BFHOF Report
The Bass Fishing Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors will provide financial support to six conservation projects that will enhance habitat in lakes in Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, along with supporting a smallmouth bass tracking study at Lake St. Clair in Michigan.
To help maintain Lake St. Clair as one of the premier smallmouth bass fisheries, the BFHOF Board will help fund an acoustic telemetry tracking project to study smallmouth bass movement within the fishery. The data collected will allow MDNR fishery managers to address questions related to the dispersal and movement of bass after being released following tournaments, along with evaluating the survival of fish post-release. The DNR will establish a ‘Class Bass’ program that allows K-12 students to adopt and track the movement of acoustically-tagged fish and learn about the importance of smallmouth bass to the Lake St. Clair ecosystem. They’ve proposed to partner with youth, high school, and college tournaments by providing those anglers with a data collection protocol for fish caught, weighed, and released during their event.
Other Hall-supported projects include the establishment of shoreline and littoral zone vegetation and installing deep-water fish-attracting structures to improve the overall fish habitat in Clarks Hill Lake: members of the Kansas B.A.S.S. Nation youth program and adult members will work with the Kansas Department of Wildlife & Parks (KDWP) to place both natural and artificial habit into Wilson Reservoir in north-central Kansas; the Kentucky B.A.S.S. Nation and Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources will plant up to 675 young cypress trees along the shoreline and within the drawdown zone of Lake Barkley in order to improve both spawning habitat; the Tennessee B.A.S.S. Nation will participate in building effective habitat and fish attractor structures on Normandy and Center Hill Reservoirs; and Lake Gaston, Va. will benefit from the efforts of the Virginia-based Brunswick Academy Fishing Club that will build fish habitat structures and place them in locations in both the North Carolina and Virginia sides of the lake.
“From the perspective of our Board, the involvement of younger anglers in these projects is a great way to promote bass fishing to the next generation, along with ensuring a healthy bass fishery in the lakes and reservoirs where these projects are taking place,” said BFHOF Board president John Mazurkiewicz. “We had 19 different groups applying for our grants It’s a big win for the sport of bass fishing.”
Gilliland notes that in addition to the grant program, the BFHOF Board members look for other opportunities to financially support fishing organizations that have projects that mirror the Board’s mission. This has previously included assistance to groups including the Mille Lacs Smallmouth Alliance, Fishing’s Future, Friends of Reservoirs, the IKE Foundation, the South Carolina Wildlife Federation’s college angling recruitment program, and the Florida Wildlife Commission’s school fishing club program.