What's happened to bass fishing on the lower James River Part II

Dave Ochs

CONSIDERING THE POSSIBILITIES

It's easy to say that because there are fewer fish now in the James and Chickahominy Rivers than in 1994, and because catch rates are down, something's wrong. But that's not necessarily the case. Tidal waters are complex systems. There are many factors that could affect the biological life of any organism in the water: large predators, competition for food, biotic factors, extreme tides, weather, flood cycles. Bob Greenlee of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries says it's known that poor water flow in the rivers means poor recruitment for smallmouth bass, and there may some similar reaction among the largemouth bass in the tidal areas. For example, the timing of tide cycles during spawning could affect the outcome.

VDGIF Fisheries Outreach Specialist Dean Fowler says there has been a significant fall in the electrofishing catch rates of sunfish on the Chick, compared to 1994. The catch rate was down 40-50%, less than the 60% for largemouth bass, and he says that indicates "something broader is going on." He says usually a drop like that for bass would allow increased survival of a primary food species like the sunfish.

There also have been changes in recent years in submersed aquatic vegetation. Fowler says apparently the arrowhead and lily pads have disappeared in the last few years in areas where they were predominant in 1994. There‘s been a lot of shoreline erosion, a lot of boat traffic, and an increase in fishing pressure. He says, “every angler I've talked to over the last decade says fishing pressure has gone up tremendously.” But at the same time, he points out that you wouldn't expect the sunfish population to go down if fishing pressure were eliminating bass from the system. And not all fish populations are dropping. Fowler says there is “tremendous striped bass reproduction going on,” and blue catfish are doing extremely well, but there is no evidence that those predators are the primary factor in the bass population decrease.

Greenlee says, "I guess it's not tournament fishing, it's just fishing pressure in general. You have a certain amount of mortality associated with fishing." He says there's anecdotal evidence that angling pressure has increased, but he says, "I have trouble believing that in the 90s that angling has increased so dramatically that it has had an effect on the largemouth bass population."

The Chick and the James have been steady producers of largemouth for many years, particularly the Chick, which produced a lot of bass, perhaps a little smaller than fishermen would like, maybe 11-14 inches on average. Reproduction and recruitment seem to have been pretty steady for many years, and Fowler says, "what makes it even more shocking is that in '98 we heard that the fishing had gotten better. They were catching some bigger fish, people were pretty happy,” and then “it just went through the roof. Everybody was catching two-pound, three-pound, four-pound largemouth. There were a number of five pounders being caught, average winning weights in the tournaments went way up, up over 20 pounds wasn't unusual. Everybody was thrilled with the fishing.”

But Fowler didn‘t know why fishing improved because he didn't have any data on the river since the 1994 survey. Then everything turned around last year. Fishing success crashed, and Fowler says, "it just doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're going to see a population decline of some sort, for whatever reason, it almost always happens in a little more gradual pattern.” He says the department has “absolutely no evidence“ of any kind of fish kill.

The boom of fish size in 1999 may have been a result of low recruitment. With fewer fish, there was less competition for food. Because the population was down, fish got bigger. Because fish were bigger, fishing pressure may have increased and, Fowler says, “we might have overdone it.” But there‘s no hard data to support that.

Disease is also a possibility. Greenlee says, "I won't be surprised if we find largemouth bass virus in the system...but I don't think it's a causitive agent." Fowler echoes that, saying there‘s no evidence of the disease, but they will be looking for it.

So with these "multiple, various, confounding factors," as Greenlee puts it, is there a leading, working theory as to what happened to the largemouth bass population. Greenlee says no, "there are no leading theories." He says he's "hoping it's a cyclical pattern being driven by either competition (for food), predation,” or some other factor like "tide cycles or weather pattern."

Fowler adds more data needs to be collected before there is a decent hypotheses, and “at this point in time it would definitely be dangerous to speculate because we just don't know." He says, “hopefully it's just a weather phenomenon that may have affected the nesting species, you know, something to do with extra low tides at a critical period of reproduction."

Yet there were significant increases in some species, particularly black crappie and white perch, so the drop in bass numbers doesn't appear to be due to environmental contamination or something similar. Fowler says a couple of “broadcast spawners,” fish that don‘t nest, like gizzard shad, are doing okay.

Fowler says fish populations go through cycles.

“Keep in mind one possibility, we were at a high in the population in '94." Maybe normal is somewhere in between. There‘s not enough data over the years to make that assessment.

SEEKING THE ANSWER

The state is conducting a creel survey now on the Chick. The best thing federation fishermen can do is take the time to talk truthfully with the agents conducting these surveys if they ask for your time and help.

Who is doing all the work behind these surveys? As Greenlee says, "what we have basically, is me." He's the biologist in the Williamsburg VDGIF office who is responsible for the James, Rappahannock and York river systems. That's one biologist for the three systems. He‘s trying to track the catfish on those systems as well. For those fishermen who chase the whiskers as well as the bass, Greenlee says there are some “phenomenal blue cats in the James right now.”

Plans call for a creel survey of the entire James River system next year, something that's never been done. The technique used is called an access point survey, which basically means setting up a clerk at a river access point, like Powhatan Resort or River's Rest on the Chickahominy, and having that clerk interview every angler he can. With good cooperation from fishermen, officials can determine overall fishing pressure and harvest, the effort it takes to catch those fish, fish size, and fish numbers. Greenlee says angler cooperation produces the best data the biologists can get.

The James River surveys have incorporated waters as far downstream as College and Lawnes Creeks. Greenlee says salinity apparently becomes a factor that far downriver, as, generally, "we didn't find many bass" in those creeks. Relatively high salinity might limit reproduction. Further upstream, around Lower Chippokes and Powhatan creeks, the bass have the space to move above the salt line, and Greenlee says that's where bass population numbers become notable.

Surveys so far also indicate that the main channel of the lower James below Hopewell doesn't have many largemouth bass. Electrofishing surveys in that section have produced less than 2 bass per hour. Normally up the creeks, 20 to 40 bass would surface each hour. The lower river is a deep channel bordered by tidal flats, and there's no protective structure there for bass to hang around when the tide is out. There may be areas in the main stem of the river where there are good numbers of bass, but they aren't common. That feeds into another feeling Greenlee has about the river, that the "tributaries are acting like isolated populations of bass." He says it doesn't appear the bass move out of one creek into another. He hopes an upcoming telemetry study will confirm that theory.

Greenlee says "hopefully we'll have some more answers by this fall. It's hard to know, it's a very complex system."

=========== End of Part Two. Part One Appeared in July. ===========