“Gas, Boat cost, Tow Vehicle, Insurances or maintenance all dictate when and how the costumer can fish.”
For local fishermen and part-time anglers alike, fishing cost has grown sky-high. Actually the current economic situation for fishermen has been affected. Whether an angler travels to there local lake for large-mouth bass or maybe a distance for urban peacock bass. He’s noticed a drastic increase in his overall cost to fish, which changes the number of times his kids and friends get to go fishing with him. The economic situation has changed the way fishermen go fishing, they have had to make personal changes in when and how they fish.
Full-time Bassonline.com guide Capt Brett Isackson said, I think, “The economic change really has seem to alter my client base and increase the number of trips I have taken,” we seem to have more local angler verse out of state clients. One of my most resent customer Ken said, “I have had to change the way I look at fishing, but have not enjoyed fishing this much in a long time.”
President of Bassonline.com Capt Todd Kersey said, “Detailed planning of each client’s fishing experience helps them realize that they can still be a big part of the fishing experience, by helping with planning and decisions on where we go and what technique they would like to fish. Most anglers by habit fish the same half-dozen lures all the time and only use a few techniques. The great benefit other then the overall cost savings, is learning new techniques & lures presentations throughout the different seasons of the year.
Capt Brett remarks, another customer Matt said recently, “With the increase cost of gas, boat payments and insurance it’s much cheaper for me to just show up and have you take me fishing. I have no fuel cost, no boat payment and I don’t have to worry about finding fish and for that, my son is very grateful. We show up and start catching fish. The best part is when we are done I don’t have to clean the boat. I’m fishing more and catching more,” he said. Capt Todd replied, like we always say in this business, “a good day of fishing starts with a good plan.” We are more diligent about it then most … we work harder at it and it just comes easier to us.”A good guide makes a great day out of a really bad day of fishing,” there are bad days of fishing. We just don’t let our customers know that.
Capt Todd continues to point out, “We are a full time guide service, a lot of guides can say it. But, very few can actually accomplish that and it really shows in our catch results.” Overall guiding cost have been increasing for years, but with the accelerated fuel cost our charges for being a guide need to increase also. We have had to go up a little on the price (of a guided trip). That’s just an effect of fuel cost. “The last time we went up in price, gas was $1.50 a gallon.”
In a phone conversation with another full-time Bassonline.com guide Capt Mark Shepard, he said, a resent customer toll him, “The storage alone in Florida, not even counting that I would need to get rid of my sports car.” no way, he said, “we will continue to use you guys when we go out.”
Capt Todd replies, while there has been substantial decrease in tourism throughout the state of Florida, we have seen a big increase in all the local metropolitan areas. Inimitably, we thought it would affect the number of trips, “But it’s like one guy told me over the phone, – if you’re wanting to go fishing and you’re a serious angler, it doesn’t matter if gas goes up to $10 a gallon, your going!” Our happiest customers are anglers who had owned their own boats and are now hiring us as a guide.
One of the ways we try to keep our customers is by offering a NO FISH, NO PAY policy. We have had rejection in the industry to it, saying it a marketing gadget. But it’s not, we look at from a full-time professional guide stand point, “if we can’t find fish and get you catching fish, then we don’t deserve to get paid.” It’s as simple as that, by being on the water all the time it is easy for us to offer. “I guess if I was fishing part-time around another full-time job it would be hard to offer also.” If they hire any of our BassOnline.com guides, they can at least count on that. The big swing is not that surprising “As a matter of fact, the customers we deal with are pretty much set on taking fishing trips,” Todd said. “I have actually guided many people myself who said, “they sold their boats instead of paying the boat maintenance, payments and the gas, then they booked me.”
It is affecting the tourist who might be visiting over the next two or three months,” he said. “But right now, I think we are hovering around the same overall numbers “Nearly everyone on the water is feeling the effects of rising boat and fuel costs. He says, people are still going out on the water but they’re buying 1/2 or 3/4 day trips instead of the full day trips. Instead of going out by themselves, they are bringing one or two people with them.
If you take the cost of an average freshwater guided trip $300.00, divide that by three and it come out less then it takes for me to fill-up my Ford F-150 full of gas. How can they NOT go out fishing with us! Do the math, the actual cost of a fishing guide in no way compares to the cost of owning your own boat.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation (RBFF) encourage families to enjoy all the pleasures of fishing in Florida. Florida is the Fishing Capital of the World,” said Bob Wattendorf, special projects coordinator for the FWC’s Division of Freshwater Fisheries Management. “More people fish here than in any other state, and more tourists come here to fish than anywhere else in the country because of the quality of fishing. Nearly everyone is within a few dozen miles of a place where they can wet a line.”
Father’s Day is a great time to remember the benefits of fishing, and at the top of that list is the opportunity to spend time together as families talking and enjoying nature. Getting back to nature is a national trend that is gaining momentum because of its broad-reaching health and societal benefits. What better time to get back out there than Father’s Day.
With Father’s Day fast approaching, the RBFF (www.TakeMeFishing.org) and (BassOnline.com) is offering Anglers’ Legacy Ambassadors a Father’s Day coupon to encourage participation in recreational boating and fishing for the upcoming holiday. This easy-to-print coupon is a reminder to outdoor enthusiasts to share these activities with loved ones and newcomers. Angling dads also can use it as a way to tell someone how they really want to celebrate the holiday – on the water.
Father’s Day is a great opportunity to pass on the legacy of the sport to the next generation of boaters and anglers,” said RBFF President and Bass Online CEO Todd Kersey. “Many anglers today learned to fish from their fathers. This is an opportunity for those anglers to do the same with the next generation. And as we introduce newcomers to boating and fishing, we help preserve our waterways and generate funds for conservation.”The FWC also is offering a special five-year freshwater fishing license bonus program. This promotion provides an extra incentive to anglers, in the form of free tackle, publications and fishing accessories that add to the convenience and cost savings already associated with a five-year license.
Matched with the priceless memories created from family fishing experiences, this makes a great Father’s Day gift. Five-year licenses cost $79, plus convenience fees.
The first 3,000 customers to upgrade to a five-year freshwater fishing license not only save up to $20 in fees, but also receive a free bonus package by mail with samples, magazines and coupons from fishing-related companies. Some of the items offered include free hooks from Daiichi and Owner, lures from Culprit and Berkley, a coupon for free sunglasses from Penn, a variety of other goodies and a chance at a FREE guided bass fishing trip with one of BassOnline.com fishing guides. Five-year licenses are available online at MyFWC.com/License and via the toll-free phone number, 1-888-347-4356. In addition, they’re available at many retail stores that sell fishing supplies, bait-and-tackle shops or county tax collectors’ offices. The package typically arrives in three to four weeks, without the purchaser or the agent having to do anything else. Details are available at MyFWC.com/Fishing/5yr-2008.html .
or information about local fishing opportunities, visit MyFWC.com/Fishing/Forecasts.
A major storm early this week churned up shallow water at the south end of Lake Apopka, killing several thousand fish.
The kill came just weeks after the state dumped nearly 200,000 sunshine-bass fingerlings in that same section of the troubled lake.
“A big storm downburst like that can depress oxygen levels in shallow water, and the fish can’t get out of the way fast enough,” said John Benton, a fisheries biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Residents of Killarney Mobile Home and RV Court on Lake Apopka near the Orange-Lake County line said the unpleasant aftereffects were plaguing them Thursday.
“The buzzards are getting full, but there is not much worse than having several thousand putrefying fish in your backyard. It looked like one of those 1970s photos of an ecological disaster out there,” said Joan Sparkovich, owner of the mobile-home park.
Jim Thomas, co-founder of the Friends of Lake Apopka, said he planned to meet with state officials Thursday night to discuss the fish kill and the current condition of the lake.
“There have been bigger fish kills, but this is still significant,” he said. “I think it is drought-related. You get kills this time of year when the water is low, temperatures are high and the nutrients are concentrated.”
Tilapia, catfish, shad and bass were among the species killed, according to Micah Bakenhaster of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg.
Though the state’s fourth-largest lake once was hailed as a sports-fishing paradise, those days are long gone. Agricultural pesticides, municipal sewage and effluent from citrus processing were dumped into Lake Apopka beginning in the 1940s until the mid-1980s. Those pollutants triggered uncontrollable algae that destroyed much of its once-abundant fish and wildlife.
Restoration efforts have been costly. More than $115 million has been spent so far. In an effort to rebuild the bass population, the state plans to stock the lake with 600,000 bass fingerlings this year. Sparkovich watched the first of those fish being dumped off her dock two weeks ago. On Thursday, she and her husband counted dozens of them among the dead fish floating in the lake.
Still, there are signs of improving conditions, she said.
“Lake Apopka gets a bad rap as a giant cesspool, and that is not true anymore,” Sparkovich said. “We can see the health of the waterway improving by the number of shore birds, raptors, eagles, osprey and herons that have returned.”
This week a team from Florida Gulf Coast University planted 360 shoots of the aquatic grass vallisneria, also known as tape grass and eel grass, in shallow water on the southwest side of the 1,500-acre lake near Immokalee. Over the summer, the team will plant several thousand vallisneria shoots in the lake.
Later this year, the state will plant bulrush in the same area.
“The lake is imperiled,” research associate David Ceilley said. “The EPA and the state have recognized that it needs to be fixed. What we’re trying to do is jump-start restoration of the lake.”
Lake Trafford, a popular fishing spot for Southwest Floridians, including Lee County residents, started going downhill decades ago when its water became choked with the exotic pest plant hydrilla.
As the plant died naturally, it sank to the bottom, rotted and became muck.
Hoping to solve the hydrilla problem, officials sprayed it with herbicides in the 1970s. Tons of dead plant material rotted to increase the muck layer until it was 6 feet thick and smothered the lake’s bottom vegetation.
As muck rots, it depletes the dissolved oxygen in the water. High winds stir up the muck, and trapped nutrients become suspended in the water, sparking algal blooms. The algae suck more oxygen from the water, and fish suffocate – rotting fish also add nutrients and remove oxygen.
Over the past 12 years, the lake has experienced several major fish kills.
In November 2005, a $10.3 million project got under way to remove the equivalent of 30,000 dump-truck loads of muck from the lake. The demucking project is being paid for by Friends of Lake Trafford, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Collier County, state monies, and the Big Cypress Basin, which is part of the South Florida Water Management District.
Most of the muck has been removed, but dredging has been temporarily stopped because water levels in the lake are too low for equipment to work.
Removing muck leaves a nice, clean lake bottom, but nice, clean lake bottoms don’t support much life. Muck is gone, plants are going in Plants set in de-mucked lake bottom
To be healthy, a lake needs vegetation, and vallisneria is one of the most important freshwater plants in North America.
Found in many freshwater bodies of the contiguous United States and parts of Mexico and Canada, vallisneria is food for fish, turtles, manatees and birds. It provides habitat for small fish, crabs, shrimp and clams and traps nutrients to help prevent algal blooms.
“We have the opportunity to re-establish native plants that are good for the environment,” said Clarence Tears, director of the Big Cypress Basin, which is putting up $25,000 for the tape grass project. “If we don’t establish native plants soon, exotic vegetation, which often grow faster, can take hold.”
To keep grazers such as turtles from eating the newly-planted vallisneria, the FGCU team covered 12 plots of 30 plants each with inverted 3-foot-diameter plastic wading pools, whose bottoms had been cut out and replaced with wire mesh.
“The idea is to get dense plots established and protected, then remove the covers and monitor the sites,” Ceilley said. “With the muck gone, the water quality will improve, and we expect nothing but improvement over time.”
In addition to FGCU’s vallisneria efforts, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will plant $250,000 worth of bulrush just shoreward of the vallisneria.
Lack of rain has dropped Lake Trafford’s water levels to about 3.5 feet below normal for this time of year, and state biologists are waiting for water levels to rise before starting to plant.
“Bulrush is an emergent plant – it grows up out of the water,” said biologist Jon Fury. “Vallisneria doesn’t grow up out of the water. Both are good for fish and wildlife habitat.
“Small invertebrates attach themselves to the bulrush. The invertebrates attract small fish, which attract bigger fish. We’ll plant it in the littoral zone, the shallow areas, where we find most fish reproduction and recruitment.”
“Places like Corkscrew Sanctuary will benefit,” Ceilley said. “But the primary mission is to restore recreational Florida bass fishing in the lake. That’s an important resource for this area. As a fish guy myself, I’m all for that.”
There’s alligator wrestling and airboat rides for tourists, unrestricted 24 /7 boat ramps for local anglers and hunters, a general store and a bait shop that seem closer to Mayberry than Weston.
That’s the way it should be. At the western end of Griffin Road past U.S. 27, it’s old-time Florida, the Everglades in all its unspoiled and swampy glory.
Broward County originally wanted nothing to do with the place. After being given the land by a farmer in the 1960s, the county leased the land to the state. The state has sublet the park to various concessionaires. Since 1982, the Bridges family of Fort Lauderdale has run it. Their lease expires in 2012.
This is one case where privatization seems to work. The public gets free access to bass fishing, frog and duck hunting, and tourists pay the freight with $21 airboat rides. The Bridges turn a profit and give an annual cut to the state. The state’s share ranges from $100,000 to $400,000, according to Chuck Collins, the south regional director for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
There’s just one problem.
It’s the county’s land, but Broward doesn’t get a cent.
I suppose another way of looking at it is the county doesn’t have to spend a cent, either.
“If they have a problem with not getting a cut, I told them we’d work with them,” Clint Bridges said Wednesday. “If they just gave us a lease extension, I’d pay for all the improvements they want. They wouldn’t have to get their hands wet or do a damn thing, other than go to the mailbox and pick up their check.”
But Broward has something more involved in mind.
The county has explored getting the park back from the state. It has hired consultants and held public workshops. There’s talk of expensive refurbishments, new boat ramps and docks. There’s also talk of a $10 million Everglades museum and replica 1880′s village, seeded by developer Ron Bergeron and run by a nonprofit organization.
“A public-private venture,” Bergeron said Wednesday. “Obviously we’d need a certain amount of participation from the county.”
I hear talk like this, and I get a little clammy.
Especially when you consider the planning firm working on this is URS Corp., the same people who’ve done such a bang-up job with the airport expansion.
Especially when you consider Bergeron sits on the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which might have to approve the county takeover.
“I probably would recuse myself [from voting],” Bergeron said.
Especially when you consider the county is dealing with $100 million in budget cuts and may close other parks one day a week.
Is this really the time to get ambitious?
“That’s why everybody’s been screaming, ‘It ain’t broke, so don’t fix it,’” said Paul Schmitz, of Pembroke Pines, a frequent duck hunter. “It’s just an unencumbered, ideal place for hunting and fishing. It sounds like they want to turn this from a money-maker into a money loser.”
On Wednesday, the county unveiled the revamp plan at a public forum. Among the recommendations: getting rid of on-site camping, doubling the parking from 150 to 300 spots, and building the museum to educate locals and visitors about the Everglades’ history.
“We want to make it a showplace,” Bob Harbin, the county’s director of parks and recreation, told me earlier in the day. “The theme would be the same, but the facilities need to be brought up from 1930. What we’d build would still have a rustic appearance.”
Harbin said the park would remain open round-the-clock, the No. 1 priority for local hunters and anglers who came to workshops.
“We’re skeptical about that,” said Rick Persson, a bass fisherman and vice-president of the South Florida Anglers for Everglades Restoration. He cited a park in Loxahatchee run by Palm Beach County that now closes at dusk. “We’d like to see improvements, but if it’s going to lead to people getting shut out of the park, then what’s the point?”
Michael Mayo’s column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Read him online weekdays at Sun-Sentinel.com/mayoblog. Reach him at mmayo@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4508.
