Berry Lindley
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Watched a local hunt/fish show last night and 2 TWRA fisheries biologists were on the show and the topic came up on bass tournament mortality (I'm actually a fisheries biologist by education, but never worked as one). The condensed version was that hot weather tournaments have a mortality rate of over 60%. They actually said you might as well harvest some of these fish and give them to someone needy, as most of these will die anyhow (even if they swim away and seem fine). Because of this, they suggested releasing fish caught in the hot months right away. The tournaments in cooler weather had relative low mortality rates, around/below 30%. This research was done in conjunction with (if I remember this right) TN Tech and employed telemetrics in the study. The net impact of tounaments was not as bad as previously thought, and suggested that non-tournament anglers actually removed more fish from this area than post-tournament mortality. Sounds a little fishy to me (ha) as I almost NEVER see anyone keep a bass any more, but I do only fish on weekends and maybe the "meat" fishermen fish during the week. Anyhow this to me was pretty interesting that they put this all together and shared data with us and not opinions last night. Consensus of their most recent surveys is that bass populations in Middle TN are very high right now, both on J Percy Priest and Old Hickory, despite the pounding that they take.