Thursday, May 27, 2004
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: Gas prices put the pinch on outdoorsmen
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
Bill Cochran's Outdoors
Recent columns
- Hunters and anglers still in the conservation business
- Drum fishing on Virginia’s Coast comes in two colors
- Elk advocate finally gets his day
- Turkeys are plentiful, so why are hunting regulations so tight fisted?
- Column archive
Bill's Mailbag
Bill's Field Reports
- Eagles are up; black rail are down
- A. Willis Robertson great name for new DGIF headquarters
- Field reports archive
Resources
Soaring gasoline prices are driving up the cost of fishing, boating and camping. A personal example: When I fill the tank on our modest 18-foot center-console boat at $2 a gallon it costs a cool $120. Ouch!
The same pain can be felt when you gas up a RV. Even if you don’t own a boat or RV, you aren’t likely to escape higher gasoline prices. Say you are an angler and drive to the coast to hire a guide or board a charter or party boat. At the minimum, the drive is going to cost you more, and once you get there you may discover that fees for guide or charter boat services have increased.
The price for a full-day, offshore-charter boat outing out of Rudee Inlet in Virginia Beach is $1,325 to $1,350. That’s about $50 more than last year. Even so, this increase isn’t covering the bite that higher fuel prices are putting on charter operations. Bill Richardson, skipper of the Top Notch, said current fuel prices are costing charters about $100 more per trip. Right now, these businesses are absorbing about 50 percent of the loss.
In the past, charter operations have added surcharges to their fees when fuel prices have spiked. That hasn’t been a widespread practice this season, but it could happen if prices continue to climb. Most of the larger boats use diesel fuel, which gives them a break because it is running $1.59 per gallon at marinas; regular gas there is about $2.30.
Businesses that serve fishermen are struggling to hold the line on the fees they charge so as not to scare off customers. Along with fuel prices, in many instances insurance rates also have increased.
“I have decided not to raise my prices to compensate for higher fuel costs simply because of the increased fuel cost for the angler driving to the bay,” said Capt. Ferrell McLain, who operates a charter service at Reedville on the west side of the Chesapeake Bay.
Current fishing conditions are favoring McLain and other bay skippers who are targeting striped bass. Many simply are motoring about 10 miles from port and setting up a chumline that lures fish to the anchored boat. Earlier McLain was running north to troll for stripers, which meant a costly 60-mile roundtrip. The switch in tactics had nothing to do with fuel prices and all to do with the change in the behavior of stripers as the water warmed.
Even with a lower profit margin, skippers are expected to continue working hard to put anglers on fish, said Claude Bain, director of the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament. “They are going where the fish are,” he said.
So far, there is little evidence that anglers are cutting back on their fishing activities, but that could happen.
“I would expect fewer trips by anglers to be the first indication of altered behavior due to gas price,” said Bain.
Capt. McLain hopes anglers will do some math before deciding not to fish.
“If the angler drives 200 miles each way in a car to go fishing that gets 20-miles per gallon, he will burn 20 gallons of fuel. Figuring on a 50-cent per gallon increase in gas prices since last year, this means that the gas for the fishing trip would cost only $10 more than last year. You can see that the cost of gas should not be a reason not to go fishing.”
