PHOTO BY GARRICK DIXON
New York ’ s Cayuga Lake has been a big-smallmouth factory , kicking out the highest per-fish weight for smallies among MLF Cup , Bass Pro Tour and specialty events .
v We use the same process for smallmouth to find that Stage Five on Cayuga Lake in 2023 had the highest average smallmouth weight at 4.49 lbs . This was also an improvement from Stage Six at Cayuga the year before , which had an average of 3.72 pounds . On paper , this data would seem to show that both fisheries are improving , but once again , this doesn ’ t take into account the minimum scorable weight .
To create an actual average considering the minimum scorable weight , we would need to standardize the weights for all events to only include fish above 2 pounds . The largemouth bass records stay the same when we do this , as they were both 2-pound-minimum events .
The smallmouth bass record does slightly increase for 2023 , which had a five-fish limit and used a minimum scorable weight of 1.25 pounds . In the original data , 772 smallmouth bass ranged from 1.25 to 7.31 lbs . We needed to remove the 13 smallmouth bass below 2 pounds . Once this was done , the new average smallmouth bass weight at Cayuga in 2023 was 4.54 pounds , showing a greater improvement then originally found .
the true measure of a fishery
The gold standard for using the MLF data to help make management decisions is to create a catch-per-unit effort ( CPUE ) equation . This equation considers the number of fish , the number of anglers and the number of hours of fishing time available . A manager will then know how many fish an angler should expect to catch for every hour on the water . This can be applied to recreational fishing , five-fish tournaments and future catch / weigh / release events .
The MLF format allows for three 2 1 / 2-hour periods for a maximum of 7 1 / 2 hours of angling time per day . This season on the BPT , 40 anglers competed on Days 1 through 4 , giving us 300 angling hours per day . Day 5 had 20 anglers for 150 fishing hours , and Day 6 had 10 anglers for 75 hours . If we simply divide the number of fish caught during the competition day by these angling hours , we get an average number of fish caught per hour per angler .
For 2024 , our highest CPUE number occurred during the Championship Round at Stage Three on Tennessee ’ s legendary Dale Hollow Lake with 2.95 fish per angler per hour . The highest average for an entire event was at the St . Lawrence River , with an event-long average of 2.08 fish per angler per hour .
The 2019 Stage Six tournament on Table Rock Lake has the highest single-day CPUE at 5.09 and the highest event average at 4.00 .
The fun part of using the CPUE system to assess the fisheries is I can compare a BPT event to a smaller field event and get a usable comparison . For example , the 2020 General Tire World Championship from Grand Rapids , Michigan , had anglers compete on Pokegama , Wabana , Turtle and Spider Lakes . Day 2 of that event saw eight anglers compete on Pokegama with a total catch of 404 fish . That ’ s a CPUE of 6.73 fish per angler per hour , the highest single-day CPUE in MLF history .
The 117,844 fish catches shared with agencies will continue to grow each season – before the 10th anniversary of the BPT , we will likely cross the 200,000-fish threshold . Tracking population changes will take time and repetitive visits to fisheries , but in the meantime , MLF , our FMD data partners Mossy Oak , Berkely Labs and BUBBA , our anglers and officials should celebrate every event as a meaningful citizenscience effort that will benefit state biologists and fish management for years to come .
Tennessee ’ s legendary Dale Hollow Lake lived up to its reputation during Bass Pro Tour Stage Three , producing not only an abundance of chunky fish , but also the highest catch-unit-per-effort day in more than 100 events .
OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2024 | MAJORLEAGUEFISHING . COM 11