(Radio Iowa) — A second round begins today (Tuesday) for the remaining Missouri and Big Sioux rivers paddlefish licenses. The D-N-R fisheries expert for the area, Chris Larson says the paddlefish population is doing okay. “It’s pretty stable…it’s interesting, we look at our Iowa waters and think the paddlefish are here year-round, they really are not. They do long distance migrations,” Larson says. He says they’ve been able to get some good records on the paddlefish migration.

“We’ve been doing some monitoring on paddlefish over the last seven or eight years. We put jaw tags in them that has an identifiable number, and they we release them back into the water. And they’ve been caught up by Yankton at the dam…they’ve been caught also on the Mississippi River down by the state of Tennessee. So you see the hundreds and hundreds of miles these fish will traverse,” Larson says. The paddlefish season started up again in 2015 after being closed on the Missouri and Big Sioux because of declining populations. He says the fish have done well in the border rivers along Iowa, despite a lot of constantly changing conditions.

“In the greatest scheme of things we’d like to see the population increasing, but we’re really missing the habitat that those fish need to really increase in numbers,” Larson explains. “So, they’ve kind of figured out a way to survive in a highly-modified river and their population is pretty stable in the confines of that habitat.” Larson says they also take surveys of those who buy licenses.

“From what we’ve found, most people make four to five trips. They’re out there for three or four hours and on average about 25 to 30 percent actually harvest a fish. It’s not that they didn’t snag them — closer to 40 to 45 percent actually snag one — but they have to release it because it is not legal size,” Larson says. You can purchase a tag from January 1st through January 7th. A resident license sells for 25 dollars and 50 cents and a nonresident license is 49 dollars. You must also have a valid Iowa fishing license.

The season opens February second and runs through the April 30th. You can find out more about the paddlefish season by going to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources website at: www.iowadnr.gov.