Fish sampling is an important component of wetland research, management, conservation, monitoring, and assessment programs, and studies of fish abundance, productivity, and community structure can provide important information about wetland condition and health. In this chapter, we discuss considerations specific to wetland sampling, including issues such as the phenology of wetland use by transient fishes and sampling constraints in hydrologically-dynamic habitats. We review both active techniques, which involve moving the gear to the fish, and passive techniques, which involve the fish moving to the gear, and differentiate gears based on their ability to provide qualitative or quantitative data. Because wetlands vary considerably in their hydrology, physicochemistry, habitat structure and biotic community composition, we review and recommend a wide variety of collection techniques, including seines, minnow traps, gill and entrapment nets, electrofishing, throw and drop traps, weirs, and trawls. Problems and solutions related to gear calibration and gear bias also are addressed, and we provide examples and exercises that demonstrate common approaches to sampling wetland fishes.
