A 10-year exercise at Tenoroc Fish Management Area near Lakeland, Florida, confirms that largemouth bass do survive release practices and that they can be "recycled" in order to manage the resource at quality levels.
"We now know that catch-and-release offers fishery managers an alternative to optimize the use of a limited resource," says Phil Chapman, biologist with the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission.
Chapman, an inductee into the International Fishing Hall of Fame, is supervisor of a continuing regulation study which began in 1984 on several Tenoroc lakes to answer a wide range of questions regarding bass.
Each of the various Tenoroc lakes, opened to the public a decade ago, had individual regulations ranging from minimum size limits, slot size limits, reduced bag limits, trophy bass restrictions, catch-and-release regulations, and gear restrictions.
Following high levels of fishing pressure occurring during the studies, experimental bass regulations resulted in different levels of success--with one exception. The catch-and-release regulation proved far superior for managing bass populations.
These water bodies, lakes A, C, and 3, ranged in size from 20 to 75 acres and varied widely with regard to water quality, aquatic vegetation, shoreline configuration, and bottom structure.
"Regardless, results of the catch-and-release regulation were surprisingly consistent," Chapman stressed.
"When lakes A and C first opened for public fishing, each supported less than five "adult" largemouth (10 inches or longer) per acre.
"Population density had been suppressed due to heavy coverage of water hyacinths, but eradication increased productivity, and bass numbers expanded rapidly," the biologist continued.
Since no bass could be harvested, those protected populations flourished.
"After five years, populations had stabilized and adult bass numbered 29 per acre in Lake A and 36 per acre in Lake C, or respective increases of 525 and 650 percent," said Chapman.
"Those increasing bass populations did not go unnoticed by fishermen.
"From 1984 to 1989, annual bass fishing pressure increased from 29 to 117 hours per acre on Lake A and from 17 to 131 hours per acre on Lake C.
"In spite of greatly expanded fishing pressure, the angler success rate actually increased," Chapman pointed out.
Catch rates for bass climbed in both lakes from 0.19 bass per hour to about 0.60 per hour over the initial five-year study period. These rates were well above the generally accepted state average of 0.25 bass per hour.
"No other public lakes in Florida have been found to support such excellent bass fishing success at the level of fishing pressure that was recorded at Tenoroc."
A follow-up evaluation of Lake 3 substantiated previous findings. The beneficial effects of catch-and-release were obvious as fishing pressure was quite high, but angler success was most productive.
In addition to high success rates on the three lakes, fish size averages were similarly impressive. While the average size of bass in most state waters range from 11 to 13 inches, bass in all three catch-and-release lakes averaged 15 inches.
Other Tenoroc data further supports a catch-and-release bass fishery.
For example, the equivalent of 100 percent of the estimated bass population was caught by anglers in lakes A and C within 24 fishing days after opening to the public.
"Without extreme harvest restrictions, these fisheries would have collapsed and likely never recovered to quality levels," Chapman theorized.
"Also, during the final year of investigation, fishermen reported catching the equivalent of 1.8 to 2.5 times the number of bass estimated to be in populations of the three lakes where bass harvest was prohibited.
"This shows that bass survive following catch-and-release, and many are caught multiple times," Chapman concluded.
It's obvious that angler acceptance of catch-and-release fishing at Tenoroc has been outstanding since lakes A, C, and 3 are clearly preferred over the other lakes which allowed some bass harvest, but where fishing was less productive.
As the number of bass anglers continues to grow throughout the United States, special harvest regulations will probably become increasingly important to maintain a quality fishery.
And, it seems, based on the Florida experiment, more and more bass anglers appear willing to sacrifice harvest for quality fishing.
Copyright (c) 1996 Herb Allen. All rights reserved.
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