Family <b>fishing</b> in the spotlight

It is not often that we get to participate and volunteer in events that create much joy, pleasure, happiness and satisfaction as has been happening at the Courtenay and District Fish and Game Protective Association (CDFGPA) over the past two weeks with the Fishing Forever Program and culminating with the Family Fishing – Father’s Day celebration this weekend.

I was unable to participate with the former but I had great pleasure in volunteering this past weekend. Once in a while somebody says just the right things in the right way in expressing gratitude to those who made the events a success, as was the case expressed by Evelyne Posetha in a card of appreciation she presented to Jan MacKenzie and Brian Allen –  the joint chairpersons of the events. Evelyne spent much of her volunteer time at the fish cleaning table – on behalf of all of us, thank you, Evelyne.

Evelyne’s card of appreciation:

“Dear Jan and Brian,

"It is an honour to have worked with you both and for such good causes.

"Many thanks for your guidance, your generosity and all the support you give to the volunteers. You are both 'Awesome,'

Keep up your 'Great Work.'

PS  I will wear the beautiful polo shirt with pride as soon as I am not cleaning fish. …

Evelyne Posetha.”

Inscription on the card read – “Kindness spreads like wildflowers … leaving happiness behind.”

The celebration at the CDFGPA did not happen in isolation of many other connected events. First the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC made the fishing possible with the generous supply of catchable rainbow trout they stocked in the ponds. Thrifty Foods of Courtenay generously supplied free treats of hotdogs, pop and bottled water to all participants on both days. These annual treats are a huge gift to all concerned and a sincere thank you to the Thrifty stores for their generosity and corporate support.

I took some time out from my volunteering to wander around the pond with my camera. Pictured with the column are a father and son enjoying some quiet, secluded fishing on a very crowded pond. It is an appropriate Father’s Day celebration where the child is spending some special time with father. In the process they are both getting an infusion of emotional medicine that helps to close the nature deficit deficiency so common in our increasingly disconnected society.

I spent most of my time putting together small containers of worms, (thanks to Dennis) and Power Bait plus untangling lines on what seemed like an endless chain of novice anglers with injured tackle. Throughout the whole process I never talked to one unhappy participant.

One lasting effect from the weekend will be the memory of large numbers of novice anglers and happy children and others who had caught a nice trout to take home for supper. It is reassuring to know that the celebration taking place in the club pond was being reenacted throughout the province wherever people were gathering to celebrate this Family Fishing – Father’s Day Weekend.

The overriding purpose of the Family Fishing Weekend is to interest families and others to taking up the family oriented hobby of recreational fishing in our thousands of freshwater lakes and rivers and rich marine waters that make up our beautiful and bountiful province. Indeed the promotion of free family fishing weekends in now a national custom.

Earlier in the week I came across an interesting little magazine-style booklet – Vancouver Island Fishing 2013. It is free and is available at tackle shops, tourist information centres and other places. It is published by Goldstream Publishing who are the people that produce the Angler’s Atlas.

The booklet features 22 Vancouver Island lakes with contour lines, special information pertinent to the lake plus directions on how to get to each lake. In my view it is a gold mine for freshwater anglers. On page 34 there is a detailed 2012 stocking list for each lake. It would be an interesting challenge to fish all 22 of them in one season.

In closing, I wonder what it takes for Valley politicians to think beyond athletic fields and stadiums to bring Maple Lake into the public domain – what a jewel it would be, developed as an urban family fishing lake.

Ralph Shaw is a master fly fisherman who was awarded the Order of Canada in 1984 for his conservation efforts. In 20 years of writing a column in the Comox Valley Record it has won several awards.

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Alabama striped <b>bass</b> family tree roots likely all now sprout from rearing ponds

O.P. Harrison of Mobile caught this 12.6-pound striped bass on a live shrimp in late February while fishing for speckled trout in the Theodore Industrial Canal. (Courtesy O.P. Harrison)  

MOBILE, Alabama -- On the same day news broke that 65-year-old James Bramlett of Dora had caught a potential state- and world-record 70-pound striped bass from the Black Warrior River in northeast Alabama, pictures of a 12.6-pound striper landed near Mobile began circulating through social media.

O.P. Harrison of Mobile was fishing for speckled trout in the Theodore Industrial Canal that late-February day when the fish hit a small live shrimp he was fishing on 6-pound-test line.

While Bramlett's fish will most likely replace the 55-pounder Charles Totty pulled from the Tallapoosa River in 1959, Harrison's will be admired simply because not many people in the southwest part of the state have ever seen one in its scales.

Few people around Mobile target stripers. Like Harrison's fish, they are rare bycatch that eats a bait a fisherman is using to target another species.

While Bramlett's huge fish was the result of intensive restocking of Atlantic and Gulf striped bass in reservoirs above dams across the Alabama River since 1979, the genetic origins of Harrison's fish are a little bit murkier.

Striped bass were once common in the rivers and estuarine environment of the northern Gulf coast, according to information from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has overseen an interstate fishery management plan guiding the species' recovery since 1986.

They were found from Texas to the Suwannee River in Florida, and inland hundreds of miles up the Alabama River and Tombigbee River systems and to St. Louis on the Mississippi River.

Historical reports indicate the fish were landed commercially from the late 1800s through the early 1960s. Except for a remnant population of Gulf-strain striped bass in the Apalachicola River system in northwest Florida and infrequent catch reports in a few other river systems, they are no longer common throughout their range.

While the Alabama conservation department Web site contains information stating that there "may" still be a native population of Gulf striped bass migrating through the Mobile Bay estuary, Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division District V chief fisheries biologist Dave Armstrong, who's based on the Mobile Bay Causeway, said not enough is known to say if native Gulf-strain stripers still swim state water.

"As far as if we have a run or not, I believe we are more likely sustaining a semi-resident population derived from previous stocking efforts," Armstrong said. "These fish do have the instinct to run and they'll cover a lot of ground."

Armstrong said that instinct likely contributes to the large congregations of striped bass - and some hybrid bass - that gather just below Claiborne Lock and Dam on the Alabama River and Coffeeville Lock and Dam across the Tombigbee River.

James Bramlett and his wife Janice stand with the 70-pound striped bass he caught from the Black Warrior River on Feb. 28. The fish broke the existing 53-year-old Alabama state record for the species by 15 pounds and is potentially a world record for landlocked striped bass. (Joe Songer/jdsonger@al.com)  

"Those fish are most likely resident fish that are taking advantage of the abundant shad numbers just below the dams," he said. "They also prefer to live in the cool, running water just below the dams, especially during the hotter months."

Ben Raines, an avid diver and knowledgeable fisherman from Fairhope, reported seeing a single 10-pound striped bass as he and it swam along the rock jetties at Perdido Pass in 2008.

Raines said there could have been other stripers around that he just did not see.

The reasons for the decline of native striped bass along the northern Gulf coast are speculative, according to the USFWS.

Along with the impacts of commercial fishing, environmental alterations, the construction of dams across traditional spawning corridors and industrial and agricultural pollution have also been implicated as probable causes of the drastic decline of striped bass.

Alabama's Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division began restocking reservoirs above dams in the northern part of the state in 1979.

In 1985, the first striped bass were stocked below the dams across the Tombigbee River at Coffeeville and at Claiborne on the Alabama River, according to WFF stocking data provided by Armstrong. Those fish were Atlantic-strain stripers, which were stocked for the first seven years.

The first Gulf striped bass fingerlings were stocked beginning in 1992 and the Atlantic-strain fish have been used in only two years since.

Including that first stocking, more than 2.1 million Atlantic and Gulf striped bass fingerlings have been released at the confluence of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, where they form the Mobile River.

Armstrong said the site is used because it provides the fingerlings with more than one option in deciding which way to swim upon release, the water's deep and cool and there's plenty to eat.

Over the past seven years, an average of 65,000 fingerlings have been released between May 14 and June 2, according to the WFF data.

Fisheries biologists have concluded that natural reproduction is occurring in the upper Coosa River near Rome, Ga., resulting in large numbers of naturally produced striped bass showing up at Weiss Reservoir in northeast Alabama and other Coosa River impoundments, according to the WFF.

Studies on reproductive possibilities among striped bass stocked just above the Mobile-Tensaw Delta have not been done, Armstrong said.

No one can say for sure, but 2.1 million-to-1 odds suggest that O.P. Harrison's fish was probably a 6- to 8-inch long fingerling when it was stocked as much as a decade ago and more than 30 miles from where it was eventually caught.

It's intriguing to believe, however, that at least one true Gulf striped bass still swims along generations-old migration routes in Alabama, especially if it has a mate.

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Local lake called one of best for family <b>fishing</b> fun

MEADVILLE — Pymatuning Lake: 17,000-plus acres of family-friendly, fish-filled northwestern Pennsylvania freshwater, attractively nestled (by some well-read accounts) right between Port Isabel in Texas and Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee.

Does that make sense? Not really?

Well, check out the May issue of Game & Fish magazine, and it will: That nationwide, all-things-outdoors publication has put Pymatuning Lake at Number 7 (right between Port Isabel and Reelfoot Lake) in its “10 Top Destinations for Family Fishing Vacations” in 2012.

“Shallow, stained, cover-laden and filled to the gills with crappie, walleyes, bass and bluegills, Pymatuning Lake beckons families because the fish stack up in obvious spots during early summer and eat quite readily,” article author, Georgia-based outdoors writer/photographer Jeff Samsel, writes in the recently-published “10 Top.”

Samsel, who couldn’t immediately be reached for additional comment, gave Pymatuning the notable designation of being among the nation’s best family fishing spots following a recent guided tour of the lake and Pymatuning State Park, according to Juanita Hampton, executive director of the Crawford County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

That honor’s been bestowed following reports earlier this year that Pymatuning — which attracts around 3.3 million visitors a year — brings the largest economic impact of any state park in Pennsylvania, according to a study conducted by Penn State University in coordination with the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

With the summer season getting into full swing, those designations are “fabulous (news) for our area,” said Hampton. “This is huge. ...The most important thing about this destination,” she added, “is that it’s family-oriented.”

And any way the lines are cast out that way, “it’s some darn good fishing,” she said.

Ask some of those most familiar with Pymatuning, and they’ll say it’s getting better all the time. Park Manager Pete Houghton, for example, said the recent Memorial Day weekend was, from his view and 36 years’ experience, “the best one ever” for fishing and overall park visitation. From then on, “everyone’s (been) getting fish — it’s phenomenal,” he said.

Joel Brown, longtime member and president of the Pymatuning Lake Association, credits that growing anglers’ success (and growing fish populations) to the ongoing work by that association’s volunteers in conjunction with Houghton and other park and state outdoors officials. From population-boosting and habitat-establishing projects to general maintenance and a host of other continuing efforts, “you put it all together, and, I’m telling you, the fishing is fantastic,” Brown said.

The Game & Fish designation is “spot-on,” said Brown.

And “as long as there’s fish in this lake,” he added, “everything else is going to take care of itself — all the hotels, businesses, restaurants ... it’s really showing” how the draw of the fish in turn positively affects the local economic climate-at-large.

Economic impact

Pymatuning’s visitors spent a total of more than $83.6 million on their trips to the park in 2010, according the PSU/DCNR study released earlier this year. That spending, according to the study, directly resulted in more than $78.3 million in commercial sales; the creation of 1,178 jobs; $27.3 million-plus in labor income; and more than $43.5 million in “value added” — that includes profits, rents, indirect business taxes and more — to the region’s economy.

The economic impact of Pennsylvania’s most-visited park, Presque Isle State Park in Erie — which had roughly 4 million visitors in 2010 — ranked just under Pymatuning in terms of economic impact, according to the study’s findings.

The park — and by extension, the entire region — “has so much going for it,” said Hampton.

Did you know?

Pymatuning Lake has been named among the “10 Top Destinations for Family Fishing Vacations” in 2012 in the May issue of Game & Fish magazine, a nationwide all-things-outdoors publication.

Here’s the “Top 10” list:

1. Black Hills (South Dakota)

2. Everglades City and 10,000 Islands (Florida)

3. Kenai Peninsula (Alaska)

4. Mammoth Lakes (California)

5. Niagara River (New York)

6. Port Isabel (Texas)

7. Pymatuning Lake (Pennsylvania)

8. Reelfoot Lake (Tennessee)

9. San Diego (California)

10. White River (Arkansas)

To read the entire article, visit gameandfishmag.com/2012/05/23/10-top-destinations-for-family-fishing-vacations.

Learn more

-n For more information about Pymatuning State Park and its public facilities and events, call the park office at (724) 932-3142, email pymatuning@state.pa.us or visit dcnr.state.pa.us.

- To read “The Economic Significance and Impact of Pennsylvania State Parks” — a recently-issued study conducted by Penn State University in coordination with the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources —visit dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/thingstoknow/economicimpact/index online.

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