
all tags we
10:00
tagged five yes five we're here at the
10:03
back of the arm in the max crack hit
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pond the province of new brunswick
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where uh apparently there's not a lot of
10:09
largemouth but we got proof now in
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science to back it up
10:12
sam thanks for your work phil really
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appreciate you too
10:15
we'll see you guys next time from the
10:17
east coast
10:27
[Music]
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