Smallmouth Bass – Environment Indicator Species

Do you want to see how pollution is affecting water quality near your home? Check the physical condition of the smallmouth bass caught in your local lakes and streams. This species of fish will show the health of the river on its body. If industry is polluting  your ground water with poisons, one of the first indicators is the physical condition of bass caught in local streams.

Smallmouth bass are renowned by anglers for their fighting spirit and delicious pan fried flesh. This fish has been transplanted all over the world because of its high quality. The smallmouth bass is one of the most well stocked game fish in North America, and now lives in river systems well beyond its traditional home – the Mississippi river north to the Great Lakes and right up to the Hudson Bay watershed, in the center of the continent.

The history of American railroads and bass fishing are uniquely intertwined, and they’re an important chapter in the rise of recreational fishing in the United States and Canada. It was because of the railroad that this particular fish came to be found all over the continent. Buckets and barrels of fingerlings were dumped into river systems from passing trains by enthusiastic naturalists and anglers with a passion for bass fishing.

A high level predator in each of the freshwater ecosystems they inhabit, smallmouth bass is vulnerable to environmental pollutants.  Because of this sensitivity, and because of its significance commercial importance, the species is tightly monitored one by the EPA in the United States, and the Ministry of Natural Environment in Canada.  Reductions in bass numbers, or abnormal morphological deviations on their skin and lumps on their bodies and even unusual behavioral trends, can be warnings of degraded waterways.

Smallmouth bass is highly regarded for its top water fighting ability when hooked – old fishing journals referred to the smallmouth bass as “ounce for ounce and pound for pound the gamest fish that swims”. Smallmouth bass are taken for the table, with filets of white, firm flesh when cooked.

Smallmouth bass is the canary in the coalmine, an environmental indicator species.

Largest smallmouth bass ever caught weighed 11 lbs, 15 oz.  David Hayes caught the world’s biggest smallmouth bass in 1955 at Dale Hollow Reservoir, a water reservoir situated on the Kentucky/Tennessee border. But they don’t seem to ever grow that big anymore…

Smallmouth bass prefer clear water rivers with rocky or sandy bottoms.  When selecting bait, remember that this is a carnivorous animal, but that doesn’t mean it goes around attacking other fish (although it will feed on other fish).  It eats mostly crayfish, insects, and zooplankton.  The female can lay up to 21,100 eggs in one sitting, which are guarded by the male in his nest.

Sick smallmouth bass are an inconvenient truth in Chesapeake Bay,  but DEP and EPA officials refuse to declare the Susquehanna an ‘Impaired River’.

A recent report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation on the status of smallmouth bass suggests that the lower Susquehanna should be classified as “impaired” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because of patterns observed in the resident bass population.  With an “impaired” status for the lower Susquehanna means the EPA deems it falling short of certain water-quality criteria, a designation established under the federal Clean Water Act. If the EPA declares the river impaired, the states within its drainage boundaries would have eight to 13 years to come up with plans to identify and reduce offending pollutants.

Environmental advocates, anglers and conservation groups, in letters to the commonwealth and the EPA, also requested that the Susquehanna River be listed as impaired, but with no success.

The April 2013 Chesapeake Bay Foundation report that suggests that symptoms such as lesions and mucus coatings seen in smallmouths, which aren’t native to the watershed but have been established for decades, should be considered actionable indicators of the lower Susquehanna’s diminished water quality has gone unheeded by the EPA and DEP in June 2013.

There will be economic consequences; according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, smallmouth bass account for $630 million in fishing revenue for Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia, an industry supporting some 5,700 jobs.

At a meeting in May, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection DEP director for point and non-point source pollution, Lee McDonnell says “Right now, we still have a lot of data we have to collect and analyze,” and concluded by saying,”We don’t feel we have enough information to make a good decision on that. We haven’t determined a river wide impairment at this point.”

But if fishermen are catching smallmouth bass that look like the one above, I’d say the river is impaired.