Largemouth and smallmouth bass are very popular species for North American anglers, and angling for bass in the Great Lakes region provides economic benefits for many communities. In 2013, a change was implemented regarding the angling season for largemouth and smallmouth bass in Southern Ontario, the start date for the season was advanced by one week, to the third Saturday in June. Concerns were raised on whether this change was appropriate for Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, as these large waterbodies take longer to warm up than other smaller, inland lakes.
To investigate this potential issue, members of the Queen’s University Freshwater Fisheries Conservation Lab (Principle investigator Dr. Bruce Tufts, Dr. Daniel McCarthy, Serena Wong, Connor Elliott, Sean Bridgeman, Erich Nelson, Eric Taylor, Arthur Bonsall, and Randy Lindenblatt) and collaborator Dr. Mark Ridgeway (Harkness Laboratory of Fisheries Research, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources) began a three year study to identify the timing of spawning bass in Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. They published their paper, titled ‘Ecology and timing of black bass spawning in Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River: Potential interactions with the angling season” in the Journal of Great Lakes Research in 2019.
The authors found that largemouth bass spawning sites warmed more quickly than smallmouth sites. The majority of largemouth bass spawning nests had fry that reached the juvenile stage by the start of the angling season. However, only between 4-13% of the smallmouth nass nests had reached this stage by the same date. Thus, at the time, the current angling season occurred during the peak of the spawning period for smallmouth bass.
The researchers concluded that smallmouth bass require an additional two weeks for a sufficient number of their fry to reach the juvenile stage. If the angling season remained the same, smallmouth bass spawning nests would have continued to be targeted by anglers who are looking for trophy size bass. Intense angling of the smallmouth bass can leave them vulnerable to their top nest predator in these waterbodies, the invasive round goby.
The findings produced by Tufts et al. have led to multiple important regulation changes to the angling seasons for largemouth and smallmouth bass. While the opening date for largemouth bass remains the same, the angling season for smallmouth bass will now begin two weeks later on the first Saturday in July, providing this species with ample time to successfully spawn. A better understanding of the timing of bass spawning in these waters also led to the creation of a new “catch and release” season for both bass species. This season takes place before the start of the spawning period for either species and will begin at the start of the new year, and last until May 10th. These changes, which will come into effect for the first time this year, are a great example of the importance of scientific research for the management of fisheries resources.
