A Conservation Conversation- Behind the scenes at B.A.S.S. tournaments

    As graduate students, we are afforded opportunities to work and collaborate with a range of people in fisheries and conservation sciences. In one of those instances, we had the pleasure of having dinner with Bass Anglers Sportsman Society’s (B.A.S.S.) own Noreen Clough (the recently retired B.A.S.S. conservation director and a former US Fish and Wildlife Service regional director). Over dinner we discussed the pros and cons of tournament fishing. Coming from B.A.S.S., Noreen told us why black bass conservation mattered so much to bass fishing organizations.

Figure 1 - Sportfishing for largemouth bass

    B.A.S.S. annually sponsors dozens of bass fishing tournaments nationwide. These include large opens like the 2013 Southern Open, a three-day event hosted at Lake Tohopekaliga, Florida. These Opens draw hundreds of amateur and professional anglers. For the first two days, each professional angler strives to catch their five-fish bag limit (the final day of fishing pits only the top-12 per class against each other). In the first two days of fishing up to 1,500 largemouth bass can be caught per day! To non-tournament anglers, these intensive collection events can be alarming. “Aren’t you killing or harming all those fish?” is a question that might be asked. To help answer this question and cast more scientific eyes towards these tournaments, Noreen invited us down to watch fish-handling practices at the 2013 Southern Open.