Sarah Pruys
Since its inception began in 1995, the Ministry of Natural Resources has been sampling fish caught during the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship to monitor the health of the smallmouth bass population in Rainy Lake and to see if the tournament has any negative effects on the species.
Similar monitoring work has been completed at other major bass fishing tournaments in Northwestern Ontario, including the Shaw Kenora Bass International and the Atikokan Bass Classic.
“This data collection is a cost-effective and efficient means to sample smallmouth bass compared to other techniques (i.e., fall index netting and creel surveys),” noted Darryl McLeod, an area biologist with the MNR office in Fort Frances.
Information collected includes length, weight, age, growth, fishing quality, year class index, catch rates, and mortality.
“We clip a dorsal spine off the fish and then we send that to our aging lab, and they section the spine and it has growth rings on it like a tree,” McLeod explained.
He noted the average age of the bass in 2011 was 9.15 years.
The MNR has been collecting this information for several reasons, including:
•the evaluation of fish population health;
•to assess levels of fish mortality;
•to assess long-term impacts of competitive fish events, if any, on the fisheries resource; and
•to provide advice on improvements to fish care where needed.
Usually, the MNR randomly samples about 300-500 fish caught during the FFCBC each year.
“The MNR has previously completed an intensive fish tagging study of smallmouth bass on Rainy Lake through the FFCBC from 1995-2000,” said McLeod, noting there’s been no indication of any long-term impacts.
The tagging, which monitored fish movement and survival, also suggested the survival rate after release was quite high.
They also “compare results from other similar tournaments to evaluate fish populations over a broad scale, and information has been valuable is documenting the status of smallmouth bass in Fisheries Management Zone 5 for fisheries management planning,” McLeod added.
Charts comparing the three tournaments show Rainy Lake has slightly older (and therefore longer) fish than in Lake of the Woods, where Kenora’s tournament is held each August.
After the Atikokan Bass Classic switched from Crowrock/Dashwa lakes to Marmion Lake in 2008, McLeod said that event has seen an increase in fish size and age that is much closer to Rainy Lake levels.
Rainy Lake has a 96 percent release rate for smallmouth bass, and so the low harvest allows the fish to live longer.
At the FFCBC, the pre-release survival rate averages 97.5 percent, while last year it was 97 percent.
It is important to note that fish caught during tournaments generally tend to be slightly larger than those caught in different samples.
But since it is consistently the larger fish that are caught and kept in the tournaments, they still are a good indicator of the health of the fish population because the sampling is consistent.
If fish sizes in tournaments started to decline, then there would be reason for concern that they—or another variable—was harming the fish.
While fish sizes have remained fairly stable over the past few years, the MNR cannot predict what will happen down the road.
All they can do is “hope fish size and angling quality remains high,” said McLeod.
“The trends in our data suggest that fishing quality has not been impacted over the long-term, and the length of fish captured by tournament anglers remains stable and very good,” he remarked.
“The size of fish captured by anglers can also be influenced by weather, water temperatures, fishing techniques, and year class strength,” he added.
“Some of the data collected has provided an opportunity to look at a year class index (YCI) to look at future fishing success and abundance.”
The YCI measures how productive each year was for producing fish, taking the age of the fish to determine how many survived the year they were born.
It is affected by environmental variables. A cold, short summer, for instance, could mean not as many fish born that year survive and therefore the year class index for that year is lower than normal.
Each bar in the YCI includes data from multiple FFCBCs, with three years of consecutive data to complete each year in the chart.
Once that information has been collected, it then becomes a full index and no more information is added to that year.
They MNR currently is working on completing the years 2006-present.
“Fishing quality based on the size of fish remains very high for Rainy Lake based on sampling of tournament-caught fish,” McLeod reiterated.
“Angler success is also high.
“[But] overall abundance of smallmouth bass appears to be lower in recent years, due to below average year-class production [spawning success] since 2000 and possibly other changes in the fish community of the North Arm, such as improved walleye and anglers reporting a lower abundance of rainbow smelt,” he noted.
“This is consistent with the angler reports that the number of catchable bass is down in the past few years, at least in the North Arm,” added McLeod.
“However, the 2010/11 creel survey suggests that catch rates for bass anglers are still very good—down slightly from 2002 but at the highest levels observed in both the South Arm and Redgut Bay.”
McLeod stressed weather can affect angling success and the size of fish caught.
“Early springs and warmer water temperatures, for example in 2012, can influence the depth of fish,” he explained.
“More bass, and potentially larger bass, may be in deeper water for feeding and resting.
“Wind conditions can also influence angler effort and success,” he said.
“The weight of bass captured by tournament anglers is influenced by a number of environmental variables, weather, skill, and luck,” McLeod continued.
“There are always fish in the lake to approach or exceed the previous record weights for biggest fish, daily, and three-day winning totals.”
The biggest fish recorded in the history of the FFCBC was a 5.94-pounder back in 1998.
The largest single-day catch totalled 22.28 pounds (in 2002) while the largest three-day catch to date totalled 58.62 pounds (in 1998).
