Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Product sources Electroshocker doo-dad

So how do I make one or where do I buy one and how much does it cost?

OK- I know that they're illegal in public waters in Texas. Having worked for TPWD for a few years back when, I've seen them in the Game Warden's evidence bag. Still, for a private pond, it should be fine I suppose and for taking a census, it would be a useful tool.

I don't even know what they're called officially so I can't do a proper web search. Can anybody direct me to a source or at least give me a name?

kjm, you sound like me when it comes to dangerous "doo-dads"!

For us, I think the proper search term to use is "instant death by electrocution device".

KJM

I was about to start this topic as well - we're in the same situation I think. I am facing the dilemma of either seining by myself or considering the alternatives...the only one of which I can think of is electrofishing doo dads.

I'd wager someone in the forum knows....

All previous opinions here on DIY electrofishing by in-the-know folks have been negative. Dangerous stuff to try and rig up yourself.

To quote ewest:


One thread to review: ELECTROFISHING

KJM

What do you say? I'll build it and you can be the first one on the water to "test" it? I'll be recording events safely from shore.

TJ

A few years ago TP&W had a "sting" operation on Lake Texoma.
Warden's from around the state, acting as everyday fishermen, hired a few suspected "outlaw" striped bass guides and arrested several lawbreakers.
Some exceeding limits, several selling fish to Asian markets, and one using a hand held shocking device.

The result of the investigation IIRC, that they were being made by employees of local "Telecom Corridor" and were quite effective shocking devises.

I'm clean - honest ...

In a small tank, why couldn't you put a "boom" in the water and stand on the edge?

It seems like a census using fishing data would be inaccurate as I fish for one species at a time. Rarely will a bluegill bite a spinnerbait, though sometimes bass take a worm nicely.

Seining would have worked prior to renovation, but the banks are now so steep that I don't think it would be practical or successful. I guess I have three years to think on it. Electrofishing seems to be the easy way.

BTW- I acknowleged that in public waters any device like this is very illegal to even have on the boat. This is for census techniques.

KJM

Let me know how you do...I'm eager to hear from you as I have 2:1 slopes and seining will be a challenge for me also.

Will post back, but because I don't have any real need for a couple years, I may resort to the old army phones...

One last note - I researched those backpack units and it looks VERY suspect - at best - in terms of safety for the user. Wading in the water one is sampling gets even my attention. No thanks - I'll just get a snorkel and float around for samplings. Still not sure if there's anything but a seine that will work for fish collection.

As long as you have waders on the backpack units are safe. It is also recommended to wear rubber gloves.

Hi Chris - thanks for the feedback - do you have much experience using them in field work for school? Do you find them as pretty useful tools for sampling in ponds or are they more suited for smaller bodies of water such as streams or creeks?

I would love to use one to assist collection efforts and also for sampling...any thoughts?

Thanks in advance -

TJ

We use in them in streams that are wadeable. You can't go deeper than your waist or you will get the battery wet.

I don't think they would work very good in ponds because there would be much area that you could sample. If you had a bunch of heavy shoreline cover where the fish can hide they may work ok.

Thanks Chris - I think I might try to devise some sort of a fish corral in my reproduction ponds and utilize the tool in that manner. Someone has to have better ideas than I do to acheive this...using fish gates or something.

You might try setting up a nearly-fenced-in shallow area to feed in for a while, with edge nets ready to pull to shore and trap fish in until the can be removed by seining/netting. I think ewest has posted a diagram of this kind of setup.

Good idea Theo - that's what I rudely had constructed in my mind. My obvious problem is my ponds I've chosen for reproduction are NOT conducive to seining - just wanted something more aesthetically appealing and knew I'd have to deal with issue of fish collection later. Pretty - but not practical.

I like the idea of a fish corral and either netting or electrofishing them at that time. I will look for Ewest's diagram - thank you!

TJ -- what is your water quality? Is it highly mineralized like Dr. Bruce's? If so, electrofishing is impaired when conductivity/mineral content is high. That's especially true with the backpack units that don't have as strong a field as the boat units.

Hello Dave - great to hear from you!

Yes mineral content is also high - I'm within 10 miles of Bruce. That's something I NEVER would have considered, so thanks for the enlightenment.

The impetus for this came after dragging seines overweighted with filamentous algae and convinced I was having a stroke I began thinking, "TJ - there HAS to be an easier way to collect fish..." I thought by reducing depth of pond from 9 to 2' and corraling fish into a corner of the pond and repeatedly "shocking it" I could not only make collection something I could do solo but would also save a ton of inefficient effort dragging seines thru FA and missing over half of them every time.

I'm fully prepared to admit that sometimes there exist no shortcuts or ways to improve efficiency and am a glutton for arse busting work. HOWEVER - I am ALSO prepared to buy several cases of beer and Green Egg a tenderloin and see if I can convince Bruce, Treeplanter and Shorty to come and "supervise" the seining!

What do you think of the electrofishing corral concept? Asinine?

This thread has one of the most classic subject titles ever.

Electroshocker doo-dad...

Kinda like if a president said, "Where's the start button for those nuclear thingies?"

TJ -- do you have some way to get a conductivity reading from you pond? I think that's has the potential to limit your success. Dr. Bruce, how do you get water quality measures?

Cody!

We used to have some simple "pens" that would give a reasonable measure of conductivity. TJ, if you are interested, send me a PM or email. I can find one for you to borrow.

Dr. Willis,

If I recall correctly, Bruce's water quality lab report stated that his conductivity was 7,000 uS!!! While I was on-site, I had some of his pond water splash on my glasses. I used my cotton t-shirt to wipe them clean and the salts in the water scrathed my lenses. I think of Bruce everytime I put on my sunglasses!!

I had a little 3000 watt generator, but the water was too "amp" hungry. It kept tripping my generator. I needed at least a 5000 watt unit (but a 7-9000 watt system would be ideal) with small diameter annodes.

Well, Shawn, if TJ has the same high conductivity water as Bruce, the electrofishing will be out! Even with our 5,000 watt generator, I really can't get a decent electrofishing field above about 2500 uS/cm, or maybe 3,000 (and that's after dark when the fish are least aware). We used to have a 7,500 watt gas generator, but honestly, it didn't do much better than the 5,000. Like you, we had very little surface area exposed on the positive electrode.

7,000 conductivity would float frogs, wouldn't it?

...that really is pretty damn funny
-
btw, it's nucular

I've seen instructions on the internet to make a fish shocker using a hand crank magneto, does this really work in a pond, or only in small streams?

The small generators from the old hand crank telephones are most effective on catfish- namely flatheads. You can bust off the crank and hook a cordless drill to it to spin it fast. Make two leads, one coming off each terminal. Throw one off the bow and one off the stern and then let'er rip. If you are in a river with flatheads, grab a big net. I know of only one drainage where this is legal, though. There's a river system in NC where flatheads have been introduced and they are decimating the native fish community. It is legal to electrofish and remove all of the flatheads you want. At least it was back in 2004, but I assume its still fair game.

Dr. Willis, do you more commonly trip your generator breaker or overload your control box? What type of control box do you use (brand and model)? I know that guys successfully electrofish with SR 9.0 in estuaries. I've spent most of my time and efforts trying to get successful samples on the other end of the spectrum- really low conductivities, even though I rarely encounter them. I've done this because this is where most have problems. We've gotten some great results with manipulating our annode configurations, spacing, and diameters. I'd like to try our new box in higher conductivities. The box I used at Bruce's was an old design by an electrical engineer named AL Lewis. He's been dead for a while but his son made me one a few years back. I cannot adjust frequency or duty cycle with it, though. The boxes we are using on customers' boats are being custom built to our specifications, and they've even named a model after our company, which I thought was pretty cool. Our configuration is based on the wiring schematic for fishing with AC, which is not really a big deal.

On the DC side, the boxes have a standard peak DC output of 45 amps or can now be upgraded to handle as much 72 amps, which will likely never be used but at least the components can handle it. To use the 72 amps means you would have to be using less than 65 volts or you would overlaod the box. But it is equipped this way for the high conductivities, but we don't know how high. I've been told that 2000uS can be fished easily, but I just don't have those kinds of waters around me to see for myself. I would like to test one on Bruce's pond, but I just can't take a client's boat on a field trip except for a local lake where we test. I wish I had a large grant and a few years to play (I mean experiment) around with this stuff to really fine tune one boat with one control box to successfully sample a large range of conductivities. It would be pretty cool to sample the condcutivity, account for temperature and then exactly where to set all parameters including the diameters of the annodes. We have been making an interchangeable annode system just for this kind of "down the road" tweaking. For now, I can do well between 50 and 1500 uS (that's about the range I have around here but mainly between 200-600), which is where most biologists across the nation seem to need. Over the past 20 years, Miranda's about the only one I've found in the literature that has added to our knowledge base.

On another note, we delivered a boat to VA about a month ago and did a field trial on the James River which was pretty awesome. I wish it was during the summer because they are growing some HUGE blue cats out there. Blues are hard to get but I've shocked them on the Missouri River before. We rolled one that reminded me of a Volkswagen Beetle....must have been 90-100 lbs.

I better get back to tax preparation. I wish JHAP lived in my office, he could do my taxes and make me laugh all day.

Shawn -- we have a big mix of old junk! We have gathered the old coffelt control units from everyone who has gone to SR. Some of the boxes have breakers that throw first. If not, then the generators will throw their breaker. We almost entirely have Honda generators (they have been great). With spare control units, we can take two, keep working when one goes down, and then send in the broken one for repairs.

Yes indeed, the state agency guys with the SR units can shock higher conductivity waters than us, and seem to get a pretty darn good field, too. With our old units and the electrospheres, the field is pretty small in high conductivity water.

P.S. Smith Root does repair our older Coffelt units.

Shawn--I noticed you talked alot about anode configurations, but have you done any experimenting with the cathode (boat). I have shocked for several different agencies/researchers and it seems to me that for all the thought that goes into anode size/number/placement that messing with the boat would have some merit too.

Some of the guys I worked for were obsessed with removing every spot of paint from the bottom of the boat (and even part way up the sides of the boats :)). One had a 16:1 formula (surface area cathode:surface area anode); for him we calculated the surface area of the anodes and then removed the paint from an area exactly 16 times that size on the bottom of the boat. Others could not have cared less about removing any paint from the boat.

I cannot say which "cathode design" was best for low or high conductivity shocking as the boats were different size/models with different equipment and operators working in different parts of the country. But it seems to me that it would have some effect.

On another note, I know Miranda was working on at least one more publication on electrofishing about a year ago. I haven't noticed if he published it yet, but the research was about the placement of the anodes from the boat. He took measurements with the two booms in two different configurations(angles from the boat) as well as using just one boom centered in front of the boat. Those results should give you more info.

Csteffan,

You make good points about the cathodes. Our boats are not painted so we really don't have to worry about anything. For the cathode, you must have enough surface area in relation to the annode, but too much doesn't seem to be a problem because of the direction of the flow of the current, unless if maybe you were shocking with AC and reversing polarities. I have dealt with painted hulls and have had to strip paint. I have noticed that not stripping enough gave less than satisfactory results, but we were able to improve upon the situation by stripping more paint. The 16:1 ratio interests me. I'm curious as to how he came up with that. Anymore, I take a 6" strip across the width the bottom of the hull and then take a few 4" strips heading back to the stern about 1/3 the length of the boat (for an 18'er). This has proven pretty effective as long as we stay below the waterline! Made that mistake once. I try to make my across-the-hull strip as close as I can to the waterline as possible (as far forward as possible) so that my distance to the annodes is optimized. My annode distance from the hull is fixed for the most part.

Miranda's paper did come out about a month or two ago. It was pretty good. We had already discovered a lot of that information through our "redneck" experimentation, but we also learned a lot from his work. I like mapping fields although I always feel nervous standing in the water when 200 volts and 10 amps is coming at me. I do use insulated waders and lineman gloves, but I do not recommend this procedure to any fellow rednecks that may be reading this post.

Email me at pondrx@midwestlake.com if you would like to have a copy of that paper. He caem up with some pretty cool graphs. Are you still in the fish biology trade? I noticed you had two homes, MS & IA. It makes me think you might be in grad school.

Interesting concept with the strips. One more variation to think about. I have no experience with AC, but I can see where it could make more of a difference in that situation.

I have no idea how that one guy came up with the 16:1 ratio. He was one of the guys I worked with at the Missouri department of conservation in West Plains. When I was at Mississippi State I asked Miranda about it and he said he had never heard or read of it.

You were right about the grad student thing. I was a masters student at Mississippi State under Miranda for a while. I loved the field work, wish I could do that all my life. But when it came to sitting at a desk all day trying to write a thesis I couldn't do it. Good experience anyway though. Especially working with Miranda, without a doubt the smartest guy I have ever met in my life. I now work as a Research Associate at Iowa State University. Mostly I collect and analyze water samples, but I do some electrofishing in the summers. Pond management is the dream job though....

Since I work at the university I have access to pretty much every scientific journal article I could ever want. Where did he publish that article?

Also, when Miranda took his readings I don't think anyone got in the water. Thats a pretty dangerous idea.

Thanks for the ideas on the paint stripping. Definitely something to consider should we set up a new boat here or (if I'm really lucky someday) I get to build my own shock boat. Noticed you are in MO, do you do much work in Iowa?

Dave

Thanks for your interest in this - sorry I've been in Chicago for the last five days enjoying -40 windchills.

I looked up my well water tests - and found a report for Electrical Conductivity

Here goes:

.754 mmho/cm

Of course I know how to interpret this result, I just wanted to see if Brettski did too - so I'm going to play dumb.

Honestly - not sure if this is what I need.

Hi TJ. Yes, that is the measure.

0.754 mmhos/cm X 1,000 = 754 umhos/cm

millimhos to micromhos

umhos/cm is the same as uS/cm (microSiemens/cm)

Now, if this is correct, you're way lower on conductivity than Dr. Bruce. Electrofishing works very well in water with this conductivity.

If you thought that your water was more mineralized than this, maybe I should send down the pen, and let you take another reading?

Thanks Dave - and that's welcome news. I will PM you and we can discuss the pen process. Thank you again for your assistance!

even JHAP knows this one...it's an extrapolation...did you remember to carry the bum?

Well done, TJ. Enjoy the new hairs and wear them proudly.

Brettski -- it should have been easy method, but as this is a public forum and I am an aging individual, I also punched it into the calculator before posting. :-;

Hey don't knock extrapolation. I find it's good for an extra 10 to 15 percent if you can use it in a sentence on a client's bill.

I read through this thread and finally gave up. No matter how hard I try to convince her JWHAP is NEVER, EVER gonna let me build an Electroshocker Doo-Dad, EVER.

Any ideas on feasibility of this potential project attempting to utilitze a fish corral and electroshocking DOO-DAD for collection instead of seining? It's entirely possible I'm wasting valuable resources - namely PB's best and brightest minds - and it wouldn't be the first [or last] time.

My mind's eye version of this works pretty slick - but I WAS raised on Warner Bros cartoons....

Create fish corral/gates
Begin feed training specific corner of pond
Block off corral
Enter Pond Boss Forum Member Volunteer with ACME Backpack Electroshock Doo-Dad
TJ scoops SMB from safety of bank

I have a schematic I could post of one of these doo-dads but not sure if it would do you much good. The reason, well when I built the circuit my intention was to use a voltage generator to help track down a leak in my pond. Needless to say it didn't work but one side affect was that I noticed when I turned it on and adjusted the frequency, some fish would surface. And I'm not talking float, more like they were coming to the surface to feed real quick and then back down. Not enough time to see much.

Csteffen,

Sorry for the delay. My attendance on the site is sporadic at best. ANy way, Miranda's new paper can be found at : TAFS 137: 1358-1362, 2008

I can email you the .pdf if you want, but I'm sure you have access to Transactions.

I don't use AC too much myself either unless its been rectified. I'm in NW Missouri but rarely cross the Iowa line. I have fished Red Rock and Rathbun, though.

I know of the guy you're talking about in West Plains if he is the technician. I've seen their boat that has the continuous recirc system built in for trout sampling in the rivers, which I thought was pretty cool. I also know Dave and Mary. I worked for MDC for several years in the NW part of the state and out of the research center in Columbia.

It is dangerous to get in the water, but I watched and learned from the best- Jim Reynolds (AK) and Alan Temple (WV).

Are you originally from Missouri?

Late reply, haven't been around.

I only worked for the MDC for one summer about 3.5 years ago between my Junior and Senior years of college. I don't remember names very well, but the guy with the 16:1 ratio was actually one of the mechanics/maintenance guys in the shop. Of course, he could have gotten it from one of the fisheries people. Technically I was in the Resource Science division so even though I did mostly fisheries work I didn't interact much with the fisheries people. I did stream backpack fish sampling and habitat assessment, which was pretty sweet in the Ozarks. No better place to learn fish ID; I think we collected something like 70 species of fish by the end of the summer.

If you are gonna cross the Iowa line to fish I would recommend fishing Little River Lake in Leon. It should be closer for you and the fishing is much better IMHO.

I am originally from NW Iowa, but in the course of getting a fisheries degree and gaining work experience I have really gotten around.

i'm not sure the army ta-312 crank tele will work in a pond , i always thought or have been told they only work in rivers
because they need current