Bass plan addresses other species
Not surprisingly, the final element of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s proposed Black Bass Management Plan involves interactions with other species.
Arkansas offers a lot of different fishing opportunities for a myriad other fish species. Historically, bass anglers deeply resent striped bass and striped bass/white bass hybrids. Striped bass are not native to Arkansas, and hybrids are laboratory creations.
Stripers do not reproduce in significant numbers of Arkansas because our waters are do not have the proper conditions to incubate striper eggs. Hybrids are sterile. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission stocks stripers at lakes Ouachita, Hamilton, Norfork and Beaver. It stocks hybrids at DeGray Lake. It stopped stocking hybrids at Greers Ferry Lake years ago.
Stripers and hybrids are very fun to catch. They are also very popular and contribute significantly to Arkansas’s fishing economy and fishing culture.
Largemouth bass anglers despise them, claiming that they eat too many baitfish to the detriment of largemouth and smallmouth bass. They also claim that stripers eat largemouths. In 2006, a Game and Fish Commission meeting in which largemouth bass anglers objected to stocking stripers at Lake Ouachita almost deteriorated into fisticuffs until former state representative Bill Abernathy of Mena sent both teams to their respective sidelines and flagged them all for unsportsmanlike conduct.
In its proposed plan, the Game and Fish Commission acknowledges that black bass are the most common game fish and also the most popular among anglers. It also acknowledges that it stocks stripers and hybrids in certain fisheries to provide open-water fisheries.
Finally, the plan acknowledges that bass anglers believe stripers and hybrids adversely affect fishing for black bass species.
Game and Fish Commission goals are to manage populations of largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass to maximize angler satisfaction and to evaluate behavioral and ecological interactions between black bass populations and stripers and hybrids.
Objective 1 will promote smallmouth bass fishing and educate smallmouth bass genetics in Arkansas. The commission will use recent genetics data to influence decisions about smallmouth bass in lakes.
Objective 2 will use harvest regulations to restructure black bass populations where largemouths and spotted bass coexist. The commission will also monitor spotted bass genetics in Arkansas Lakes to ensure that Alabama bass are not found. The commission will also educate anglers about the risks that Alabama bass pose to existing largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass populations.
Objective 3 will describe the interactions between black bass, stripers and hybrids.
Because their presence depends on stocking, stripers and hybrids are not a threat to displace black bass. If the Game and Fish Commission quits stocking them, they will disappear.
Alabama bass, a larger, more aggressive spotted bass species that’s native to the Coosa River drainage, is very much a threat to displace native largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass species. According to the North Carolina Wildlife and Fisheries Department, largemouth populations declined on average about 8% in Lake Norman, near Charlotte, N.C., after Alabama bass were introduced.
Where introduced, Alabama bass hybridize with largemouths and smallmouths. F1 crosses delight anglers for about five years because those fish are bigger than native largemouths, but those fish cycle out of the population, and overpopulations of stunted Alabama bass take over. Alabama bass wrecked Lake Norman’s largemouth fishery, and they are wrecking a great largemouth fishery at Lake Gaston. They also wrecked a great smallmouth fishery at Lake Chatuge.
As with most invasive species disaster stories, these incidents resulted from anglers bringing Alabama bass to lakes where they are not native. In North Carolina’s case, tournament anglers brought them from Lake Lanier near Atlanta believing they would improve bass fishing. Instead, they ruined it.
In that light, Panel 7 might be the most important part of the proposed black bass management plan.