Michael A. Sawyers
If you read my column of two weeks ago about the kill of hundreds of bass following fishing tournaments on the tidal Potomac River, you may have pondered the same thing as did I.
“There are a lot of bass tournaments on Deep Creek Lake. I wonder if many bass die because of them?”
Who would know the answer to that question better than Alan Klotz, regional fishery biologist for Maryland Inland Fisheries? Nobody. That’s who.
The quick answer to the question is that there is indeed some immediate mortality to bass caught at Deep Creek Lake tournaments, of which there are many — tournaments, that is.
“During the tournament weigh-in, we held the bass in a 300-gallon tank supplied with oxygen, an aeration pump and non-iodized salt to restore their ionic balance,” Klotz explained in an e-mail. “We didn’t hold the bass for an extended period of time.”
The fish were held for about an hour and released.
“The fish that were still alive, but unable to swim away, we recorded as mortality,” Klotz said.
Klotz summarized the immediate mortality of black bass captured during open tournaments on Deep Creek Lake in the years 1997 through 2000.
During those four seasons, 5,155 bass were caught with an immediate mortality of 4 percent. My calculator shows that means 206 bass died. That is an average of 50 per year, according to Klotz’s numbers.
The tournaments are conducted from June through October. Klotz has evidence that smallmouth bass are a little more susceptible to post-tournament death than are the largemouth.
Of the 1,970 largemouth bass caught, 2 percent died. However, 5.3 percent of the 3,185 smallmouth bass that were captured went on to perish.
“We require the tournament officials to take any dead bass with them, rather than throw them in the lake,” Klotz said.
During 2009, 21 tournaments have taken place or will take place on the large impoundment in Garrett County, though six of the events are for walleye, not bass, according to information supplied by Patty Manown of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
The most boats allowed in any single tournament is 60. The total number of boats in all tournaments is 675 with the average being 32.
If there is a question to be asked about this situation, perhaps it is this. “Is it acceptible that 4 percent of the bass caught during a tournament at Deep Creek Lake go on to die?”
Klotz said there are two bass tournaments per year conducted on Jennings Randolph Lake and some club bass tournaments held on Lake Habeeb in Rocky Gap State Park.
Contact Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com
