This dataset is associated with a larger manuscript published in 2022 in the Illinois Natural History Survey Bulletin that summarized the Fishes of Champaign County project from 2012-2015. With data spanning over 120 years, the Fishes of Champaign County is a comprehensive, long-term investigation into the changing fish communities of east-central Illinois. Surveys first occurred in Champaign County in the late 1880s (40 sites), with subsequent surveys in 1928–1929 (125 sites), 1959–1960 (143 sites), and 1987–1988 (141 sites). Between 2012 and 2015, we resampled 122 sites across Champaign County. The combined data from these five surveys have produced a unique perspective into not only the fish communities of the region, but also insight into in-stream habitat changes during the past 120 years.

The dataset is in Microsoft Access format, with five data tables, one for each time period surveyed. Field names are self-explanatory, with some variation in data types collected during different surveys as follows: Forbes & Richardson (1880s) collected presence/absence only. Thompson & Hunt (1928-1929) collected abundance only, Larimore & Smith (1959-1960) collected length and weight for some samples, but only presence/absence at others. In some cases, fish of the same species were weighed in bulk, with the fields “LOW” and “HIGH” indicating the lower and upper limits of total length in the batch, and weight indicating the gross weight of all fish in the batch. Larimore and Bayley (1987-1988) collected length and weight for all surveys, and Sherwood and Stein (2012-2015) collected length and weight for all surveys except for cases where extremely abundant single species where subsampled. Lengths are reported in millimeters, and weight in grams. Two lookup tables provide information about species codes used in the data tables and sample site location and notes.