Comparison of North American and European Gillnetting Standards

The province of Ontario (Canada) has made extensive use of two international gillnetting standards.  From 1999 to 2005, the European standard was used to survey 174 lake trout lakes in the northeastern region of the province.  Since 2008, the North American standard has been used to survey approximately 900 lakes across the entire province.  For both methods, intensive studies were conducted in a subset of lakes to learn about the capture efficiency of the gear.  The gears differ in terms of their size selectivity and capture efficiency because they were designed for capturing different size segments of the fish community.  We report estimates of the size selectivity and capture efficiency (i.e. catchability) of each gear for several species (lake trout, walleye, northern pike, yellow perch).  Because the North American gillnet excludes mesh sizes aimed at catching small fish (i.e., length < 30 cm), Ontario designed a small mesh net to accompany the North American large mesh net.  We also report how the combined catch from the North American (large) mesh net and the Ontario small mesh net compares to that of the European net.