AGFC busy improving fishing

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has been busy this summer in ways that directly benefit anglers.

In July, for example, the agency’s fisheries division stocked 1,241,238 fish totaling 41,607 pounds into our state’s waters. These include 49,763 rainbow trout, 323,422 Florida strain largemouth bass, 345,504 northern strain largemouth bass, 507,320 striped bass and 6,228 channel catfish. Most of the largemouths were stocked into the Arkansas River.

Also, the AGFC and Corps of Engineers began planting coontail moss in DeGray Lake.

In 2007, the AGFC and Corps introduced the Pakistani fly to control hydrilla in DeGray Lake. The “Pak” fly larvae were supposed to eat the tops off hydrilla plants down to a depth where it would decrease total plant coverage.

The architects of this scheme did not foresee several years of drought, which combined with the Pak fly, wiped out DeGray’s hydrilla. Largemouth bass recruitment suffered as a result. And so, everything old is new again.

Additionally, AGFC culture biologists learned about new walleye spawning techniques.

Over the past few decades, Arkansas quietly has blossomed into a walleye fishing hotspot. Credit former director Scott Henderson, a walleye fishing fanatic. The walleye program was his baby, and we are grateful that it thrives four directors later. We also credit Assistant Director Chris Racey, the former chief of fisheries. He is a Pennsylvania transplant who understands and appreciates the importance of a robust walleye fishery.

About 12 years ago, when I first started writing about walleye fishing, online trolls asked, “Who cares?”

Transplants to Arkansas from northern states are delighted with our walleye fishery, but lifelong Arkansans embrace it as well. Duke Gunnell, one of our best-known bass anglers, is a closet walleye fanatic who catches a lot of walleyes. No hardcore bass angler complains when he catches a walleye incidentally.

What’s not to love about a fun and challenging fish that tastes so delicious?

Speaking of cutting edge, we recently opined about the Game and Fish Commission misallocating resources on constituents that don’t contribute to conservation. These are the “nonconsumptive” users who don’t buy hunting or fishing licenses, nor contribute to the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act or Federal Aid in Fisheries Restoration Act by buying firearms, ammunition, hunting gear, fishing tackle, etc.

Heather Balogh Rochfort is a Colorado-based freelance journalist who chronicles her adventures in her blog, justacoloradogal.com. She is also gear editor for

Backpacker magazine. She recently penned an editorial in Backpacker titled, “Pay to Play,” in which she noted that 5% of Americans (hunters older than 16) supply more than 60% of the funding for state game and fish agencies.

It’s a lot more than 60%, but Rochfort is on the right track.

While hunters are becoming fewer, hikers, skiers and paddlers are increasing, Rochfort wrote. She proposed a small federal excise tax on all outdoor gear.

“Charging a penny on the dollar for a sleeping bag or a pair of skis won’t make up for all the lost revenues from firearms sales, but it shows that we, as users of public lands, are ready to be part of the funding picture,” Rochfort wrote. “We need to get some skin in the game.”

Rochfort said she expects pushback from her peers who complain about paying a small fee to park at a trailhead, but she exemplified hunters who pay fees and firearms taxes as an accepted expense to the activities they love.

Hunters asked Congress for the federal excise taxes on firearms and ammo in 1937, and anglers requested a federal tax for sportfishing equipment in 1950. It was not imposed on us. The taxes have immense bipartisan support, and also bipartisan resistance when politicians tried to tap them for unintended purposes.

The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration fund is not imperiled. It surges from national gun sales spikes whenever the political/media/pop culture complex gets gun ban fever.

As Rochfort noted, the problem is two-pronged. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allocates Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson tax money to the states through a formula that weighs heavily on the number of hunting and fishing licenses sold within each state. If a state sells fewer licenses, it gets a smaller portion of the federal pie.

Rochfort’s sleeping bag example suggests a 1% tax. If it is to be on par with what hunters and anglers pay, it should be closer to 10%.

On this — to echo a bygone campaign slogan — I’m with her.