Plan covers three bass species

Roughly four out of 10 black bass in Arkansas will die this year, but there’s no need to panic.

That mortality rate is pretty common, and some mortality through harvest is actually encouraged to ensure a healthy fishery. This is one of many interesting finds anglers get by reading the latest version of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Reservoir Black Bass Management Plan, released earlier this year.

Game and Fish has had a strategic plan for the management of largemouth bass for decades. The largemouth bass plan predates the formal black bass program itself.

Colton Dennis, black bass program coordinator for Game and Fish, said the popularity of bass fishing and its economic benefit to Arkansas drove the formation of the plan in 1990 as well as the creation of the program in 2000.

“The commission understood that black bass, like trout, have such a large and specialized following in Arkansas, that they later devoted biologists specifically to these two families of fish, much like biologists specialize in deer, ducks and other wildlife across the state,” Dennis said.

The latest plan was the combined effort of biologists from across the state, including everyone from hatchery biologists, fisheries managers throughout Arkansas, assistant chiefs of divisions and even the state’s fish pathologist. The plan involves nearly every aspect of fisheries management.

A major change to this version of the plan is the inclusion of all three species of black bass found in Arkansas. Previous versions focused solely on largemouths, but smallmouths and spotted bass also are found in many Arkansas reservoirs and are just as important to many anglers.

“The plan focuses on reservoir fish, and there has always been a plan for stream species like smallmouth, but with many anglers pursuing them and spotted bass in the reservoirs as well, we felt it important to include components specific to these species in our latest black bass plan,” Dennis said.