Smith Lake Stripers - Alabama Department of Conservation and ...

Smith Lake
Stripers
The striped bass fishery is having a larger economic
impact on the area than anyone imagined.
What makes a striped bass a trophy?
As has been said countless times about beauty, it’s in the eyes of
the beholder. Whether it’s a 20-pound-plus lunker or an average
fish of 10 pounds, it has been determined that the striped bass
in Lewis Smith Lake in north Alabama are all trophies in terms of
economic impact to the region.
Dr. Terry Hanson of Auburn University completed an economic
impact study earlier this year on striper fishing at Lewis Smith
Lake in north Alabama with revelations of how important that
fishery is to that local area and the state.
BILL VINES
Bubba Wells with a Smith Lake striper
Any investment with a return of 2.5 to 1 would be a hot ticket
on the financial market, but the Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries
Division’s Fisheries Section didn’t realize how valuable the striper
fishery is at Lewis Smith until Hanson, an associate professor
who specializes in aquaculture economics, published the study
this spring.
12 Outdoor Alabama | July 2012

By David Rainer, Staff Writer
George W. Ponder, III
Big Economic Impact
Because striped bass require long
stretches of river to promote a spawn, the
stripers in Lewis Smith do not reproduce.
The Fisheries Section has annually stocked
stripers for almost 30 years in the deep,
clear lake. Lewis Smith is an ideal reservoir
to maintain the genetic purity of the Gulf
strain of striped bass. The lake is stocked
each year with a number of fingerlings
calculated to make sure the population is
plentiful but does not impact other popular
fish species, like largemouth and spotted
bass, crappie, catfish and bream.
What Hanson discovered is the striper
stocking efforts make greater financial
sense than anyone ever imagined. Hanson
said one of the objectives for the study was
to determine the management goals for the
fishery that would best meet the expectations
of the striper anglers.
“Another objective was to try to find out
what striped bass anglers were spending
there,” Hanson said. “We also wanted to
find out how much of those expenditures
were local, that is within 40 miles of the
reservoir, and how much of those expenditures
were outside that local area. And what
did those expenditures mean to the local
economy in terms of the multiplier effect,
but also in tax dollars to the local governments
and state government.”
Hanson said gathering the pertinent
data at Lewis Smith was not an easy task. A
Master of Science graduate student, Ryan
Lothrop, spent eight days per month interviewing
anglers in two four-day sessions
per month for 12 months. After the on-water
interview, anglers were called by phone
and asked a few more questions.
“So it took a lot of time to get all the data
collected and entered into a database to be
able to analyze it,” Hanson said.
What Hanson and his students discovered
was that striped bass fishing is a very
popular, profitable activity on Lewis Smith
Lake. When Hanson presented his report
to Fisheries Chief Stan Cook and Assistant
Chief Nick Nichols, the Auburn professor
had some unexpected information.
“In talking to Stan and Nick, they were
surprised that 23 percent of the fishing
effort on the lake was for striped bass,”
Hanson said. “They didn’t think it was that
high. It was a surprising, important part of
the study.”
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Ryan Northrop
An Auburn graduate student
gathers data from Lewis Smith
Lake anglers.
The analysis
indicated that
for every $1 the
Fisheries Section
spends to stock
striped bass at
Lewis Smith,
between $2 and
$3 in tax revenue
is generated
for the local
governments.
Hanson’s study
also revealed that
about $700,000 is
spent annually just
fishing for striped
bass on Lewis
Smith Lake.
“Then you have
probably a 2.5 multiplier,
which means
there is about $2.1
million that bounces
around the local economy from striper fishing,”
he said. “The interesting thing about
striped bass fishermen was that about 81 percent
of their expenditures were done within 40
miles of the reservoir in Winston, Walker and
Cullman counties.
“Another thing was the percentage of
guides hired was really high. The way that
turned out is that there are people who don’t
know the lake but want to catch a 10- to
20-pound fish. They were there for only a
limited time so why not get a guide and pay
him to take you to the spot where you’re most
likely to catch striped bass. It’s wise to hire a
guide, especially for these trophy-sized fish.”
Cost Versus Benefit
Hanson did a benefit-cost analysis in terms
of tax dollars to the local three counties and
the tax dollars to the state. In both cases, the
benefit was greater than the cost.
The analysis indicated that for every $1 the
Fisheries Section spends to stock striped bass
at Lewis Smith, between $2 and $3 in tax revenue
is generated for the local governments.
Add in the benefit to the State of Alabama,
and the striped bass fishery at Lewis Smith
generates a total of between $8 and $12 in tax
revenue for each $1 spent.
The summary from Dr. Hanson’s 2010
study reads:
“Striped bass anglers had the highest expenditures
per visit when compared to anglers
targeting other species. Greater than 80 percent
of striped bass angler expenditures were
in the local tri-county area of Cullman, Walker
and Winston. Annual aggregated expenditures
were approximately $0.74 million for striped
bass anglers and approximately $3.03 million
for all targeted fish species at Lewis Smith
Lake in 2010. The majority of striped bass
angler expenditures were for fuel and general
sales (fishing equipment, groceries, restaurant,
launch fees, repair), followed by guide service
and minimal lodging expenses. Expenditures
by striped bass anglers generated $44,232 in
local and State of Alabama tax revenue; local
governments received $11,880 of this amount,
which went into their education, road maintenance
and general fund accounts.”
Guide Experience
Bill Vines, who started guiding on Lewis
Smith Lake in 1988, has made a career out
of the striped bass fishery. “I’m either fishing
or catching bait,” Vines said. “I went to UAB
to be a school teacher and wound up fishing
more than anything. I can think of about a
dozen or so people who guide for stripers on
Smith right now. We’ve got people anywhere
from a retired county sheriff to a convenience
store owner guiding.
“It does mean a lot to our economy. I had
a guy from Greenville, S.C., call me the other
day. He’s coming in, bringing his boat, and he’s
renting a house for the week, which adds up.”
Vines said he gets customers from all
over who want to striper fish, even one as
far away as Scotland. “The guy from Scotland
came over here to look at a factory, but
he wanted to go fishing while he was here,”
Vines said. “The striper is a very good fish
for kids. They’re good for a family outing.
We use live bait, mainly. They fight similar
to redfish. They don’t jump, but they pull
hard. And a 10-pounder is pretty much a
run-of-the-mill size.”
Vines said the lake constantly changes in
terms and sizes and numbers of stripers. Right
now it’s a numbers game. “Right now we’re
not catching as many trophy fish as we did a
few years ago,” he said. “There for a while, we’d
have a 40-pounder caught just about every
year. We still catch a lot of fish in the mid to
upper 20s, but the high 30s are pretty scarce.
“I think it’s just a cycle. Every lake goes
through this. The thing is we’re catching lots
of 10- to 20-pound fish. Used to, if you caught
one 10- to 12-pound fish a day, that was good.
Now a lot of times we’ll catch 20 to 25 a day
with a 10-pound average. That’s pretty good
fishing. The best time to catch a big fish is
February through April. Then we catch lots of
fish at night during the summer. In October
and November, the fish will start schooling
and move up the lake, and the fishing gets
really good.”
14 Outdoor Alabama | July 2012

The Fisheries Section truck releases striped bass into Lewis Smith
Lake. Approximately 63,000 fingerlings produced at the state’s
Marion fish hatchery are stocked in Lewis Smith Lake each year.
Stocking Efforts
Nichols said the striper stocking started
at Lewis Smith in 1983 for a reason that had
nothing to do with economics.
“About that time, the fisheries agencies
in Georgia, Florida and Alabama got
together with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service to try to restore and conserve our
native striped bass, the Gulf-strain,” Nichols
said. “Lewis Smith Lake was the only large
impoundment at that time that had never
been stocked with the Atlantic strain of
striped bass. Everybody working on this
project wanted to have a place where they
could stock the best examples of Gulf-stock
stripers they could get their hands on.
There had been a mixing of the Gulf- and
Atlantic-strain stripers pretty much everywhere
else in the Southeast.”
Nichols said the Fisheries Section now
stocks around 63,000 fingerlings in Smith
Lake each year, a rate that has been successful
in maintaining the fishery in balance
with the lake’s forage base. “What it has
evolved into now is that Smith Lake is a
brood fish repository in the ongoing effort
to maintain the Gulf-strain striped bass,” he
said. “We get brood fish from the lake and
spawn them at our Marion hatchery. Then
some of the fingerlings go back to Smith
Lake. We’re managing that population to
maintain as much genetic diversity as possible.
Instead of doing one or two big stockings
each year from a few crosses of adult
striped bass, we’ll do as many as a dozen
small stockings from multiple crosses of
adult fish. We want as many parents as possible
to produce the fingerlings going back
into the lake. We also introduce some Gulfstrain
fish from Florida or sources from the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. We do a lot
of fish exchanges with Florida and Georgia
to maintain this Gulf strain. So it goes
much beyond just Smith Lake.”
Nichols said the stocking effort has been
very successful with a well-established and
utilized fishery. Striped bass is the secondmost
sought-after species behind black
bass. Nichols also said it is gratifying to see
the stocking efforts have significant value
other than recreational benefits.
“As a state agency, we’ve been doing research
studies on our fisheries for 40 to 50
years,” he said. “We’ve been evaluating our
fisheries, whether largemouth at Guntersville
or crappie at Weiss Lake. We’ve been
studying those populations from a biological
standpoint. But what we haven’t done
much of is study those fisheries from an
economic standpoint. In other words, what
is the value of this resource?
“Dr. Hanson’s research is a pilot study.
We wanted to consider that economic value
as part of the decision-making process. We
knew the striped bass fishery was important.
We knew it from our guys being on
the lake and the number of anglers fishing
for stripers. We were surprised at how big it
was and how popular it was. We didn’t realize
the full economic value of it. We knew it
was a significant value, but we didn’t realize
the proportion of it.”
As it turns out, the stocking effort
is what one would call a “no-brainer”
in terms of economics for the lake and
surrounding counties.
“From our standpoint, it’s not costing
us much to do it, but there’s a huge surplus
of revenue generated by the money we
spend to stock the fish,” Nichols said. “Plus,
the anglers get a very good value for what
they’re spending. That makes us all feel
real good.”
Future Studies
Dr. Hanson and his graduate students
are currently working on a similar study
of Lake Guntersville, rated one of the best
black bass lakes in the country.
“Guntersville is a much larger lake,”
Hanson said. “The bass fishing up there is
world-class. We’re not going to be looking
at just striped bass. We will focus on
whatever the anglers are fishing for — black
bass, crappie, sunfish, catfish or striped
bass. We’ll be looking at fishing effort on
the lake, catch per effort on the lake, their
expenditures while they fish and why they
fish there.
“It’s a huge lake, wide and 26 miles long.
It’s a tremendous effort. And we’ll have six
aerial flights per month where we count
boats so we can extrapolate the information
taken from the creel surveys for the entire
lake. It’s a large operation.
“The second year we’re going to be focusing
on tournament fishing. These Bass
Anglers Sportsman Society tournaments
can bring in millions to the cities and counties
up there. Plus, there are tremendous
numbers of smaller local tournaments.”
Lewis Smith
Lake is one of
11 stops on
the Alabama
Bass Trail.
Visit www.alabamabasstrail.org
for more information.
www.outdooralabama.com 15