A Regional Evaluation of Suwannee Bass and Largemouth Bass Exploitation in North Florida Rivers

Abstract

Suwannee Bass Micropterus notius are a riverine species inhabiting a restricted range within the states of Florida and Georgia. However, little is known about exploitation of Suwannee Bass, which are currently managed in Florida under a single harvest regulation with black basses (genus Micropterus). Regional exploitation of Suwannee Bass in Florida has never been examined in comparison with Largemouth Bass Micropterus salmoides, though such a comparison would allow fisheries managers to assess the efficacy of the current regulation. We estimated regionwide exploitation of both Suwannee Bass and Largemouth Bass in rivers, as facilitated via high-reward ($100), plastic-tipped dart tags. In fall 2013, we tagged 108 legal-sized Suwannee Bass (≥305 mm) across 7 rivers and 160 legal-sized Largemouth Bass across 10 rivers in northern Florida. At the end of 1 year, we found that exploitation rates of Suwannee Bass (0.15) and Largemouth Bass (0.10) in rivers were similar. These estimates were also similar to estimates of Largemouth Bass exploitation in lakes across northern and central Florida.

Received October 30, 2015; accepted March 31, 2016 Published online July 20, 2016

Acknowledgments

We thank J. Estes, D. Krause, C. Paxton, J. Dotson, and A. Martin for help in developing this project. We thank the many people involved in the field work for this project including J. Hults, K. Woodside, J. Knight, D. Dutterer, M. Szatkowski, K. Harriger, B. DeMauro, M. Wegener, T. Tuten, K. Johnson, and E. Nagid. Help with statistical analyses was provided by E. Leone. We also thank J. Kerns and three anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. This project was partially supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Sport Fish Restoration Program.