November 20, 2024 • 39 mins
Spencer Graves caught up with Kay Donaldson of the Alabama Bass Trail (ABT,) Lee Holmes of Sylacauga Marine and Gene Gilliland, the Director of Conservation for BASS (Bassmaster,) on the current proposal of a 14-20 inch, tournament only slot limit for the Coosa River.
The Coosa River is 6 lakes, all connected with dams, in Alabama. Weiss, Neely Henry, Logan Martin, Lay, Mitchell and Jordan. Most of these lakes are used by tournament anglers on a routine basis.
The Coosa River is 6 lakes, all connected with dams, in Alabama. Weiss, Neely Henry, Logan Martin, Lay, Mitchell and Jordan. Most of these lakes are used by tournament anglers on a routine basis.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The slot limit proposed on the Kusa River has a
lot of tournament anglers pissed off because how could you
not take this as a direct attack upon tournament angling.
My name is Spencer Graves. Thanks so much for being here.
I'm going to be joined with Lee Holmes of Siliconga
Marine and Kay Donaldson of the Alabama Bass Trail in
(00:20):
just a few We're also going to hear from Gene Gilliland,
who is the director of Conservation for bass or Bass Master.
Here's some things that I want everybody to know. The
Cusa River is six lakes. This study was conducted on
Neelie Henry, just one of the six, and they took
three years to compile all of this together. Now, those
(00:42):
are some of the things that we do know. If
there's more information than that, then I welcome anybody involved
in this study to get in touch with me because
we would all love to hear it. Over eight hundred
thousand dollars was spent on this study in this survey,
and the findings are alarming, and they are alarming, and
if if you're a tournament angler, they should be alarming.
But what truly goes into this, It's not simply what
(01:06):
we saw in the proposal. There's way more at stake.
There's things that happen under the water that impact the
fisheries more than just somebody casting a line and catching
a fish. As tournament anglers, There's things that we do
when we handle fish. There's things that we do when
we handle fish that ultimately can impact the care of
(01:29):
those fish and what happens when we release those fish
back into the water. We see them swim off, but
do they continue to live an hour or maybe a
day later. These are all things that are up for discussion,
but the problem is no one wants to have the discussion.
It just seems like here's a slot limit. We're planning
(01:52):
on pushing this forward. Now, there's a lot of personalities
that are involved in this, and there's a lot of
people that need to know about this, So let's break
it down. The introduction of catchway release on some major
platforms like Major League Fishing has turned a lot of
people's attention towards is that something viable that we can do? Kay,
you just mentioned the whole having cell phone reception and
(02:15):
having internet capabilities. It's not always possible. We all know
that as outdoorsman it's really hard to do. Is that
something that would limit the ABT for being able to
do catchway and release?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yes, I mean, and not just that.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I mean you also have to look at thirty percent
of our anglers that fish thalbambaso are over the age
of fifty five.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
A lot of them are over the age of sixty.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Just the sheer of ability to be able to work
your cell phones and things like that. You got to
get your glasses on, you got to do all the things.
So it is a little prohibitive and it would really
narrow our market reach to a younger audience.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
But it's not to say that somebody over the age
of fifty five couldn't figure it out right, that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
They couldn't, but we can tell you when we went
to online registration. You know, it is something that you
have to be conditioned with.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Because I know for a fact that if I was
facing fifteen thousand dollars as a prize in mind, I
might sit there and go, well, I probably need to
figure out how to do this.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah, if everyone was forced to do that, maybe, but
if only certain organizations were forced to do it, then
they would be more conditioned to go fish.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Those that did not require that.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Also on that even in my trail, the Silicogga Marine Trail.
What you know, we would have a large investment just
to buy the equipment to do that. And it's not
going to work at all our lakes, and you were
fishing in the rain and everything else. And then what
about all the guys, you know, we can't exclude them,
they're giant too. What about all the guys that are
(03:38):
having the weekend tournament, the Shriners tournament, the tournaments that
raise money for churches. I had a tournament at my
store two weeks ago for ARC We had five hundred
guys there for dinner. We had two hundred boats in
that tournament. We raised sixty two thousand dollars that day
for charity that goes on all over the place. And
(03:59):
all that gets left out at that point. And the
guys that are wanting to fish a Friday nighter are
a club like hook Ems that I fish in in Solicago,
small club of twenty five guys. There is no way
to accomplish that at this present time.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Some of the things that we're going to discuss in
this because I think every point that I've heard over
the last week or so conversations that I've had with
the two of you individually, also some tournament anglers that
I've discussed with. I've even gone all the way up
to talking to some state senators. I almost talked to
Kittie Britt and Tommy Tubberville because I was like, you
know what, you might as well go all the way
(04:35):
to the state. But the one thing that I've learned
from all of this is a lot of people have
some good ideas about what we can do. The problem
is we're living in extremes. You have a slot limit
of fourteen to twenty which, if you know anything about fishing,
a fourteen inch fish, large mouth bass is probably going
to weigh one point four inches point four pounds. That
(04:56):
will take you all the way to the twenty inch limit,
which is about four point three six pounds. That's a
good amount of fish between those numbers that are in
the Kusa River, and those are pretty much the ones
that you see won in tournaments. We're not seeing massive
bags coming out of the Coosa River. But it's a
fun chain to fish, and it's a fun chain to
(05:17):
be on UH and it does a lot for the
local community. Like some of the economic stuff. The things
that I'm hearing from the state legislators and the people
that we've elected to office is the DCNR has the
ability to make any recommendation in any rule that they
want to put on the bodies of water within the
state Alabama. That's one. The second one is we can
(05:41):
look at this and we can go, Okay, catchway release
may not be good for certain tournament trails, but could
it be utilized in some of them? And should it?
Then we look at the size of the tournaments you
were talking about some of the local ones. Some local
tournaments like a Wednesday Night or Tuesday night or that's
anywhere from five to fifteen maybe thirty boats max for most.
(06:03):
Then you look at some big trails like the ABT
brings in how many for an ABT North Division.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Two hundred and twenty five blutes two hundred and.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Twenty five bucks, right, so you have a considerable distance.
And if you look at the number of fish that
are caught, And then you have high school fishing, which
is something not a lot of people are talking about.
We're trying to grow the outdoors and we're trying to
get kids active in the outdoors. When I was a kid,
we didn't have the ability to go to college to
fish under a college scholarship. That's something that tournament anglers
(06:33):
at the high school level are trying to do. Should
we limit those tournaments to a three fish maximum? Should
we do a three fish limit on those Should they
be doing catchway release? Should we have over two hundred
and fifty boats in high school? Should they be able
to battle at the high school level between their school
and then send the best three teams to get into
(06:54):
a more elite thing like an MLF or some of
the other national trails or you know some even the
bigger state trails. These are all things that I feel
like we need to talk about. The numbers that we're
seeing from the reports that came out the fourteen to
twenty inth slot limit are very very confusing. I mean,
we're hearing that they put transmitters in fish, and one
(07:14):
hundred percent of the spotted bass that they put transmitters
in were caught. But then they follow it up and
they say actually more than well, you can't have on
more than one hundred percent, Like mathematically that's not right
going forward. K on the tournament side with those things
that I just laid out. What do you think the
best course of action would be for the DCNR to
(07:37):
look at as a viable option.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
You know, I think there's a compromise. I think you go.
We've always operated under a twelve inch minimum on large
mouth and spot of bass on the Coasta River. I
think pretty much standard throughout tournaments. That's where we've been.
When you take that and then take it from a
fourteen to twenty inch slot, that's a very aggressive approach.
I think there's some room for a compromise there. I
(08:01):
don't think anyone in the state of Alabama, or anyone
driving from Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, whatever to fish Alabambastro
expects to go to lay Lake and catch eight or
nine pounders. I think they expect to catch four and
five possibly a six. So I think that is what
we would like to achieve, is to have a healthy
fishery for four or fives and sixes, and I think
(08:21):
that can be done with a smaller slot limit. I
also want to say I'm not a biologist, I'm a
marketing person. I'm a tournament organizer, but I also have
the strictest dead fish penalty in all of bass fishing,
we have a one pound dead fish penalty and you
can only weigh one fish that's dead. So we believe
in conservation. We spend one hundred thousand dollars on fish
(08:42):
care equipment this year, so we believe in that, and
we wouldn't be here fighting this fight if we didn't
think that there was some type of compromise that can
be done.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Now, you did mention the release rate, because there are
a lot of misnomers out there. If you go to
a tournament schedule and you see that five fish caught,
five fish were released in, maybe one person weighed in
a dead fish at some point, these are all very
small numbers compared to what some tournaments bring. It's a
release rate, it's not a live release rate. So we
(09:13):
release those fish back in. They're alive when they leave
the boat. Those numbers are counted, But then it's the
couple days after that. Some people who live on lakes
or just are out there fishing will go to social
media and they will say, look at all these dead
fish that we're seeing. We had that on Lay Lake,
the northern part the river section of Lay Lake, there
was a massive fishkill. Was it a tournament. I don't
(09:35):
think so. I think it was the fact that they
weren't moving water and it was stagnant for so long.
So biology wise, none of us are biologists. I wouldn't
even want to point somebody to go, this is the
real facts about what that is. But the reality does
exist that all the things that impact a fishery are
more than just two hundred and twenty five boats going
(09:56):
out and trying to catch five.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Fish one time of year.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
You know, most the time we visit tournament, we visit
a location one time a year. There is an occasion
where we'll take our one hundred series the same place
we took a regular series of two hundred and twenty
five boats. But like you mentioned, there's a lot of
things we had. The same thing happened at Gunnersville and
it was post Alabam Bastrail, but there was a nine
day period where they did not pull water to keep
ill grass from moving into Browns Creek where the power
(10:22):
boats were going to be. They didn't want that influx
of ell grass going into that area, so they agreed
that they would not pull water. Well that in June,
when you've had twelve days of over ninety five degrees.
That is going to delineate the auction level in that
water and it is going to cause deadfish. It happened
the same time that the situation on Lay Lake happened.
There's so many factors that affect dead fish, from tournaments
(10:46):
to the low aucyg level to when the lake turns
over to you know, chemicals that are released in the
in the water. I mean, I live on Wheeler. We
have fifty fortune five hundred companies. There's constantly an amount
of liquid that is in the water that the approves
and all of those things. You also have the fact
that you know, when these lakes were flooded one hundred
(11:07):
years ago, there's a lot of stumps and trees and
all the things that was there fifty years ago that
now have disintegrated or have gone back to the earth.
You don't have the ecosystem that you once had. Mike
McClellan at Alabam Power just sent me an email over
the weekend show and all the fish attractors that they deployed.
So they're trying to put those fish attractors back in
the water, but you can't do it at the rate
(11:29):
that they were there. Fifty thirty years ago, So you know,
there's a lot of things that play into this. I
think as fishing organizations, we do have to be top
of mind awareness of fish care. Lee and I both said,
you know, there's so much more that we can do,
and we're trying to work on that, but you know,
(11:50):
the economics of this and the objects of this is
really bad for the state of Alabama. We do hope
that there's cooler minds will prevail and we can get
some type of compromise, but we encourage anglers to be
you know, and mart mccagu who has won a ton
of money on our trail. The first time I ever
announced our dead fish penalty, we had a shouting match.
I mean it was loud talking, that's what I tend
(12:12):
to call it. But Mark also called me back in
three years and said, I want to tell you something.
I watch my fish more now than I ever have
because of how significant that dead fish penalty is. When
you go to places like Martin Likely, you know, like Jordan,
you know now I check my fish more than I
ever did before, and it's because of that strict penalty.
So anglers, tournament organizations and then also cities that host
(12:36):
these events. We can no longer allow people to travel
ten to fifteen miles off site for dands.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
You know, there are numerous things that I've seen from
going from a recreational fisherman to doing some of the
tournament stuff, and I'm by no means like really good
at it. I just enjoy the camaraderie. I enjoy the competition.
I like being out on the water just as anybody
who right. But the thing that I continue to go
back to, and I've said this to a couple guys,
(13:04):
and this definitely rattles the cages of some people, like
you were talking about with Mark McCaig. Sometimes you need
somebody to look in the face and go, this is
why we can't do what we're doing. I've said this
to several guys. The more tournament anglers jump on social
media and complain about the lakes, the more the DNR
(13:25):
is going to start looking at it. And it's not
necessarily good when they start looking at it. It's kind
of like, don't bite the hand that feeds you. If
they're going to put in regulations, which they're allowed to do,
they don't have to go through state legislation. They're allowed
to do that. If they're going to do that based
on complaints that they're seeing, it may not go in
the favor that you want. The worry that I have
(13:46):
is the economic impact that this has because most of
the towns that are along the Coosa River are not big,
and they determine and rely a lot on what tournament
and fishing brings. People going to restaurants, people stopping buy
tackle shops, going to Silicago Marine, buying a boat, getting
the boat service there, buying gas at a gas station,
(14:09):
stopping off and getting snacks, running hotels, getting airbnbs, finding campgrounds.
All these things impact your local area. And when local
areas don't have a lot, when you take that little
that they get, that's where the impacts really are. You're
probably going to see that at Silicago Marine.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Well, I a man, We've done a little bit of
a looking. You know, Let's say we sell one hundred boats,
one hundred bas boats in a year. That number is
going to get significantly dropped from this. But on one
hundred bass bots a year, the state collects one hundred
and twenty thousand dollars in tax from me. The county's
collecting about thirty four thousand dollars of tax from me.
(14:47):
My business has been there sixty years, and this will
virtually eliminate bass boat higher end sales. You know. And
one of their things they talk about only ninety percent
of the fishermen a tournament fishermen. Well, that's probably true
if you count everybody going crappie fishing, briom fishing, cat fishing,
all the different ways to fish. But ninety percent of
(15:10):
the money generated from fishing is from tournament fishing. Right,
That's where all that money comes from. And though you know,
you get into the thing hole Spencer, are they going
to say that Lee and Spencer sitting in a bass
boat can have five fish in our live well, but
none of them can be between fourteen and twenty inches.
(15:31):
They can say that Jim and Joe over here sitting
in a bass boat that's not in a tournament. Okay,
so this is the big thing. They can carry twenty
their Krell limits ten per man. They can carry twenty
of those fish home in a live well and clean
them and cook them and they never go back.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
Right.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And what a lot of guys continue to forget is
if I go out and catch ten fish, I can
still sit there and catch thirty forty fifty more. Absolutely,
but I can only keep ten, That's right. So what's
to say that I gut hook a fish and I go,
I don't want to keep that one. I throw it
back in the water. It's swam off. But then you know,
(16:10):
a guy a mile down finds a dead fish and
it happens to be the one. Not that I would know,
but it happens to be the one that I may
have just gut hooked. Well, that's now you know, bait
for a bird or for some other animal that wants
to eat that.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
But how are you gonna single out just the tournament fish?
Speaker 1 (16:27):
That's that's my whole thing with this entire deal is
if you're gonna look at a slot limit, you got
to put it on everybody. If you put a slot
limit of fourteen to twenty inches on everybody on the
Coosa River will decimate what people do on that lake.
It'll be a way, And what's happening now under the
water is just as important as what's happening on top
of it. When guys see boats and they're taking out
(16:50):
grass and they're eliminating structure, or just like you were
talking about earlier. K you have stumps that have been
in the Coosa River for hundreds of years. But then
you also have when they finally dammed these lakes up
in the sixties when this was a big thing in
the United States. A lot of those stumps are now disintegrating.
It's not nearly as good as it used to be.
(17:11):
So you have to look at habitat. If you don't
look at habitat, you're literally taking fish on a restocking
program and you're throwing them in. You're not giving them
a place to be homed. You're not giving them a
place to hunt, and then you're not giving the forage,
the bait an opportunity to get away to thrive the
next day. So we're promoting lean fish that could potentially
(17:34):
come out of restocking programs if we're not giving them
an actual house. But if we give them a house
and we restock, it's the best of both worlds.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
And they won't even allow us. I mean, you know,
uptil we went to the legislature about a year and
a half ago, we would request permits over and over
and over again. Biologists down there would not give them
to us. They don't want us to restock that is
a fact you got to lose. Look at any of
their emails they I'll say it. In fact, one made
(18:04):
a comment that you needed to get mortgage all of
our houses to make it do any good. They will
not give us a chance to restock these lakes. And see, well,
we went to the legislature and got that approved. Kay
Ive signed it. I still believe to this day some
of this is retaliation for us getting that done. And
that's what I'm always gonna believe. And that's an opinion.
(18:24):
I don't have facts to prove that, but why else
would immediately after that they come after only tournament fishermen.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
It is important to restock lakes when you have the
ability to give those fish somewhere that they can do
natively what they're supposed to do. That's right, which is one.
And look, so should we be talking about in addition
to having restocking, should we have local tournaments and clubs
and things like that? Really focus more on let's build
the habitat. Let's get more of those habitat devices out there,
(18:56):
Let's get more artificial brush piles that are out there.
I know they don't want guys flooding a pontoon boat
to go out there with a bunch of trees and
throw them in there. I understand that. But if we
do the artificial side, you know, are they just as
beneficial to fish populations as a static tree that somebody
puts in Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
I mean, I don't know if artificial fish attractors are
as good as someone going out and dumping a pontoon
boat full of cypress trees that they've cut, or Christmas
trees that we've collected, you know, after the holidays or whatever.
But you know, I do think that enhancing the habitat
is important, and you're going to have people on both
(19:34):
sides of that. There are people who believe that grass
is very important. You've got people that believe that grasses
is a nuisance. But on Wheeler, where I lived for
a long time, we were the little sister to Gunnersville
for a long time, we saw the grass come back
on Wheeler, absolutely no stocking done, but we saw the
(19:55):
fishing go up. We saw the cat traits go up,
we saw the weights go up. We saw the quality
of the bass the five and six pounders go up,
and the health of those bass. And that's the thing
that our team noticed the most when we started seeing
those five and six pounders come in is they were healthy,
they weren't beat up.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
You know, they.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Actually had somewhere to hide in the hot weather. They
had those ambush points to feed on and all those things.
So no stocking was done in Wheeler, but we got
the habitat back that we had never had, the habitat
that Gunnersville now has.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
So just imagine this. If you had the habitat like
you do now and you do a restocking program, you're
giving those fish an opportunity to really thrive. I think
the two really do work hand in hand. For Lee,
you being able to go to the state legislature and say, hey, listen,
this is really important. The one thing that I'm seeing
in this proposal that continues to miss is everybody's hyper
(20:47):
focused on just the slot limit. And the one thing
that I feel like the state of Alabama is not
doing a good job of is remembering that you're the
birthplace of bass fishing. Yeah, you are the state that
everybody in the world looks at and says, well, what
do they do in Alabama? Now you have certain states
like Florida, Texas, even places in California, which I don't
(21:10):
think California is a model for conservation at all. But
when you look at some of these places and they're
putting out big bags, we all have to remember that
certain lakes dictate how big fish can actually get. Lake
Fork is a massive body of water.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Yeah, but that's the one I want to discuss with you,
and they keep going back to it in their emails.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Because of the lunker program. Yeah, we never asked for that, right.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
What we're trying to accomplish here, in my opinions everybody
be able to catch fish and not go out there
and not catch fish and have the three and four
pounders out there more than they are because that's the
fish we like to catch in tournaments, and those are
the fish that people like to catch. We're not trying
to take six small lakes and turn them into Lake
(21:54):
Fork and everybody go catch eight pounders, which is still rare.
And that's or they're guiding us to. And they keep
going back in their emails from the two biologists to.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Like, but this is why, and I'll play Devil's advocate
on this. The reason why that happens is you have
anglers who sit behind a computer and they go, we
need programs like they have in Texas, and we need
programs like they have in Florida. Those are completely different
fisheries no matter how you look at it.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
Well, then also, you're gonna go and you're going to
do a study that I don't think was done very well.
You've already gave some of the stuff about it, and
you're going to do it on one lake.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
It's crazy to think that that would end.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
And then we're going to just eliminate the whole Cousa River.
It's crazy. And then the point that they are just
picking on tournament fishermen, what about everybody else that fishes?
Why don't we set down calmly with these people? And
we've offered to me Kay and a whole bunch of us.
There's things we are willing to agree to as a
(22:59):
fishing community because we want conservation too. We want good fish,
but maybe a thirteen to sixteen slot limit. They have
a thirteen to fifteen like we diw we now something
like that where we can still do what we love
and get those fish to a bigger age. You know,
(23:21):
you mentioned it. I've got some guys that weren't like
that you mentioned it, But I'm kind of with you.
What you know, maybe we've got to go to a
three fish limit on tournaments.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Well, and I'm not saying all tournaments now to be
fair the way either. The one that I'm thinking about
more than anything is the high school tournaments. I think
in Ky you could probably talk to this at the
bigger scale. I honestly think there's a lot of people
that are throwing tournaments because they've gotten so excited about
Like every time I put it on tournament, more and
more people show up. And that's not necessarily good. I mean, listen,
(23:52):
I love the ABT one hundred. I like the fact
that it takes an opportunity for you to get into that,
you know, it's a little more exclusive. Things like that.
We have gotten into a point in society where we're
like in the fishing society, where it's like, let's just
throw a tournament and get as many boats as we can.
Some of these high school tournaments, I mean it's dangerous.
(24:12):
It's dangerous to have that many boats out on the
water with a lot of inexperience. Now there's some high
school anglers that can outfish some of the top pros
that you see everywhere. I mean they're becoming sticks, but
there are far more numbers of kids who are just
learning the sport and trying to get into it. I
think a three fish limit is good there because it
still shows that you're good. You're still catching a lot
(24:33):
of fish if you're really good. But it also gives
a kid an opportunity who might be low in the
standings to have a really good string where he got
three fish, he's like, dang, I might actually do all
right and start to get that excitement. I think the
high school level is where it starts, but I also
think that's a good place for catchway and release. If
you get the number of boats down and you get
it more of you have a small tournament to qualify
(24:55):
for the bigger trail.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
You know, and the argument it's always going to be
is there's not enough tournaments for all the kids to
participate in. The amount of kids that want to fish
now is unbelievable. And it's great for people likely who
are going to get that next crew of anglers that
are going to come in and buy boats and all
the things, and it's great for our industry, but it
does have to be managed. I mean, you have certain
(25:19):
amount of MLB teams, you have a certain amount of
college teams, you have a certain amount of you know,
so even in other professional sports, you do have to
have a certain amount the.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Right football right, you know, and you're the forty one
guy out. You know, you didn't make the cut, you
didn't make the team. You know, it's not an opportunity
where everybody should be able to compete, like you have
to have these qualifiers in order to get there. There's
a reason why the bass Master elites are regarded as
the best because they have to go through an arduous
qualification in order to get there. Were some other tournaments
(25:51):
they basically just said to you an email and go,
we have an open spot. Why don't you jump in?
You can have the notation of who you are, right.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
There are some people that can participate in the A say, BFA.
There's some that can participate in bass because now bass
moves around with all the high school and all of that.
But when you really look at it, you know, we've
talked about everything from permitting to all kinds of things.
There are so many trails right now, and high school
has five or six trails, and it is I mean,
(26:18):
it's it's hard. You know, these guys need to be
taught conservation, they need to be taught sportsmanship and all
the things. I'll say that for people in my trail
as well. There are some that do it better than others.
We all have to take responsibility for that. But high
school fishing is the largest and the fastest growing segment
of our business, and we must pay attention to that.
They're the next Alabam Bastro angler. They're the next person
(26:40):
who's going to go to Silicong Marian and buy boat,
So we have to pay attention to that. But I
think we have to start now training them in the
way that we need them to go. We need to
teach them that conservation side of it as well as
the competitive side of it. And it's going to start
with those tournament organizers to is it better to have
(27:00):
two hundred and fifty boats or three hundred boats and
three hundred twenty boats depending on the tournament you're talking about,
or is it best for us to limit it to
one hundred and fifty. But what we've seen is when
one tournament trail says Okay, I'm going to limit it
to one hundred and fifty, then another diad or whoever
goes over here and says, well, my kid didn't get
in that one hundred and fifty. I'm going to start
this trail and we're going to have another seventy five, right,
(27:21):
and then now we're doing one hundred and the lake. Yeah,
now we're a one hundred and fifty on this end
of the lake. We're seventy five boats on this end
of the lake, and then somewhere in between at First Creek,
we're going to do a thirty five boat club tournament.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So you still have that, and I get it.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Unfortunately, sometimes as long as there's money to be paid
for entry fees, there's always going to be someone starting
a tournament trail.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
I've had a couple people give me some information. I
just want to really figure out what it is. I'd
love for the DNR to comment on this. Believe me,
I've invited several people from the state legislature and their
organization to jump on this. They didn't decline, but they
also didn't respond, So that'll just tell you whatever you want.
But what I would love to truly know about the
(28:04):
permit side of this is does Alabama actually have a
permit deal where you have to get a permit in
order to throw a tournament, because I don't think that
you know your local joe blow tournament guys, and you
know your local clubs, they're not signed up.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Well, and then you can't. You know, it's not going
to be a fire system. It's going to have to
be done somehow.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Were they, but right now it doesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
There is a permit that you can get and we
do apply for it, but it's not required. We do
it out of we were told when we started the
Albambastao and honestly, we worked very closely with Department of
Conservation because when we first announced the alban Bastarew we
had no dead fish. You could not weigh a dead fish,
you could not call a dead fish.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
We still have that role.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
And then we went back to Department of Conservation after
Martin mccagu and said several others from the Kusa River
explained how hard it is to keep spot a bass alive,
you know, especially in the hot time of the year
or just post a spawn.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
So we went back.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
That's when Stan Cook was in in there and I
worked with Stan and I said, would you be okay?
Would you sign off on us having a one dead
fish and that be it and no calling of dead
and to be a one pound penalty, and.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
He agreed to that.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
So that's the dead fish penalty that we went under
year one in twenty fourteen and is still where we
are today. We've done other things in the summer, and
I know Lee has done this this as well.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
We opened up our scales.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
And tournaments in this summer.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
We open our scales an hour early, you know, so
we we try to do all the things we can
do to prevent this. But there is a permit that
you can get. It's not required, not everyone does it.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
And because it's not wire do you feel do you
feel that would impact on now? Okay, only we call
that out.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
What are you going to do? You're gonna you're gonna
cut out the little guy or you're gonna tell me
and Kay and the Airport Trail, the case of River
Team Trail, some of the other trails that really care
about this stuff that we've got to go to battle
to say who gets the permit for that weekend? And
now you're going to have you know, the guys that's
goot clubs all over the state of Alabama. They will
(30:07):
never get permit. The guys fishing at the Little Friday
Nighter is never going to be able to get a permit.
You have excluded three quarters of all the fishermen that
are fishing tournaments, and that's just absolutely not fair.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
So that brings me to my next thought that I
know a lot of people have said the idea of
not having tournaments on any Alabama lake between June and August,
so you basically eliminate June, July, and August into the
first of September.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
I would almost go for the July August thing, but
I don't think that's great because there's still guys that
want to go out there and fish. They're still having
night tournament.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
But only tournaments. Like if we were talking about if
you want to go out and do recreational stuff, because
if you kill a fish, you know that now goes
against your career limit. If you have it in your life, well,
now that again, that's such a big gray area because
if you're just out recreational fishing, you don't want to
keep one that's been dead for twenty mins as you
didn't realize it. You just throw it back in the water.
Nobody knows anything you know, would you be more of
(31:06):
a proponent of we don't fish when it is brutally
hot between July and August.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
I don't do it anyway. I don't know that I
want to get on anybody that does. But as far
as my trail, we have our last tournaments start a
gene right, and we have no tournaments through the heat
of summer. Now, I'm not going to sit here and
lie to you either. I don't really like setting out
there in the heat of summer, so we're gonna be
real honest about it. I had a little control over that,
(31:33):
so we're not fishing in the summer. But I also
think once salt water gets really really hot, that there's
got I mean, it's got to hurt the fish more
to be turning those fish back in super hot water. Now,
I have no way to justify that. I don't know
if that's true. Okay, make and speak on it.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
You can.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
On your side with the Alabama Bass Trail, you guys
are regarded as the biggest in the state, the best
in the state. As far as what you do. Has
that been a conversation of we don't run tournaments between
July and August.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
We don't.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
We never have had julyne August tournaments. Even when we
were in COVID, we never put tournaments in July and August.
We always move those to September. When we have had
tournaments postponed due to high water at Pickwick, we had
to move a tournament to September because we don't fish
in July and August. I think that's very important, you know,
and it's probably selfish for us, because really julyne August
(32:24):
are the only times that we would have time to
even think about a vacation, just simply because of the
number of tournaments we do, the number of consumer shows
we do for the tourism side of what we do.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
It's not like you operate with a lot of people
two places in one time, right.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
We have two employees, so you know, we're totally for that.
But I know that a lot of the high schools,
a lot of the charity tournaments happened during that time
because they don't want to compete with Lee's schedule or
my schedule, because they want the most anglers they can get,
especially for charity events, and so they hold them during
those times. I know a songwriter's event at Pickwick always
happens in August, and I, you know, I always consult
(33:00):
with them about their fish care. But that's when they
can get the most anglers because they're not fighting. Because
a guy's not going to not fish an Alabama Bastral
event to go fish one for five thousand dollars. It's
a charity event because he needs the points in the
Albam Bastrail or he needs it in Lee's Trail to
get to his championship. So, you know, I took a
little offense to their comments about that in their report,
(33:23):
saying that we encourage people to weigh substandard bags or
non competitive bags of fish so that they're awarded points
for the championship later on. That one hundred percent is
how bass fishing has worked from its inception. That's how
you get to the bass Master Classic.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
For God's sakes.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
So not everybody can win an Alabama Bastrail tournament. I mean,
not everybody can get a check. So if you're saying, okay,
if you're in forty first place, you just don't weigh
your fish, you're done, then okay, we have a championship
of four hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Both and the one thing that's the one thing that
I feel like they're missing on that. I can speak
to this because this is kind of where I'm at
in the rankings. Right when I get into a tournament trail,
I want to see how I did compared to last year.
I want to see if I've gotten better. I want
to see where other guys have been, you know, have
some of the top guys fallen off a little bit.
I look at it more as if I'm out there,
(34:13):
I'm weighing in fish. If I caught a fish, I'm
weighing it. I don't care if I walk up there
with it. You are hard right, Like that's me And
I'm a showman. So if I get on stage, you know,
I'm going to show off that big one pounder like
nobody's business. So I don't feel like anybody should tell
me how I handle what I do when I'm weighing
in a fish. But I do care about fish care.
I care about the habitat. I care about what we're
(34:36):
doing on the water. I care about what we're pumping
into the waters and what we're taking out of the waters.
There is way more of a conversation that needs to happen,
and it would be extremely detrimental if the DCNR just said, well,
we spend eight hundred and thirty three thousand dollars in
change of taxpayer money, so we're going to take this
and we're going to run with it. You have to
(34:58):
start looking at this objectively. I think it's a great
start of a conversation, and you exactly. I agree, And
I think that that's where it all starts. And if
we start to see some people not want to have
those conversations, then you know you have some bigger problems.
On the phone is Gene Gilliland. He is the director
of Conservation for bass or bass Master. Gene, Really, what
(35:21):
are the steps that you feel like needs to happen here?
Speaker 5 (35:24):
The first thing is is we need to have a
sit down meeting with with all the stakeholders and and
I really can't tell you what strategy is the best
to fit uh, not just le Neelie Henry, but the
CUSA system. Yeah, you know, without seeing all the data
(35:48):
from from all of those legs to see how this
really fits in. So yeah, I'd be very hesitant to say, well,
all you need to do is regulate summertime tournaments and
not allow tournaments in July or August or you know
something like that. I don't know that that's the correct answer,
(36:14):
and certainly for I can't speak for all of the
other stakeholders that have a stake in this game, right,
So I think the first the first debt really is
to get everybody together and talk about the what are
(36:35):
some other possible solutions. It may be that the slot
limit is part of that solution. Maybe it's certain times
of the year. Maybe you adjust those numbers up and
down somehow. Maybe you create a tournament registration system that
(36:57):
some of the other states have used very successfully to
help kind of moderate some of that fishing pressure, or
a permit system where the state actually steps in and says, okay,
we don't want more than x number of tournaments on
these lakes during certain times of the year, or or
(37:21):
put other kinds of restrictions on and you figure out, okay,
can everybody live with that? What whatever solution we come
up with their strategies, You go all the way around
the table and talk to all of these stakeholders and
find out, you know, not everybody's going to get everything
they want. There's going to have to be some compromise there.
(37:44):
But what what kind of solutions can we come up
with it, everybody can live. And that's that's our hope,
is that we can get get some kind of a
meeting like that put together and hopefully fairly soon. Uh
So that because I know there are a lot of
tournament organizations that are already got schedules out for next year,
(38:08):
and there are Cousa River Lakes on a lot of
people's schedules, and so the potential impact of something happening
fairly quickly that you know there there could be some
some real negative impacts uh to some of those organizations
(38:30):
if this thing was to pass as it was proposed
and go into effect. Uh you know this spring sometimes
but I think uh as one of the people we
were talking to when this first came out, we said, hey,
let we need to get to Alabama Fisheries people to
just pump the brakes on this thing and let's get
everybody together and talk about it. Well.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
I appreciate both of you guys for coming in. I
truly do I feel like that this is the start
of the conversation that could happen. They're more than welcome
to jump into the conversation. Will they I don't know,
but I do go back to the most power that
we have as anglers and as taxpayers and residents of
the great state of Alabama. You should be talking to
(39:12):
your congress people. You should be talking to your senators
whether or not they can do anything inside legislature right now,
at least get it on their radar. Well all, because
what you don't know is what you don't know.
Speaker 4 (39:22):
Call the DNR. Leave messages for mister blank and ship.
Betsy's a real nice lady. She answers the phone. I'm
not encouraging anybody to call down there with a bad attitude.
You need to be nice. But we need more voices.
We need everybody to speak up right now to help
get this where we can have that conversation.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
With Lee Holmes of Silicaga Marine, Kay Donaldson of the ABT.
Appreciate you guys. I'm Spencer Graves. You can always download
all these podcasts when you go on the iHeartRadio network.
The slot limit proposed on the Kusa River has a
lot of tournament anglers pissed off because how could you
not take this as a direct attack upon tournament angling.
My name is Spencer Graves. Thanks so much for being here.
I'm going to be joined with Lee Holmes of Siliconga
Marine and Kay Donaldson of the Alabama Bass Trail in
(00:20):
just a few We're also going to hear from Gene Gilliland,
who is the director of Conservation for bass or Bass Master.
Here's some things that I want everybody to know. The
Cusa River is six lakes. This study was conducted on
Neelie Henry, just one of the six, and they took
three years to compile all of this together. Now, those
(00:42):
are some of the things that we do know. If
there's more information than that, then I welcome anybody involved
in this study to get in touch with me because
we would all love to hear it. Over eight hundred
thousand dollars was spent on this study in this survey,
and the findings are alarming, and they are alarming, and
if if you're a tournament angler, they should be alarming.
But what truly goes into this, It's not simply what
(01:06):
we saw in the proposal. There's way more at stake.
There's things that happen under the water that impact the
fisheries more than just somebody casting a line and catching
a fish. As tournament anglers, There's things that we do
when we handle fish. There's things that we do when
we handle fish that ultimately can impact the care of
(01:29):
those fish and what happens when we release those fish
back into the water. We see them swim off, but
do they continue to live an hour or maybe a
day later. These are all things that are up for discussion,
but the problem is no one wants to have the discussion.
It just seems like here's a slot limit. We're planning
(01:52):
on pushing this forward. Now, there's a lot of personalities
that are involved in this, and there's a lot of
people that need to know about this, So let's break
it down. The introduction of catchway release on some major
platforms like Major League Fishing has turned a lot of
people's attention towards is that something viable that we can do? Kay,
you just mentioned the whole having cell phone reception and
(02:15):
having internet capabilities. It's not always possible. We all know
that as outdoorsman it's really hard to do. Is that
something that would limit the ABT for being able to
do catchway and release?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yes, I mean, and not just that.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I mean you also have to look at thirty percent
of our anglers that fish thalbambaso are over the age
of fifty five.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
A lot of them are over the age of sixty.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Just the sheer of ability to be able to work
your cell phones and things like that. You got to
get your glasses on, you got to do all the things.
So it is a little prohibitive and it would really
narrow our market reach to a younger audience.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
But it's not to say that somebody over the age
of fifty five couldn't figure it out right, that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
They couldn't, but we can tell you when we went
to online registration. You know, it is something that you
have to be conditioned with.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Because I know for a fact that if I was
facing fifteen thousand dollars as a prize in mind, I
might sit there and go, well, I probably need to
figure out how to do this.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah, if everyone was forced to do that, maybe, but
if only certain organizations were forced to do it, then
they would be more conditioned to go fish.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Those that did not require that.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Also on that even in my trail, the Silicogga Marine Trail.
What you know, we would have a large investment just
to buy the equipment to do that. And it's not
going to work at all our lakes, and you were
fishing in the rain and everything else. And then what
about all the guys, you know, we can't exclude them,
they're giant too. What about all the guys that are
(03:38):
having the weekend tournament, the Shriners tournament, the tournaments that
raise money for churches. I had a tournament at my
store two weeks ago for ARC We had five hundred
guys there for dinner. We had two hundred boats in
that tournament. We raised sixty two thousand dollars that day
for charity that goes on all over the place. And
(03:59):
all that gets left out at that point. And the
guys that are wanting to fish a Friday nighter are
a club like hook Ems that I fish in in Solicago,
small club of twenty five guys. There is no way
to accomplish that at this present time.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Some of the things that we're going to discuss in
this because I think every point that I've heard over
the last week or so conversations that I've had with
the two of you individually, also some tournament anglers that
I've discussed with. I've even gone all the way up
to talking to some state senators. I almost talked to
Kittie Britt and Tommy Tubberville because I was like, you
know what, you might as well go all the way
(04:35):
to the state. But the one thing that I've learned
from all of this is a lot of people have
some good ideas about what we can do. The problem
is we're living in extremes. You have a slot limit
of fourteen to twenty which, if you know anything about fishing,
a fourteen inch fish, large mouth bass is probably going
to weigh one point four inches point four pounds. That
(04:56):
will take you all the way to the twenty inch limit,
which is about four point three six pounds. That's a
good amount of fish between those numbers that are in
the Kusa River, and those are pretty much the ones
that you see won in tournaments. We're not seeing massive
bags coming out of the Coosa River. But it's a
fun chain to fish, and it's a fun chain to
(05:17):
be on UH and it does a lot for the
local community. Like some of the economic stuff. The things
that I'm hearing from the state legislators and the people
that we've elected to office is the DCNR has the
ability to make any recommendation in any rule that they
want to put on the bodies of water within the
state Alabama. That's one. The second one is we can
(05:41):
look at this and we can go, Okay, catchway release
may not be good for certain tournament trails, but could
it be utilized in some of them? And should it?
Then we look at the size of the tournaments you
were talking about some of the local ones. Some local
tournaments like a Wednesday Night or Tuesday night or that's
anywhere from five to fifteen maybe thirty boats max for most.
(06:03):
Then you look at some big trails like the ABT
brings in how many for an ABT North Division.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Two hundred and twenty five blutes two hundred and.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Twenty five bucks, right, so you have a considerable distance.
And if you look at the number of fish that
are caught, And then you have high school fishing, which
is something not a lot of people are talking about.
We're trying to grow the outdoors and we're trying to
get kids active in the outdoors. When I was a kid,
we didn't have the ability to go to college to
fish under a college scholarship. That's something that tournament anglers
(06:33):
at the high school level are trying to do. Should
we limit those tournaments to a three fish maximum? Should
we do a three fish limit on those Should they
be doing catchway release? Should we have over two hundred
and fifty boats in high school? Should they be able
to battle at the high school level between their school
and then send the best three teams to get into
(06:54):
a more elite thing like an MLF or some of
the other national trails or you know some even the
bigger state trails. These are all things that I feel
like we need to talk about. The numbers that we're
seeing from the reports that came out the fourteen to
twenty inth slot limit are very very confusing. I mean,
we're hearing that they put transmitters in fish, and one
(07:14):
hundred percent of the spotted bass that they put transmitters
in were caught. But then they follow it up and
they say actually more than well, you can't have on
more than one hundred percent, Like mathematically that's not right
going forward. K on the tournament side with those things
that I just laid out. What do you think the
best course of action would be for the DCNR to
(07:37):
look at as a viable option.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
You know, I think there's a compromise. I think you go.
We've always operated under a twelve inch minimum on large
mouth and spot of bass on the Coasta River. I
think pretty much standard throughout tournaments. That's where we've been.
When you take that and then take it from a
fourteen to twenty inch slot, that's a very aggressive approach.
I think there's some room for a compromise there. I
(08:01):
don't think anyone in the state of Alabama, or anyone
driving from Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, whatever to fish Alabambastro
expects to go to lay Lake and catch eight or
nine pounders. I think they expect to catch four and
five possibly a six. So I think that is what
we would like to achieve, is to have a healthy
fishery for four or fives and sixes, and I think
(08:21):
that can be done with a smaller slot limit. I
also want to say I'm not a biologist, I'm a
marketing person. I'm a tournament organizer, but I also have
the strictest dead fish penalty in all of bass fishing,
we have a one pound dead fish penalty and you
can only weigh one fish that's dead. So we believe
in conservation. We spend one hundred thousand dollars on fish
(08:42):
care equipment this year, so we believe in that, and
we wouldn't be here fighting this fight if we didn't
think that there was some type of compromise that can
be done.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Now, you did mention the release rate, because there are
a lot of misnomers out there. If you go to
a tournament schedule and you see that five fish caught,
five fish were released in, maybe one person weighed in
a dead fish at some point, these are all very
small numbers compared to what some tournaments bring. It's a
release rate, it's not a live release rate. So we
(09:13):
release those fish back in. They're alive when they leave
the boat. Those numbers are counted, But then it's the
couple days after that. Some people who live on lakes
or just are out there fishing will go to social
media and they will say, look at all these dead
fish that we're seeing. We had that on Lay Lake,
the northern part the river section of Lay Lake, there
was a massive fishkill. Was it a tournament. I don't
(09:35):
think so. I think it was the fact that they
weren't moving water and it was stagnant for so long.
So biology wise, none of us are biologists. I wouldn't
even want to point somebody to go, this is the
real facts about what that is. But the reality does
exist that all the things that impact a fishery are
more than just two hundred and twenty five boats going
(09:56):
out and trying to catch five.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Fish one time of year.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
You know, most the time we visit tournament, we visit
a location one time a year. There is an occasion
where we'll take our one hundred series the same place
we took a regular series of two hundred and twenty
five boats. But like you mentioned, there's a lot of
things we had. The same thing happened at Gunnersville and
it was post Alabam Bastrail, but there was a nine
day period where they did not pull water to keep
ill grass from moving into Browns Creek where the power
(10:22):
boats were going to be. They didn't want that influx
of ell grass going into that area, so they agreed
that they would not pull water. Well that in June,
when you've had twelve days of over ninety five degrees.
That is going to delineate the auction level in that
water and it is going to cause deadfish. It happened
the same time that the situation on Lay Lake happened.
There's so many factors that affect dead fish, from tournaments
(10:46):
to the low aucyg level to when the lake turns
over to you know, chemicals that are released in the
in the water. I mean, I live on Wheeler. We
have fifty fortune five hundred companies. There's constantly an amount
of liquid that is in the water that the approves
and all of those things. You also have the fact
that you know, when these lakes were flooded one hundred
(11:07):
years ago, there's a lot of stumps and trees and
all the things that was there fifty years ago that
now have disintegrated or have gone back to the earth.
You don't have the ecosystem that you once had. Mike
McClellan at Alabam Power just sent me an email over
the weekend show and all the fish attractors that they deployed.
So they're trying to put those fish attractors back in
the water, but you can't do it at the rate
(11:29):
that they were there. Fifty thirty years ago, So you know,
there's a lot of things that play into this. I
think as fishing organizations, we do have to be top
of mind awareness of fish care. Lee and I both said,
you know, there's so much more that we can do,
and we're trying to work on that, but you know,
(11:50):
the economics of this and the objects of this is
really bad for the state of Alabama. We do hope
that there's cooler minds will prevail and we can get
some type of compromise, but we encourage anglers to be
you know, and mart mccagu who has won a ton
of money on our trail. The first time I ever
announced our dead fish penalty, we had a shouting match.
I mean it was loud talking, that's what I tend
(12:12):
to call it. But Mark also called me back in
three years and said, I want to tell you something.
I watch my fish more now than I ever have
because of how significant that dead fish penalty is. When
you go to places like Martin Likely, you know, like Jordan,
you know now I check my fish more than I
ever did before, and it's because of that strict penalty.
So anglers, tournament organizations and then also cities that host
(12:36):
these events. We can no longer allow people to travel
ten to fifteen miles off site for dands.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
You know, there are numerous things that I've seen from
going from a recreational fisherman to doing some of the
tournament stuff, and I'm by no means like really good
at it. I just enjoy the camaraderie. I enjoy the competition.
I like being out on the water just as anybody
who right. But the thing that I continue to go
back to, and I've said this to a couple guys,
(13:04):
and this definitely rattles the cages of some people, like
you were talking about with Mark McCaig. Sometimes you need
somebody to look in the face and go, this is
why we can't do what we're doing. I've said this
to several guys. The more tournament anglers jump on social
media and complain about the lakes, the more the DNR
(13:25):
is going to start looking at it. And it's not
necessarily good when they start looking at it. It's kind
of like, don't bite the hand that feeds you. If
they're going to put in regulations, which they're allowed to do,
they don't have to go through state legislation. They're allowed
to do that. If they're going to do that based
on complaints that they're seeing, it may not go in
the favor that you want. The worry that I have
(13:46):
is the economic impact that this has because most of
the towns that are along the Coosa River are not big,
and they determine and rely a lot on what tournament
and fishing brings. People going to restaurants, people stopping buy
tackle shops, going to Silicago Marine, buying a boat, getting
the boat service there, buying gas at a gas station,
(14:09):
stopping off and getting snacks, running hotels, getting airbnbs, finding campgrounds.
All these things impact your local area. And when local
areas don't have a lot, when you take that little
that they get, that's where the impacts really are. You're
probably going to see that at Silicago Marine.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Well, I a man, We've done a little bit of
a looking. You know, Let's say we sell one hundred boats,
one hundred bas boats in a year. That number is
going to get significantly dropped from this. But on one
hundred bass bots a year, the state collects one hundred
and twenty thousand dollars in tax from me. The county's
collecting about thirty four thousand dollars of tax from me.
(14:47):
My business has been there sixty years, and this will
virtually eliminate bass boat higher end sales. You know. And
one of their things they talk about only ninety percent
of the fishermen a tournament fishermen. Well, that's probably true
if you count everybody going crappie fishing, briom fishing, cat fishing,
all the different ways to fish. But ninety percent of
(15:10):
the money generated from fishing is from tournament fishing. Right,
That's where all that money comes from. And though you know,
you get into the thing hole Spencer, are they going
to say that Lee and Spencer sitting in a bass
boat can have five fish in our live well, but
none of them can be between fourteen and twenty inches.
(15:31):
They can say that Jim and Joe over here sitting
in a bass boat that's not in a tournament. Okay,
so this is the big thing. They can carry twenty
their Krell limits ten per man. They can carry twenty
of those fish home in a live well and clean
them and cook them and they never go back.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
Right.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And what a lot of guys continue to forget is
if I go out and catch ten fish, I can
still sit there and catch thirty forty fifty more. Absolutely,
but I can only keep ten, That's right. So what's
to say that I gut hook a fish and I go,
I don't want to keep that one. I throw it
back in the water. It's swam off. But then you know,
(16:10):
a guy a mile down finds a dead fish and
it happens to be the one. Not that I would know,
but it happens to be the one that I may
have just gut hooked. Well, that's now you know, bait
for a bird or for some other animal that wants
to eat that.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
But how are you gonna single out just the tournament fish?
Speaker 1 (16:27):
That's that's my whole thing with this entire deal is
if you're gonna look at a slot limit, you got
to put it on everybody. If you put a slot
limit of fourteen to twenty inches on everybody on the
Coosa River will decimate what people do on that lake.
It'll be a way, And what's happening now under the
water is just as important as what's happening on top
of it. When guys see boats and they're taking out
(16:50):
grass and they're eliminating structure, or just like you were
talking about earlier. K you have stumps that have been
in the Coosa River for hundreds of years. But then
you also have when they finally dammed these lakes up
in the sixties when this was a big thing in
the United States. A lot of those stumps are now disintegrating.
It's not nearly as good as it used to be.
(17:11):
So you have to look at habitat. If you don't
look at habitat, you're literally taking fish on a restocking
program and you're throwing them in. You're not giving them
a place to be homed. You're not giving them a
place to hunt, and then you're not giving the forage,
the bait an opportunity to get away to thrive the
next day. So we're promoting lean fish that could potentially
(17:34):
come out of restocking programs if we're not giving them
an actual house. But if we give them a house
and we restock, it's the best of both worlds.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
And they won't even allow us. I mean, you know,
uptil we went to the legislature about a year and
a half ago, we would request permits over and over
and over again. Biologists down there would not give them
to us. They don't want us to restock that is
a fact you got to lose. Look at any of
their emails they I'll say it. In fact, one made
(18:04):
a comment that you needed to get mortgage all of
our houses to make it do any good. They will
not give us a chance to restock these lakes. And see, well,
we went to the legislature and got that approved. Kay
Ive signed it. I still believe to this day some
of this is retaliation for us getting that done. And
that's what I'm always gonna believe. And that's an opinion.
(18:24):
I don't have facts to prove that, but why else
would immediately after that they come after only tournament fishermen.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
It is important to restock lakes when you have the
ability to give those fish somewhere that they can do
natively what they're supposed to do. That's right, which is one.
And look, so should we be talking about in addition
to having restocking, should we have local tournaments and clubs
and things like that? Really focus more on let's build
the habitat. Let's get more of those habitat devices out there,
(18:56):
Let's get more artificial brush piles that are out there.
I know they don't want guys flooding a pontoon boat
to go out there with a bunch of trees and
throw them in there. I understand that. But if we
do the artificial side, you know, are they just as
beneficial to fish populations as a static tree that somebody
puts in Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
I mean, I don't know if artificial fish attractors are
as good as someone going out and dumping a pontoon
boat full of cypress trees that they've cut, or Christmas
trees that we've collected, you know, after the holidays or whatever.
But you know, I do think that enhancing the habitat
is important, and you're going to have people on both
(19:34):
sides of that. There are people who believe that grass
is very important. You've got people that believe that grasses
is a nuisance. But on Wheeler, where I lived for
a long time, we were the little sister to Gunnersville
for a long time, we saw the grass come back
on Wheeler, absolutely no stocking done, but we saw the
(19:55):
fishing go up. We saw the cat traits go up,
we saw the weights go up. We saw the quality
of the bass the five and six pounders go up,
and the health of those bass. And that's the thing
that our team noticed the most when we started seeing
those five and six pounders come in is they were healthy,
they weren't beat up.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
You know, they.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Actually had somewhere to hide in the hot weather. They
had those ambush points to feed on and all those things.
So no stocking was done in Wheeler, but we got
the habitat back that we had never had, the habitat
that Gunnersville now has.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
So just imagine this. If you had the habitat like
you do now and you do a restocking program, you're
giving those fish an opportunity to really thrive. I think
the two really do work hand in hand. For Lee,
you being able to go to the state legislature and say, hey, listen,
this is really important. The one thing that I'm seeing
in this proposal that continues to miss is everybody's hyper
(20:47):
focused on just the slot limit. And the one thing
that I feel like the state of Alabama is not
doing a good job of is remembering that you're the
birthplace of bass fishing. Yeah, you are the state that
everybody in the world looks at and says, well, what
do they do in Alabama? Now you have certain states
like Florida, Texas, even places in California, which I don't
(21:10):
think California is a model for conservation at all. But
when you look at some of these places and they're
putting out big bags, we all have to remember that
certain lakes dictate how big fish can actually get. Lake
Fork is a massive body of water.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Yeah, but that's the one I want to discuss with you,
and they keep going back to it in their emails.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Because of the lunker program. Yeah, we never asked for that, right.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
What we're trying to accomplish here, in my opinions everybody
be able to catch fish and not go out there
and not catch fish and have the three and four
pounders out there more than they are because that's the
fish we like to catch in tournaments, and those are
the fish that people like to catch. We're not trying
to take six small lakes and turn them into Lake
(21:54):
Fork and everybody go catch eight pounders, which is still rare.
And that's or they're guiding us to. And they keep
going back in their emails from the two biologists to.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Like, but this is why, and I'll play Devil's advocate
on this. The reason why that happens is you have
anglers who sit behind a computer and they go, we
need programs like they have in Texas, and we need
programs like they have in Florida. Those are completely different
fisheries no matter how you look at it.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
Well, then also, you're gonna go and you're going to
do a study that I don't think was done very well.
You've already gave some of the stuff about it, and
you're going to do it on one lake.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
It's crazy to think that that would end.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
And then we're going to just eliminate the whole Cousa River.
It's crazy. And then the point that they are just
picking on tournament fishermen, what about everybody else that fishes?
Why don't we set down calmly with these people? And
we've offered to me Kay and a whole bunch of us.
There's things we are willing to agree to as a
(22:59):
fishing community because we want conservation too. We want good fish,
but maybe a thirteen to sixteen slot limit. They have
a thirteen to fifteen like we diw we now something
like that where we can still do what we love
and get those fish to a bigger age. You know,
(23:21):
you mentioned it. I've got some guys that weren't like
that you mentioned it, But I'm kind of with you.
What you know, maybe we've got to go to a
three fish limit on tournaments.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Well, and I'm not saying all tournaments now to be
fair the way either. The one that I'm thinking about
more than anything is the high school tournaments. I think
in Ky you could probably talk to this at the
bigger scale. I honestly think there's a lot of people
that are throwing tournaments because they've gotten so excited about
Like every time I put it on tournament, more and
more people show up. And that's not necessarily good. I mean, listen,
(23:52):
I love the ABT one hundred. I like the fact
that it takes an opportunity for you to get into that,
you know, it's a little more exclusive. Things like that.
We have gotten into a point in society where we're
like in the fishing society, where it's like, let's just
throw a tournament and get as many boats as we can.
Some of these high school tournaments, I mean it's dangerous.
(24:12):
It's dangerous to have that many boats out on the
water with a lot of inexperience. Now there's some high
school anglers that can outfish some of the top pros
that you see everywhere. I mean they're becoming sticks, but
there are far more numbers of kids who are just
learning the sport and trying to get into it. I
think a three fish limit is good there because it
still shows that you're good. You're still catching a lot
(24:33):
of fish if you're really good. But it also gives
a kid an opportunity who might be low in the
standings to have a really good string where he got
three fish, he's like, dang, I might actually do all
right and start to get that excitement. I think the
high school level is where it starts, but I also
think that's a good place for catchway and release. If
you get the number of boats down and you get
it more of you have a small tournament to qualify
(24:55):
for the bigger trail.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
You know, and the argument it's always going to be
is there's not enough tournaments for all the kids to
participate in. The amount of kids that want to fish
now is unbelievable. And it's great for people likely who
are going to get that next crew of anglers that
are going to come in and buy boats and all
the things, and it's great for our industry, but it
does have to be managed. I mean, you have certain
(25:19):
amount of MLB teams, you have a certain amount of
college teams, you have a certain amount of you know,
so even in other professional sports, you do have to
have a certain amount the.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Right football right, you know, and you're the forty one
guy out. You know, you didn't make the cut, you
didn't make the team. You know, it's not an opportunity
where everybody should be able to compete, like you have
to have these qualifiers in order to get there. There's
a reason why the bass Master elites are regarded as
the best because they have to go through an arduous
qualification in order to get there. Were some other tournaments
(25:51):
they basically just said to you an email and go,
we have an open spot. Why don't you jump in?
You can have the notation of who you are, right.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
There are some people that can participate in the A say, BFA.
There's some that can participate in bass because now bass
moves around with all the high school and all of that.
But when you really look at it, you know, we've
talked about everything from permitting to all kinds of things.
There are so many trails right now, and high school
has five or six trails, and it is I mean,
(26:18):
it's it's hard. You know, these guys need to be
taught conservation, they need to be taught sportsmanship and all
the things. I'll say that for people in my trail
as well. There are some that do it better than others.
We all have to take responsibility for that. But high
school fishing is the largest and the fastest growing segment
of our business, and we must pay attention to that.
They're the next Alabam Bastro angler. They're the next person
(26:40):
who's going to go to Silicong Marian and buy boat,
So we have to pay attention to that. But I
think we have to start now training them in the
way that we need them to go. We need to
teach them that conservation side of it as well as
the competitive side of it. And it's going to start
with those tournament organizers to is it better to have
(27:00):
two hundred and fifty boats or three hundred boats and
three hundred twenty boats depending on the tournament you're talking about,
or is it best for us to limit it to
one hundred and fifty. But what we've seen is when
one tournament trail says Okay, I'm going to limit it
to one hundred and fifty, then another diad or whoever
goes over here and says, well, my kid didn't get
in that one hundred and fifty. I'm going to start
this trail and we're going to have another seventy five, right,
(27:21):
and then now we're doing one hundred and the lake. Yeah,
now we're a one hundred and fifty on this end
of the lake. We're seventy five boats on this end
of the lake, and then somewhere in between at First Creek,
we're going to do a thirty five boat club tournament.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So you still have that, and I get it.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Unfortunately, sometimes as long as there's money to be paid
for entry fees, there's always going to be someone starting
a tournament trail.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
I've had a couple people give me some information. I
just want to really figure out what it is. I'd
love for the DNR to comment on this. Believe me,
I've invited several people from the state legislature and their
organization to jump on this. They didn't decline, but they
also didn't respond, So that'll just tell you whatever you want.
But what I would love to truly know about the
(28:04):
permit side of this is does Alabama actually have a
permit deal where you have to get a permit in
order to throw a tournament, because I don't think that
you know your local joe blow tournament guys, and you
know your local clubs, they're not signed up.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Well, and then you can't. You know, it's not going
to be a fire system. It's going to have to
be done somehow.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Were they, but right now it doesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
There is a permit that you can get and we
do apply for it, but it's not required. We do
it out of we were told when we started the
Albambastao and honestly, we worked very closely with Department of
Conservation because when we first announced the alban Bastarew we
had no dead fish. You could not weigh a dead fish,
you could not call a dead fish.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
We still have that role.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
And then we went back to Department of Conservation after
Martin mccagu and said several others from the Kusa River
explained how hard it is to keep spot a bass alive,
you know, especially in the hot time of the year
or just post a spawn.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
So we went back.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
That's when Stan Cook was in in there and I
worked with Stan and I said, would you be okay?
Would you sign off on us having a one dead
fish and that be it and no calling of dead
and to be a one pound penalty, and.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
He agreed to that.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
So that's the dead fish penalty that we went under
year one in twenty fourteen and is still where we
are today. We've done other things in the summer, and
I know Lee has done this this as well.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
We opened up our scales.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
And tournaments in this summer.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
We open our scales an hour early, you know, so
we we try to do all the things we can
do to prevent this. But there is a permit that
you can get. It's not required, not everyone does it.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
And because it's not wire do you feel do you
feel that would impact on now? Okay, only we call
that out.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
What are you going to do? You're gonna you're gonna
cut out the little guy or you're gonna tell me
and Kay and the Airport Trail, the case of River
Team Trail, some of the other trails that really care
about this stuff that we've got to go to battle
to say who gets the permit for that weekend? And
now you're going to have you know, the guys that's
goot clubs all over the state of Alabama. They will
(30:07):
never get permit. The guys fishing at the Little Friday
Nighter is never going to be able to get a permit.
You have excluded three quarters of all the fishermen that
are fishing tournaments, and that's just absolutely not fair.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
So that brings me to my next thought that I
know a lot of people have said the idea of
not having tournaments on any Alabama lake between June and August,
so you basically eliminate June, July, and August into the
first of September.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
I would almost go for the July August thing, but
I don't think that's great because there's still guys that
want to go out there and fish. They're still having
night tournament.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
But only tournaments. Like if we were talking about if
you want to go out and do recreational stuff, because
if you kill a fish, you know that now goes
against your career limit. If you have it in your life, well,
now that again, that's such a big gray area because
if you're just out recreational fishing, you don't want to
keep one that's been dead for twenty mins as you
didn't realize it. You just throw it back in the water.
Nobody knows anything you know, would you be more of
(31:06):
a proponent of we don't fish when it is brutally
hot between July and August.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
I don't do it anyway. I don't know that I
want to get on anybody that does. But as far
as my trail, we have our last tournaments start a
gene right, and we have no tournaments through the heat
of summer. Now, I'm not going to sit here and
lie to you either. I don't really like setting out
there in the heat of summer, so we're gonna be
real honest about it. I had a little control over that,
(31:33):
so we're not fishing in the summer. But I also
think once salt water gets really really hot, that there's
got I mean, it's got to hurt the fish more
to be turning those fish back in super hot water. Now,
I have no way to justify that. I don't know
if that's true. Okay, make and speak on it.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
You can.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
On your side with the Alabama Bass Trail, you guys
are regarded as the biggest in the state, the best
in the state. As far as what you do. Has
that been a conversation of we don't run tournaments between
July and August.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
We don't.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
We never have had julyne August tournaments. Even when we
were in COVID, we never put tournaments in July and August.
We always move those to September. When we have had
tournaments postponed due to high water at Pickwick, we had
to move a tournament to September because we don't fish
in July and August. I think that's very important, you know,
and it's probably selfish for us, because really julyne August
(32:24):
are the only times that we would have time to
even think about a vacation, just simply because of the
number of tournaments we do, the number of consumer shows
we do for the tourism side of what we do.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
It's not like you operate with a lot of people
two places in one time, right.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
We have two employees, so you know, we're totally for that.
But I know that a lot of the high schools,
a lot of the charity tournaments happened during that time
because they don't want to compete with Lee's schedule or
my schedule, because they want the most anglers they can get,
especially for charity events, and so they hold them during
those times. I know a songwriter's event at Pickwick always
happens in August, and I, you know, I always consult
(33:00):
with them about their fish care. But that's when they
can get the most anglers because they're not fighting. Because
a guy's not going to not fish an Alabama Bastral
event to go fish one for five thousand dollars. It's
a charity event because he needs the points in the
Albam Bastrail or he needs it in Lee's Trail to
get to his championship. So, you know, I took a
little offense to their comments about that in their report,
(33:23):
saying that we encourage people to weigh substandard bags or
non competitive bags of fish so that they're awarded points
for the championship later on. That one hundred percent is
how bass fishing has worked from its inception. That's how
you get to the bass Master Classic.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
For God's sakes.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
So not everybody can win an Alabama Bastrail tournament. I mean,
not everybody can get a check. So if you're saying, okay,
if you're in forty first place, you just don't weigh
your fish, you're done, then okay, we have a championship
of four hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Both and the one thing that's the one thing that
I feel like they're missing on that. I can speak
to this because this is kind of where I'm at
in the rankings. Right when I get into a tournament trail,
I want to see how I did compared to last year.
I want to see if I've gotten better. I want
to see where other guys have been, you know, have
some of the top guys fallen off a little bit.
I look at it more as if I'm out there,
(34:13):
I'm weighing in fish. If I caught a fish, I'm
weighing it. I don't care if I walk up there
with it. You are hard right, Like that's me And
I'm a showman. So if I get on stage, you know,
I'm going to show off that big one pounder like
nobody's business. So I don't feel like anybody should tell
me how I handle what I do when I'm weighing
in a fish. But I do care about fish care.
I care about the habitat. I care about what we're
(34:36):
doing on the water. I care about what we're pumping
into the waters and what we're taking out of the waters.
There is way more of a conversation that needs to happen,
and it would be extremely detrimental if the DCNR just said, well,
we spend eight hundred and thirty three thousand dollars in
change of taxpayer money, so we're going to take this
and we're going to run with it. You have to
(34:58):
start looking at this objectively. I think it's a great
start of a conversation, and you exactly. I agree, And
I think that that's where it all starts. And if
we start to see some people not want to have
those conversations, then you know you have some bigger problems.
On the phone is Gene Gilliland. He is the director
of Conservation for bass or bass Master. Gene, Really, what
(35:21):
are the steps that you feel like needs to happen here?
Speaker 5 (35:24):
The first thing is is we need to have a
sit down meeting with with all the stakeholders and and
I really can't tell you what strategy is the best
to fit uh, not just le Neelie Henry, but the
CUSA system. Yeah, you know, without seeing all the data
(35:48):
from from all of those legs to see how this
really fits in. So yeah, I'd be very hesitant to say, well,
all you need to do is regulate summertime tournaments and
not allow tournaments in July or August or you know
something like that. I don't know that that's the correct answer,
(36:14):
and certainly for I can't speak for all of the
other stakeholders that have a stake in this game, right,
So I think the first the first debt really is
to get everybody together and talk about the what are
(36:35):
some other possible solutions. It may be that the slot
limit is part of that solution. Maybe it's certain times
of the year. Maybe you adjust those numbers up and
down somehow. Maybe you create a tournament registration system that
(36:57):
some of the other states have used very successfully to
help kind of moderate some of that fishing pressure, or
a permit system where the state actually steps in and says, okay,
we don't want more than x number of tournaments on
these lakes during certain times of the year, or or
(37:21):
put other kinds of restrictions on and you figure out, okay,
can everybody live with that? What whatever solution we come
up with their strategies, You go all the way around
the table and talk to all of these stakeholders and
find out, you know, not everybody's going to get everything
they want. There's going to have to be some compromise there.
(37:44):
But what what kind of solutions can we come up
with it, everybody can live. And that's that's our hope,
is that we can get get some kind of a
meeting like that put together and hopefully fairly soon. Uh
So that because I know there are a lot of
tournament organizations that are already got schedules out for next year,
(38:08):
and there are Cousa River Lakes on a lot of
people's schedules, and so the potential impact of something happening
fairly quickly that you know there there could be some
some real negative impacts uh to some of those organizations
(38:30):
if this thing was to pass as it was proposed
and go into effect. Uh you know this spring sometimes
but I think uh as one of the people we
were talking to when this first came out, we said, hey,
let we need to get to Alabama Fisheries people to
just pump the brakes on this thing and let's get
everybody together and talk about it. Well.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
I appreciate both of you guys for coming in. I
truly do I feel like that this is the start
of the conversation that could happen. They're more than welcome
to jump into the conversation. Will they I don't know,
but I do go back to the most power that
we have as anglers and as taxpayers and residents of
the great state of Alabama. You should be talking to
(39:12):
your congress people. You should be talking to your senators
whether or not they can do anything inside legislature right now,
at least get it on their radar. Well all, because
what you don't know is what you don't know.
Speaker 4 (39:22):
Call the DNR. Leave messages for mister blank and ship.
Betsy's a real nice lady. She answers the phone. I'm
not encouraging anybody to call down there with a bad attitude.
You need to be nice. But we need more voices.
We need everybody to speak up right now to help
get this where we can have that conversation.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
With Lee Holmes of Silicaga Marine, Kay Donaldson of the ABT.
Appreciate you guys. I'm Spencer Graves. You can always download
all these podcasts when you go on the iHeartRadio network.
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