Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Radical ideas designed to return fishing glory
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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Smith Mountain Lake was once Virginia's undisputed king of landlocked striper fisheries.
That changed last year when a parasite-induced fish kill wiped out most, if not all of the lake's trophy stripers. With the parasite problem apparently abating, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries biologist charged with overseeing the lake is throwing around some radical ideas he thinks might help the lake return to its trophy-producing glory.
One of Dan Wilson's ideas is to enact a protective slot limit, requiring anglers to release mid-sized stripers, say, those between 26 and 37 inches long.
The other would be to eliminate the current 20-inch size minimum during the summer months, while also increasing the daily angler limit from two stripers to four stripers.
Wilson discussed the ideas Friday evening at the monthly meeting of the Smith Mountain Striper Club. He met earlier in the week with the club's board of directors.
After hearing Wilson's thoughts, the board took an official stance, said club president Rex Smith.
"The board voted against supporting those proposed changes and that's all I'm going to say," club president Rex Smith said.
The roughly 70 members at Friday's meeting didn't vote, but they had plenty of questions for Wilson. Smith said he got the feeling more members were against the proposals than supported them.
Wilson could not be reached during the holiday weekend for comment. In recent conversations, he said he thought regulations changes might help speed the fishery's recovery from the mysterious die-off.
Instituting a slot limit is a common tactic of fisheries managers attempting to improve the number of trophy-sized fish.
In many waters, slot limits are designed to protect spawning-aged fish. Since Smith Mountain Lake's stripers don't naturally reproduce, a slot limit would simply give stripers a better chance to reach trophy proportions.
At Smith Mountain Lake, trophies are important. The lake's popularity as a striper lake is primarily due to its reputation as a trophy producer.
Landlocked stripers present another unique challenge. Studies have shown that release mortality during the summer months can be as high as 90 percent. It seems a shame to let that 34-inch-long striper go if it's destined to go belly up.
That's where the second of Wilson's ideas comes in.
Not only would the slot limit go away from June through September, but there would be no minimum size limit and the bag limit would rise from two fish to four fish.
Nowadays, a lot of fishermen keep going even after getting their two fish on ice. If they are allowed to keep a couple more fish, Wilson wonders, will they be more inclined to stop once they reach the limit?
Smith has been tagging a lot of fish this summer in hopes it may provide some Smith Mountain Lake-specific summertime mortality information. Since JulyE19, he's tagged nearly 220 stripers. None of the tags have been returned. Smith said increasing the bag limit and eliminating the minimum size might sound good, but he's not sure if it will work out.
"With some of these guides, I don't believe they'll stop," he said.
I don't either and I can't say I blame them.
A guide's livelihood depends on making customers happy. Customers who pay for a half-day trip expect to fish for a half-day, not just until they've boated their limit, be it two or four fish.
The best way to account for summertime release mortality may be to enact a regulation that would require anglers to stop fishing for stripers once they reach their limit. Enacting - and enforcing - that kind of rule would be tough.
Any changes to the lake's striper rules are likely a ways off.
Freshwater fishing rules aren't up for changes until the summer of 2006, although emergency regulations could come sooner. Because of the value of the lake's striper fishery, and the recent hardships, emergency changes wouldn't be out of the question.
Either way, interested fishermen will have plenty of time to have their say. My suspicion is they'll be saying a lot.
