H I - L A K E R S

Please click HERE to open a new browser window with the survey form. The form can be filled out and directly submitted to the master survey database. Once you're finished, simply close the survey form window.

Detailed Instructions on How to Enter a lake survey On-line

The web page data entry form may seem complicated but it is really not. Lake surveys require a modest amount of information so the on-line Lake Survey Data Entry does require several steps. Once you have entered a couple of lakes, you will find that you can do a complete lake survey in a minute or two. One problem that many people have with this web page data entry is they try using the “Enter” or “Return” key to enter data or move between pages. The Lake Survey Web Page only allows the use of the TAB key to move between data entry boxes. It is best to use your Mouse to select ALL functions by clicking on the appropriate box as well as moving to the next data box. If you find that all your data that you are entering suddenly disappears and is lost, it is likely that you hit the “Enter” or “Return” key. If you consistently find that some other action causes you to loose everything, contact Brian Curtis or Rex Johnson.

For a flowchart view of the entry process click HERE

If you are a member of the club, be sure to enter the “Members Only” section before requesting to do a Survey. Do not be surprised when the “Members Only” page comes up with the Trail Blazers name at the top. The Hi-Lakers and the Trail Blazers share this web page since it is managed by the same person (Brian Curtis).

To enter a Survey, go to the column on the left side of the page titled “Personal Information” and click on “Trip Report and Lake Surveys”.

Step 1: The beginning page that comes up tells you that you are entering a survey and asks for “How many days was the trip”, “How many people were on the trip (Including yourself)”, and “How any different lakes did you visit”. Click on each box, enter the appropriate number and then click “Go to Step 2”.

Step 2: asks you to enter the date of your trip. If your trip was more than one day long, enter the starting day. You can enter the date by hand in the form of MM/DD/YYYY, but it is better to use the automated search, since that guarantees the correct format of the date. To get the automated date search, click on the small box that looks like a small calendar to the right of the Date box. Sometimes, I find I have to click on it more than once. A calendar will come up. Use the arrows at the top to move to the correct month. Then click on the correct date and the date will be entered correctly. Next you are asked to enter the name of all the other participants. At the right end of the box is a down arrow. If you click on the down arrow, a list of names will come up. This list includes all Hi-Lakers, all Trail Blazers, WDFW Biologists, and some VIP’s. It is a long list in alphabetical order by last name. To shorten the time to search the whole list, you can type in the box just the first letter of the last name and the list will move to the first name on the list that starts with that letter. If you do not find your friend’s name on the list, you can just enter the name into the box to the right. Be sure to check the list first, since there is a number next to the name that is useful to the data base.

The last thing to do on this page is to enter the names of the lakes you visited on this trip. This is an important step that, if done correctly, can save you a lot of extra work. The system will use whatever you enter for the lake names to search the data base to help you positively identify the lakes. Needless to say, we must know for sure which lake you are providing information on or the data is worthless. So, all entries must go through the search engine to find the exact lake in the data base. Since search engines are typically a little dumb, the trick is to enter just enough of the lake name to find the right one. The search engine uses every word you enter, so for example if you enter the “Little Frog Pot”, it will return every lake that contains the words “Little”, “Frog”, or “Pot”. This is a lot of lakes; way too many. So it is best to only enter a single word like “Frog”. This will bring up a much shorter list on the next page when you are asked to identify the lakes. Obviously, you would never want to include the word “Lake” or “Pond” or “Pot” in a search.

The next page that comes up is the “Survey Home Page”. The top boxes of this page should have the correct starting date for your trip and the number of days. If they are not correct, there is a clickable box to the right to correct them. Below this is a list with all the lakes on this trip that you already entered on the previous page. If you forgot a lake, there is a box to enter the new name and a clickable box to enter that name. Below that is the list of all participants, with options to change them or add additional names. At the bottom of the page is a block to enter a “Trip Narrative”. This is an optional feature if you would like to tell your story. You can either type the story into the box or better yet, write your story with a word editor on your computer and then cut and paste it into this box. The important thing on this page is to correctly identify your lakes. Until you have done this, the system will not let you enter your data. So back up under the list of lakes, after each name there is one clickable option “Identify Lake”. For each lake, click this option and the search engine will bring up all lakes in the data base that contain the words you have entered. From the list, look for the lake with the correct county and Township, Range, and Section. If you are not sure, use the “View Map” option to see a small map of the lake area. When you are sure that the lake you went to is the existing lake in the data base, click the “Yes” box at the far right for that correct lake. If you cannot find your lake on the list, you will need to do a further search. (Talk about searching via TRS or L & L). If you cannot find your lake by any means, it is possible that your lake is not in the data base yet. Contact Brian Curtis. Give him the lake name, Township, Range, and Section, and the Latitude and Longitude. He will either help you find the lake in the data base or enter it as a new lake. Then you can go back and enter your data.

General Lake Information, Survey Data Step 1 of 5:
To enter your survey data for each lake, click on the last set of words [Enter Survey Data] after the lake name under the sections titled “Lakes”. The page that comes up is called “General Lake Information, Survey Data Step 1 of 5”. All the information listed on this page is required; only the comments sections are optional. Enter the total time you were at the lake and the total time you spent fishing to the nearest 15 minutes. It is best to use the pull down menus to do this. Enter the number of anglers in your party where you are reporting the fish, the number of other anglers at the lake and the number of non-anglers. Enter the Lake condition and percent frozen if it was. Under comments, things like water temperature, whether the water had a color to it, or other interesting notes are appreciated. Enter the camp usage and number of camps observed. Under weather condition, enter everything that you observed while at the lake. It is possible, if you were at the lake for an extended time, that you would see every condition listed, in which case you would check every box. Add comments to explain unusual events. When you have completed this page, click “Go to Step 2”

Fish Basics, Survey Data Step 2 of 5:
The next page that comes up is called “Fish Basics, Survey Data Step 2 of 5”. Fill in the “Quality of fishing” using the pull down menu. Obviously this is very subjective, since one person fair could be another’s good. Enter the “Rising activity”. Bob Pfeifer has recommended that up to about 5 rises per hour is a few, and more than that is a lot. Do the same for the “Cruising activity”. Fill in the “Fish Conditions” only if you caught fish to observe. Same with “Successful Lures”, only fill this in if you have lures that caught fish. Same with “Stomach Contents”; only fill this out if you killed fish and cut open the stomach to check the contents. If you do keep fish, please do this. Fill in any “Sensitive Species” that you observed at the lake. For people like me who are not biologists, Gammarus means shrimp. If you caught any fish, be sure to check the boxes below to indicate the species of fish. Then click “Go to Step 3”.

Fish Size, Survey Data Step 3 of 5:
If you checked any of the fish species boxes, the next page that comes up is “Fish Size, Survey Data Step 3 of 5”. Otherwise it skips to “General Comments, Survey Data Step 5 of 5”. Under Fish Size, select whether you measure your fish in “Inches” or “Centimeters”. Next enter the “Quantity” of fish that were caught for each species listed. For the “Size Range”, first enter the length of the smallest fish caught, then the largest. For “Average Size”, add up all the lengths of all the fish caught and then divide by that total number; this is the Average. Finally enter the number of fish for which you have “Length and Weight” data, then click “Enter”.

Fish Measurements, Survey Data Step 4 of 5:
This will bring up “Fish Measurements, Survey Data Step 4 of 5”. On the left side of the page, use the pull down menus to enter the species of each fish caught and measured. Next select your units of “Mass” and “Length” with the pull down menus. Finally enter your numbers (weight and length) for each measured fish then click “Enter”. If you only have lengths to enter, you can leave the mass column blank.

General Comments, Survey Data Step 5 of 5:
This will take you to “General Comments, Survey Data Step 5 of 5”. In the General Comments block enter any information that has not already been covered, such as access to the lake, how much garbage at the lake, impact at the lake, any changes that you have seen over the years, etc. Lastly, select the level of “Confidentiality” that you would prefer on your survey. The default is that all boxes are checked meaning all of the listed people can see your survey. If you feel the lake is very sensitive and access to your survey data should be restricted, click the appropriate boxes to remove the click marks to those people. Hopefully, you would always allow WFDW to see you survey or else doing a survey has little value. You may be concerned as to just how safe is your data and who get to see it even if it is marked completely confidential? With today’s automated web page entry, even Brian Curtis would not look at your data unless someone asks specifically about a lake where you have turned data in. I have been working with Brian for over 20 years and I have never seen or heard of him giving out any data unless it was marked non-confidential. So you can feel very confident that Brian will treat your data exactly as you specify. When you are done with this page, click “Enter”.

Next your complete survey will come up as entered into the data base. It is a VERY good idea to re-read this to check that it is correct and there are no typos. If you see any errors, there is a button to click to go back and edit everything. If you have more lakes to enter data on for this same trip or you want to enter a Trip Narrative (Trip Report), click the button “Return to Survey Home Page”.

If you have additional lake surveys to enter for different trips, you will need to click on “Members Only” on the left side of the page to return the “Main Menu” where you can select the “Trip Report and Lake Survey” option to start another Lake survey.

Good luck fishing and remember your data does make a difference to the quality of the fisheries in this State. If you want a quality fisheries, turn in all your data. There is no lake too small. Even when you do not catch any fish at all, it is still important data, so turn it in.

Thanks!
Rex Johnson
Last update: January 10, 2008

	High Lake Fish Surveys Please click HERE to open a new browser window with the survey form. The form can be filled out and directly submitted to the master survey database. Once you're finished, simply close the survey form window. Detailed Instructions on How to Enter a lake survey On-line The web page data entry form may seem complicated but it is really not. Lake surveys require a modest amount of information so the on-line Lake Survey Data Entry does require several steps. Once you have entered a couple of lakes, you will find that you can do a complete lake survey in a minute or two. One problem that many people have with this web page data entry is they try using the “Enter” or “Return” key to enter data or move between pages. The Lake Survey Web Page only allows the use of the TAB key to move between data entry boxes. It is best to use your Mouse to select ALL functions by clicking on the appropriate box as well as moving to the next data box. If you find that all your data that you are entering suddenly disappears and is lost, it is likely that you hit the “Enter” or “Return” key. If you consistently find that some other action causes you to loose everything, contact Brian Curtis or Rex Johnson. For a flowchart view of the entry process click HERE If you are a member of the club, be sure to enter the “Members Only” section before requesting to do a Survey. Do not be surprised when the “Members Only” page comes up with the Trail Blazers name at the top. The Hi-Lakers and the Trail Blazers share this web page since it is managed by the same person (Brian Curtis). To enter a Survey, go to the column on the left side of the page titled “Personal Information” and click on “Trip Report and Lake Surveys”. Step 1: The beginning page that comes up tells you that you are entering a survey and asks for “How many days was the trip”, “How many people were on the trip (Including yourself)”, and “How any different lakes did you visit”. Click on each box, enter the appropriate number and then click “Go to Step 2”. Step 2: asks you to enter the date of your trip. If your trip was more than one day long, enter the starting day. You can enter the date by hand in the form of MM/DD/YYYY, but it is better to use the automated search, since that guarantees the correct format of the date. To get the automated date search, click on the small box that looks like a small calendar to the right of the Date box. Sometimes, I find I have to click on it more than once. A calendar will come up. Use the arrows at the top to move to the correct month. Then click on the correct date and the date will be entered correctly. Next you are asked to enter the name of all the other participants. At the right end of the box is a down arrow. If you click on the down arrow, a list of names will come up. This list includes all Hi-Lakers, all Trail Blazers, WDFW Biologists, and some VIP’s. It is a long list in alphabetical order by last name. To shorten the time to search the whole list, you can type in the box just the first letter of the last name and the list will move to the first name on the list that starts with that letter. If you do not find your friend’s name on the list, you can just enter the name into the box to the right. Be sure to check the list first, since there is a number next to the name that is useful to the data base. The last thing to do on this page is to enter the names of the lakes you visited on this trip. This is an important step that, if done correctly, can save you a lot of extra work. The system will use whatever you enter for the lake names to search the data base to help you positively identify the lakes. Needless to say, we must know for sure which lake you are providing information on or the data is worthless. So, all entries must go through the search engine to find the exact lake in the data base. Since search engines are typically a little dumb, the trick is to enter just enough of the lake name to find the right one. The search engine uses every word you enter, so for example if you enter the “Little Frog Pot”, it will return every lake that contains the words “Little”, “Frog”, or “Pot”. This is a lot of lakes; way too many. So it is best to only enter a single word like “Frog”. This will bring up a much shorter list on the next page when you are asked to identify the lakes. Obviously, you would never want to include the word “Lake” or “Pond” or “Pot” in a search. The next page that comes up is the “Survey Home Page”. The top boxes of this page should have the correct starting date for your trip and the number of days. If they are not correct, there is a clickable box to the right to correct them. Below this is a list with all the lakes on this trip that you already entered on the previous page. If you forgot a lake, there is a box to enter the new name and a clickable box to enter that name. Below that is the list of all participants, with options to change them or add additional names. At the bottom of the page is a block to enter a “Trip Narrative”. This is an optional feature if you would like to tell your story. You can either type the story into the box or better yet, write your story with a word editor on your computer and then cut and paste it into this box. The important thing on this page is to correctly identify your lakes. Until you have done this, the system will not let you enter your data. So back up under the list of lakes, after each name there is one clickable option “Identify Lake”. For each lake, click this option and the search engine will bring up all lakes in the data base that contain the words you have entered. From the list, look for the lake with the correct county and Township, Range, and Section. If you are not sure, use the “View Map” option to see a small map of the lake area. When you are sure that the lake you went to is the existing lake in the data base, click the “Yes” box at the far right for that correct lake. If you cannot find your lake on the list, you will need to do a further search. (Talk about searching via TRS or L & L). If you cannot find your lake by any means, it is possible that your lake is not in the data base yet. Contact Brian Curtis. Give him the lake name, Township, Range, and Section, and the Latitude and Longitude. He will either help you find the lake in the data base or enter it as a new lake. Then you can go back and enter your data. General Lake Information, Survey Data Step 1 of 5: To enter your survey data for each lake, click on the last set of words [Enter Survey Data] after the lake name under the sections titled “Lakes”. The page that comes up is called “General Lake Information, Survey Data Step 1 of 5”. All the information listed on this page is required; only the comments sections are optional. Enter the total time you were at the lake and the total time you spent fishing to the nearest 15 minutes. It is best to use the pull down menus to do this. Enter the number of anglers in your party where you are reporting the fish, the number of other anglers at the lake and the number of non-anglers. Enter the Lake condition and percent frozen if it was. Under comments, things like water temperature, whether the water had a color to it, or other interesting notes are appreciated. Enter the camp usage and number of camps observed. Under weather condition, enter everything that you observed while at the lake. It is possible, if you were at the lake for an extended time, that you would see every condition listed, in which case you would check every box. Add comments to explain unusual events. When you have completed this page, click “Go to Step 2” Fish Basics, Survey Data Step 2 of 5: The next page that comes up is called “Fish Basics, Survey Data Step 2 of 5”. Fill in the “Quality of fishing” using the pull down menu. Obviously this is very subjective, since one person fair could be another’s good. Enter the “Rising activity”. Bob Pfeifer has recommended that up to about 5 rises per hour is a few, and more than that is a lot. Do the same for the “Cruising activity”. Fill in the “Fish Conditions” only if you caught fish to observe. Same with “Successful Lures”, only fill this in if you have lures that caught fish. Same with “Stomach Contents”; only fill this out if you killed fish and cut open the stomach to check the contents. If you do keep fish, please do this. Fill in any “Sensitive Species” that you observed at the lake. For people like me who are not biologists, Gammarus means shrimp. If you caught any fish, be sure to check the boxes below to indicate the species of fish. Then click “Go to Step 3”. Fish Size, Survey Data Step 3 of 5: If you checked any of the fish species boxes, the next page that comes up is “Fish Size, Survey Data Step 3 of 5”. Otherwise it skips to “General Comments, Survey Data Step 5 of 5”. Under Fish Size, select whether you measure your fish in “Inches” or “Centimeters”. Next enter the “Quantity” of fish that were caught for each species listed. For the “Size Range”, first enter the length of the smallest fish caught, then the largest. For “Average Size”, add up all the lengths of all the fish caught and then divide by that total number; this is the Average. Finally enter the number of fish for which you have “Length and Weight” data, then click “Enter”. Fish Measurements, Survey Data Step 4 of 5: This will bring up “Fish Measurements, Survey Data Step 4 of 5”. On the left side of the page, use the pull down menus to enter the species of each fish caught and measured. Next select your units of “Mass” and “Length” with the pull down menus. Finally enter your numbers (weight and length) for each measured fish then click “Enter”. If you only have lengths to enter, you can leave the mass column blank. General Comments, Survey Data Step 5 of 5: This will take you to “General Comments, Survey Data Step 5 of 5”. In the General Comments block enter any information that has not already been covered, such as access to the lake, how much garbage at the lake, impact at the lake, any changes that you have seen over the years, etc. Lastly, select the level of “Confidentiality” that you would prefer on your survey. The default is that all boxes are checked meaning all of the listed people can see your survey. If you feel the lake is very sensitive and access to your survey data should be restricted, click the appropriate boxes to remove the click marks to those people. Hopefully, you would always allow WFDW to see you survey or else doing a survey has little value. You may be concerned as to just how safe is your data and who get to see it even if it is marked completely confidential? With today’s automated web page entry, even Brian Curtis would not look at your data unless someone asks specifically about a lake where you have turned data in. I have been working with Brian for over 20 years and I have never seen or heard of him giving out any data unless it was marked non-confidential. So you can feel very confident that Brian will treat your data exactly as you specify. When you are done with this page, click “Enter”. Next your complete survey will come up as entered into the data base. It is a VERY good idea to re-read this to check that it is correct and there are no typos. If you see any errors, there is a button to click to go back and edit everything. If you have more lakes to enter data on for this same trip or you want to enter a Trip Narrative (Trip Report), click the button “Return to Survey Home Page”. If you have additional lake surveys to enter for different trips, you will need to click on “Members Only” on the left side of the page to return the “Main Menu” where you can select the “Trip Report and Lake Survey” option to start another Lake survey. Good luck fishing and remember your data does make a difference to the quality of the fisheries in this State. If you want a quality fisheries, turn in all your data. There is no lake too small. Even when you do not catch any fish at all, it is still important data, so turn it in. Thanks! Rex Johnson Last update: January 10, 2008