| Title A 3yr Olds Child’s Sudden Fascination with Fishing: A Search to Find Fishing Locations Using GIS |
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Author Carlos Flores American River College, Geography 350: Data Acquisition in GIS; Spring 2009 E-mail: flores.car1os@yahoo.com | |
Abstract A GIS analysis was done to map the ponds and lakes within 15 miles of my home. The information was gathered from the “Fishing in the City” program that is sponsored by the California Department of Fish and Game. | |
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Introduction Just recently, completely out of the blue, my 3 yr old son developed a fascination with fishing. Where it came from I have no idea. I had not been fishing for a very long time, and my wife and two daughters are not what you would call the “outdoorsy” types. Nevertheless, he had been on me about taking him out to catch a fish. So, as a father, I felt it was my duty to take on the challenge and show my boy that his daddy could in fact catch a fish. At the time of writing this introduction, the weather had been, well, not so conducive to outdoor activities and that was my excuse, I mean my reason, for not taking him out. But, after much of his pleading with the clouds for it to “stop raining”, the weather began to cooperate and I began my search to find suitable places for a father and son (with a 3 yr old child’s attention span) to go out and hopefully land a fish. | |
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Background In did some preliminary internet searches and found that the Department of Fish and Game sponsors a statewide program called “Fishing in the City”. This program seemed to fit the criteria of finding suitable locations near my home with the added advantage of having the ponds or lakes being regularly stocked with fish. I figured this would increase the probability of actually landing a fish. The Fishing in the City program was created in 1993 to improve angling opportunities to California’s growing urban population. Consistent with trends across the country, California’s urban anglers identified a lack of free time as the primary reason why they don’t fish more or stopped altogether. Many city and regional park lakes, ponds, and streams were all but forgotten as potential fishing sites and many lacked adequate facilities, staff, or fish to sustain a fishing program. Some suffered from non-source –point pollution and habitat degradation. All were surrounded by communities ready to provide the support necessary to create fishing in the city. The program has four simple objectives:
These objectives are met by doing careful analysis on ponds and lakes in the program, offering fishing instruction clinics, teaching young kids the importance of conserving our community waterways, and teaming with anglers in the community to custom design each individual program. | |
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Methods
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The data collection methods for this project were fairly simple. I began with a broad
internet search for any information related to local ponds or lakes in Sacramento County.
As I mentioned in the background section, I came across the California Department of Fish and Game's (DFG) website, where I
found the Fishing in the City program. The website provided names of lakes and ponds in the Sacramento Metro area that are part of their fish stocking program. I used Google Maps, Mapquest and internet searches to locate the addresses to these particular locations. I then typed in the addresses in Google Earth which gave me GPS Coordinats for each location. Next, I created a table in Microsoft Excel with the name, address, longitude and latitude for each lake or pond. After creating the tables in Excel, I saved them as comma delimited files so that I could create point feature classes in my file geodatabase using ArcCatalog.
Next, I downloaded ESRI shapefiles from the Sacramento County GIS website, more specifically the communities, main rivers,
and hydrology shapefiles, and used those as the base layers in my map. After I created my base layers, I added the points
feature classes to the my ArcMap document. Once this was completed, I had enough data to do a simple analysis using the
"buffer" tool in ArcMap's "ArcToolbox". I wanted to only target lakes or ponds within 15 miles of my home.
This would ensure that if, and when, my son got bored and tired, we wouldn’t spend a lot of the time traveling to and
from the location. After I had my target list, I decided to visit these locations to make sure they were indeed places I
could take my son. I also wanted to check the accuracy of the coordinates I had gotten from Google Earth.
I created waypoints for each location in the Garmin 76 GPS unit and then used the unit to navigate to these locations.
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Results Part I The results were a total of 9 locations in the Sacramento Metro area that are stocked by the Department of Fish and Game:
Out of the 10 sites above, 6 fell within the 15 mile buffer zone I created using my house as the base. They were:
All of the locations were suitable for fishing, with the exception of North Laguna Creek Park, which was under construction. |
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Results Part II The results for the accuracy of the waypoints taken with the Garmin 76 unit as compared to the Google Earth image were as follows:
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Figures and Maps Part I Below are images of the map created in ArcMap 9.3 and images of the attribute tables for each point layer. | |
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Figures and Maps Part II Below are the Google images showing the approximate differences in distance from the waypoints taken with the GPS Unit and the location of the points in Google Earth. | |
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Analysis I found that a 15 mile buffer worked well in highlighting locations near
my house. All of them were about 15-20 minutes driving time from my house to each of the locations.
There was a definite problem with accuracy when comparing the waypoints taken with the GPS unit and their locations on Google Earth. There may be several reasons why this is the case. Perhaps the tree cover or nearby buildings were reflecting the satellite signals, or perhaps I had poor satellite acquisition, or it could have been user error. A more precise analysis could be done on this result, perhaps multiple readings for each waypoint could be taken or post-processing could be done on the data collected, but the point was to check how accurately the unit would mark the waypoints.
I also found that you cannot do research while caring for a 3 yr old at the same time, let alone trying to catch a
fish (I spent more time trying to catch my son than actually catching any fish). This was the most difficult part of the process, and why I abandoned the “trying to catch a fish” part and just stuck with visiting these parks alone before I actually try and take him with me. I found that many people frequent these locations, specifically just after a fish plant. This seems to be the best time to catch a fish. Also, the GPS coordinates that I got off of Google Earth worked very well to help me navigate to each location using only the Garmin GPS 76 unit that we used in class. | |
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Conclusions In conclusion, the result of this simple analysis and data collection shows that a GIS can be used for even the simplest of tasks. The analysis helped me get a good idea of what locations were available in my immediate area, and helped me quickly determine what sites would be suitable for further investigation. More data could be gathered as to how successful anglers are at these locations, but for the purposes of this project, I found that it was sufficient enough to target locations that I feel my son and I would enjoy visiting. | |
