Gigantica Road Lake

For the online tournaments which finished on Sunday, I came in 30th in the Match Series, 62nd in the Predator Series, and 70th on the carp circuit. This week, the predator and carp tournaments are both on DLC lakes, so there's only 1 shot for each, while the match tournament is on Waldsee, which is one of the base lakes, allowing 3 chances.

I tried the match tournament yesterday and … didn't do well. My Match fishing setup which worked well on Grand Union canal didn't catch anything, so I switched over to my carp rig in order to have at least a not embarrassing score.

For the carp tournament, I took my one entry tonight. I haven't fished Gigantica Road Lake at all, because it's a DLC lake I don't have. I used my basic carp rig, which is now the 13 ft Haichou Extreme rod, 80lb braid, Sonik Tournos 10000, Korda DF #6, and the 14mm CR1 Pop-ups:

(Image from a previous night of fishing)

As I was fishing, my sense was that the fishing was faster, because the carp were smaller. I did catch 26 fish in the 60 minutes of the tournament, weighing a total of 585 lbs, good enough to be in 28th place out of the 156 ppl who have fished the tournament so far this week.

The length/weight distribution is depicted below … Red points are for the Gigantica Road Lake, Black for Grand Union Canal, Blue for Manor Farm, and Green for Waldsee. I've left trophy fish off this graph.

We're getting close at this point, to where I should start doing species/lake regressions to see how the fish are being modelled/see if there's a common length/weight model or if there are lake and species specific models, and see if the length/weight relationship is being modelled using the standard (cubic) form of the length weight relation.

Notes on bait

Not writing up full notes, just some impressions..

So tonight in Fishing Sim World I fished the Match Tournament on Lake Travis, and the Manor Farm carp tournament. As of when I logged off I was in 38th place out of 100 in the Match Tournament- with a score of 18 (fish caught). I used only the top rod in the image below;

Although the tackle box says bluegill, I was essentially fishing for bass-- I just wasn't able to figure out how to target bluegill or crappie on Lake Travis at all.

I then fished the carp tournament. I was in 55th place out of 285 on the basis of my previous two attempts. Tonight I used the same Korda DF #6 rig, but changed the bait to Popup Tiger Nuts 15mm. In the previous attempt using CR1 Popups (14 mm) I had caught 581.75 lbs of fish, but 36.68 lbs were Tench so my carp weight was only 545.06 lbs. Tonight I caught 586.31 lbs of fish, but 32.81 lbs were Bream, and 43.80 lbs of Tench (Including a 12 lb trophy Tench named Baker), leaving 509.7 lbs of carp. The length/weight distributions are below.. black is Tiger Nuts, red is CR1:

It's interesting that the overall weight is about the same, though the species mix differed. I do think the biggest improvement to my approach would be to figure out how to land carp faster, rather than tinkering with the gear, but I'm not sure how to go about doing that.

Carp gear selectivity Part 1

Unlike the Match tournaments, the carp tournaments are scored by adding up the weight of all the carp caught during the tournament period. Because carp take so long to land, maximizing this weight means optimizing for lbs per minute, rather than fish per minute. If the gear affects the size of the fish caught, then the gear used would be important for being competitive. Ultimately, the optimal gear loadout (for any of the tournaments) will require a lot of fishing to develop, but I present my results of my mini trials on this blog as I go. Anyone with an interest in specific gear combinations can leave a comment. Note that I do not have any of the DLC.

Methods

This week's online carp tournament is at Manor Farm. The online tournaments are 60 min long, and you have a maximum of 3 attempts. Because the catch summary is not displayed at the end of the round, I recorded fish weights and lengths as I landed them.

I fished the online tournament twice, once with the Krank 2 rig on all three rods, and once with the Korda DF 6 rig on all three rods. The spot I fished had a gravel bottom. I kept all three hooks in the water at the same spot, and used the spod rod (with sunflower seeds) when I did not have a fish on a line. Other than hook, the equipment setup was kept constant as shown below:

All fishing was streamed to my twitch channel.
Watch live video from tfernando77 on www.twitch.tv
After the tournaments I used R to analyze the data graphically, and by using T tests to compare mean weight of fish by species/hook combination.

Results

In the hour fishing with the #2 rig, I caught 20 fish weighing a total of 558.81 lbs. All of the fish caught with the #2 rig were carp. In the hour fishing with the #6 rig, I caught 26 fish weighing 581.75 lbs. Four of the fish caught with the #6 rig were tench, weighing a total of 36.68 lbs, leaving 22 carp for a total carp weight of 545.06 lbs.

The following figure shows the length and weight of individual fish caught. The symbol indicates the 'species' of fish. Black indicates fish caught using the #2 rig, while red points indicate fish caught using the #6 rig.

The T test found no significant difference in weight between hooks for Mirror Carp (t = 0.8171, df=15.81 , P = 0.426) or Leather Carp (t = 0.5112, df = 2.485, P = 0.651). However, Common Carp caught on the #6 rig were significantly smaller than Common Carp caught on the #2 rig (t = 2.944, df = 6.11, P = 0.026). The mean weight of Common Carp caught using the #6 rig was 15.95 +- 4.37 lbs (Mean +- SD), while the mean weight of Common Carp caught using the #2 rig was 23.81 +- 4.59 lbs.

Discussion

I lost at least one fish which escaped it's hook while I was recording data on a fish I had just landed with each rig. If not stopping to record, the overall weights may be slightly higher. Also... a way to land the fish faster may have a bigger impact on harvest per unit effort than anything else. Carp take a long time to land.

Although Mirror Carp and Leather Carp are biologically the same species as Common Carp (and Koi), the game does not necessarily model them the same way so I treat them as being distinct species. Interestingly, the one named trophy fish I caught (The Pretty One) was not the heaviest fish of the night, although it was the longest.

The distribution of fish weights with the #6 hook was wider than the distribution of weights with the #2 hook. The #6 hook caught more fish overall, and caught several fish that were lighter than the lightest fish caught with the #2 hook. Without more trials, it's not possible to establish a variance, so I can't conduct significant testing for CPUE or harvest per unit effort. Ultimately, for the carp tournaments, harvest per unit effort is what I want to maximize. Interestingly, the #2 hook selected perfectly for carps (in this trial... I have caught bream and Wels Catfish on the #2 hooks before), while there were a few Tench caught on the #6 hook. As a result, the carp harvest was lower on the #6 hook than the #2 hook even though the overall harvest was higher.

On the Fishing Sim World forums, Mousaka_H (who I believe has won the online carp tournament in some weeks) suggested using a mix of #2-#6 hooks. The idea behind his strategy is to bring in small fish continuously while having a chance at the larger ones. If the #6 hooks are effectively catching the large fish, that mix may be unnecessary, particularly if bait selection can exclude the Tench.

I keep my data in a Google Sheets document here. I'd be interested in sharing data with anyone else who is keeping records.

My next fishing will be on Lake Travis in preparation for online Match tournament. I'm not sure how to target bluegill and crappie (I've caught them in the game only when fishing for bass), so I'll be experimenting a little more, and while I'll be keeping records they may not be as usefull (except for length/weight model assessment).

No difference in CPUE between size 20 and size 16 Waggler hooks

In Fishing Sim World, I find the match fishing tournaments interesting, because the idea isn't to catch large fish or heavy fish, but just lots of fish. During the last DFL season, the winners of the match tournaments were posting 120+ fish scores, indicating they were catching 2 fish/min or more. The best I've done is 1 fish/min.

In fisheries management, there is a term "Catch per Unit Effort" (CPUE) which is used to assess angler success. I want to increase my CPUE to 2 fish/min. To get there, I want to know what has the most impact on my catches... the bait, the line, the hook, etc.

For my first trial, I decided to consider the hook, and specifically the smallest two 'float' type hooks. 

Methods

I fished using constant gear setups (this will be the plan for all my fishing.. only one thing should get varied at a time). The top two setups in the image below were the only equipment used, and only one rod was fished at a time.

Bait was kept constant as Pinkies, the line was Sunline Super FC Sniper 14lb, the reel was Sonik Tournos 10000, and the rod was Haichou Extreme (13ft). The two hooks tested were the Haichou Waggler 16, and the Haichou waggler 20. Remember that with fish hooks, the higher number is the smaller hook.

All fishing was done at the same spot on Grand Union canal, just off the weed beds in front of where my angler is standing in the picture below.

There were 4 replicates total... each was divided into 20 minute segments "A" and "B". I selected the which hook to fish first using a random number generator, selecting without replacement so that each hook had 2 A blocks and 2 B blocks. Time was kept using Alexa on an Amazon Echo device.

At the end of 20 minutes I recorded the species, weight, and length of each fish from the catch summary screen. After the A blocks I immediately started the B block. After the B block I backed out to the menu and re-entered free fishing mode. All fishing for this experiment was broadcast on my twitch channel.

Watch live video from tfernando77 on www.twitch.tv

Catch, weight, and average weight were assessed by two-factor ANOVA, using R. The threshold of statistical significance was set at 0.05.

Results

A total of 64 fish were caught over 160 minutes of fishing.

CPUE

The CPUE for the Waggler 16 hooks was 7.75 +- 1.71 fish per 20 minutes (Mean +- SD). The  CPUE for the Waggler 20 hooks was 8.25 +-2.87 fish per 20 minutes. The CPUE for time block A was 8.5 +- 1 fish per 20 minutes. The CPUE for time block B was 7.5 +- 3.11 fish per 20 minutes.

There was no significant difference in CPUE between the Waggler 16 and Waggler 20 hooks (F = 0.074, P = 0.799). There was no significant difference in CPUE between time block A and time block B (F = 0.296, P = 0.615). There was no significant interaction between hook size and time block (F = 0.667, P = 0.460)

Weight

The total weight of fish caught in each period for the Waggler 16 hooks was 44.98 +- 14.04 lbs (Mean +- SD). The total weight for the Waggler 20 hooks was 38.03 +- 22.43 lbs.

There was no significant difference in total weight caught between the Waggler 16 and Waggler 20 hooks (F = 0.279, P=0.626). There was no significant difference in total weight caught between time block A and time block B (F=0.105, P=0.762). There was no significant interaction between hook size and time block (F = 1.949, P=0.235).

Average Weight

The average weight of fish caught with Waggler 16 hooks was 5.74 +- 1.02 lbs (Mean+-SD). The average weight of fish caught with Waggler 20 hooks was 4.47 +- 1.47 lbs.

There was no significant difference in average weight between the Waggler 16 and Waggler 20 hooks (F = 1.874, P =0.243). There was no significant difference in average weight between time block A and time block B (F = 0.009, P = 0.930). There was no significant interaction between hook and time block (F = 1.368, P = 0.307).

Discussion

So, no significant differences found. If there is an effect, it's subtle. The graph for average weight sure seems to indicate that their might be an effect, with the smaller hook catching smaller fish. Of course, this trial used the two smallest hooks which were nearest to each other in size. That may have been poor planning, since that would be amongst the smallest of effects to detect (assuming its there).

I'm encouraged that there does not seem to be differences between time block A and time block B, since if there aren't I don't have to reset the simulation every 20 minutes. It's not entirely clear whether every fish in the lake is being modelled. If they are, or even every fish in the area, then it might be possible to "fish-out" a segment, in which case it will be necessary to move the baits around to keep up CPUE. If they're being generated on a micro scale, then it may be possible to find good locations and just keep pulling out fish.

I haven't collected enough data to assess the length-weight relations yet for any species, but that's coming, as is more gear comparisons.

We'll get to the bottom of these really heavy small fish!

Coming next, switching gears to Bluegill and Crappie for this week's match tournament on Lake Travis!

Start of a new blog

I'm planning to use this blog to explore fishing (including fisheries management and possibly fish keeping) in computer games, in depth. The first (possibly only) game I will be exploring is Fishing Sim World: Pro Tour from Dovetail Games, which I have been playing for the past few weeks on PS4.

I like FSW, but I'm not amongst the top players in the online tournaments. I think with some deliberate investigation I can make that breakthrough. I'm also curious about the underlying systems. Some questions I hope to answer over the next few weeks, by fishing deliberately and keeping records are:

• How strong is the effect where higher test line discourages fish from biting? For optimal CPUE, is it better to use something other than the 80lb test line in the carp tournaments?
• For match fishing, is it better to fish one rod using a float or ledger 3? 
• What is the effect of hook size on landed size and CPUE?
• What model is being used to determine the weight of the fish?

Also, I desperately want to know how to turn to look in the direction the boat is going while trolling. :-)

I will be streaming most of my FSW fishing on twitch:

Watch live video from tfernando77 on www.twitch.tv

I plan to approach my questions using appropriate statistics. Feel free to suggest other questions to investigate in the comments!