I guess I have had the privilege to see and work both sides of the fishing industry in Tennessee, pleasure, commercial and a professional Guide. As well as spending hundreds if not thousands of hours sport fishing for most species that our great State offers, both pleasure and tournaments over the years.
In 1980 and 1981 a good friend of mine Dillon Michener and myself decided to try our hand at Commercial fishing on Old Hickory Lake near Gallatin. This was during the Carter Administration . Money was tight and the interest rate was over 20% for anything from a car, appliance or a home … Everyone was looking for extra money. First off we contacted TWRA for the proper Licenses, rules and regulations.
We purchased a used commercial flat bottom boat and spent a day at Memphis Net and Twine for paraphernalia we would need … Then we started building our catfish slat baskets out of green oak . We had about $5.00 in materials … We could have bought them pre built for $25.00 … But we were on a shoestring budget, and what the heck what was 8 hours labor per basket in the hot summertime. For bait we used curried cheese from the local Kraft plant … STINKY STUFF, especially in 100 degree summer heat! … Even worse than working at a pig farm !!!
We started fishing in the Summer of 1980. We actually really enjoyed this, nice warm weather, being outdoors, and actually making a living off of something we enjoy, fishing. We ran trot lines, Gil nets, slat baskets for catfish. We used a cast net to catch our trot line bait. We fished basically out of Cairo Ramp and fished to the 231 bridge up stream … We really had a pretty good start with our Catfish , Buffalo sales. We set up a Fish stand in the back of our Pickup with scales and live wells and would move to various parts of Gallatin on Saturday to sell our fish.
As fall came up on us, the Cat fishing basically came to a halt as far as nets, trot lines and baskets. When we started the notion of commercial fishing the paddlefish had really not entered our mine. We did not know a lot about them . But we found out that the Russian Embargo on Caviar had stopped the importation of this product and that the Paddlefish Roe was taking its place do to the fact it was actually of the Sturgeon family. That a pound of Paddlefish roe, after being processed which was procedure of removing the membrane form the eggs and salting down, was worth $24.00 a pound. A 35 pound Paddlefish will produce between 7 to 8 pounds of eggs. In another words one fish can produce $192 worth of eggs at the wholesale level. And this was 1980!! And the paddle fish meat is one of the best textured and flavor there is if the muscle is removed … This is also worth $$$ which we took advantage of.
Now this is the hard times, learning about paddle fishing . They run in the Winter . Yep, ice on the deck, rock salt, when you pull a net out of the water in turns instantly to ice and it shatters in your face like glass … It is cold and dangerous! Kind of reminds you of the “Deadliest Catch” on TV.
We had caught a few Paddlefish daily , no real big fish we processed the eggs and harvested the meat for resale … In late January we noticed that we were really missing some fish in our 4 nets . It had looked like that they were being run by someone. So we decided the stake out the Cairo Ramp one night in our van to see who may be doing this. What happened next was a Shock !!!
Around 10:00PM that night the river lit up down stream like the “CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE THIRD KIND”, We saw large spot lights running around the river and what we counted was approximately 10 to 12 boats. They were moving up and down stream on both sides of the river . We had no idea what they were or what was going on. The only thing we knew was that they had to come out of the Gallatin Steam Plant Ramp.
THEN TO OUR SHOCK !! WE saw a barrage of trucks heading our way entering the Cairo Ramp area. There was 16 in all. Large Commercial boats, towed with large pickups with campers, some with Refrigerator units , but none the less this was some serious machinery. Some boats equipped with Generators to support their Lighting . They launched and started up stream laying their nets, also every boat had on board radio, we heard the communication between them all night … We watched this all night from our Van parked in the rear of the access. Around 5:00 AM boats started back in to leave. By 6:00AM there was not a boat or vehicle to be seen anywhere. We did walk around the ramp and looked at license tags on the trucks that were parked here. The counties, West , East and South…. ranged from all over the State and one from Georgia and another from Alabama . THIS WAS A RADIO CONTROLLED FISH RAPING PACK !!
THE LAST SHOCK! After the boats came in Cairo we walked around to see if there was any evidence they had been there. The Cairo Ramp is unique (Then I don’t know about now) But is fairly shallow, so any evidence of carcass dumping was not found.
So we decided to drive down to the Gallatin Ramp and this is what we found. Approximately between 750 to 1000 pounds of Paddlefish carcass filled the little back cove of the ramp. No meat was attempted to be removed . IN another words these fish were ripped open and the egg sack removed and the fish were discarded. Good eatable fish. The meat, White Fish they are called in some venues, excellent. This really put a bad taste in our mouth about commercial fisherman who fished for this species …BY THE WAY THEY CAME BACK FOR TWO MORE NIGHTS AFTER THIS !!!
In the two years we fished for paddlefish only three stripers were ever caught in our nets. This astonished me because the Paddlefish and the striper migrate almost in the same proximity of time . A lot of this has to do with the mesh size of the net ( We never caught a Bass or Walleye) Also the fish are swimming upstream the fish usually are capable of gill movement so it is almost 100% that you will find the fish alive . We released our stripers that were caught and they swam off. I can’t say from what I saw from the evidence of the Rogue pack that they would take the time to remove the fish, knifing the head off would be easier.
I know the Commission is meeting on the 13th … I will be there I also there are a lot of big time lobbyist that are supporting a lot of changes. I do not have any problem with any commercial fisherman making an honest living. The following is a quote from a good friend that I think says it all .
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In my opinion this is another case of commercial fishermen not liking the rules passed by TWRA, which are based on sound science and biology for the benefit of sportsmen - so they go to the General Assembly where they can lobby out of sight and get a bill passed to override TWRA and the Commission.
Everybody keep in mind that commercial fishermen don't pay their own way in Tennessee these days. They are subsidized by sportsmen and our license dollars.
TWRA is already struggling with not enough funds in its budget. And now, we are on the verge of TWRA biologists being pulled away to study new paddlefish fisheries for the sole benefit of commercial fishermen. TWRA wildlife officers will be spending time keeping an eye on paddlefish harvest in new places like the Old Hickory headwaters, instead of stopping poachers and checking fishing licenses. There's already not enough officers to provide the levels of enforcement that sportsmen want, and this will make it worse. How long will it be before TWRA has to raise our fishing license fees again to cover these additional demands on their resources.
Raise the price of commercial fishing licenses until they subsidize sportsmen, and maybe we won't have a right to complain so much.
But right now, I have absolutely zero interest in letting a bunch of paddlefish netters suck away another chunk of my license dollars so that they can rake in some extra profit on paddlefish at my expense.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------These are things I think the Commission should take into consideration to prevent the Rape of 1980 from ever happening again.
1. Nets can only be run in the day light hours on the new areas that asked for . If anyone caught on these water after dark working nets are fined heavily or equipment impounded.
2. If Night time net running is allowed … The TWRA must be notified 24 hours in advance . If not, the same penalty applies that is found above.
3. TWRA to make a special tag for nets used to capture Paddlefish … The net tag should be at a price to offset the hiring of more agents or overtime for the TWRA agents to monitor these fishing areas.
4. Commercial fisherman must have on board the meat from the fish or the complete fish at all times even after leaving the fishery. And the meat should be proportional to the weight of the egg sacks. (In another words filleted meat is proportional to the fish it was removed from also the roe can be interpolated as well).
Folks, I have probably left a lot of things out. I hope TWRA has learned from it’s mistakes of the 80’s to never let this occur again. And I hope the Commercial fishing industry has reached another level of respect for our natural resource that has been managed by the TWRA. They have done a Heck of a Job !! <‘TK>< Walker
www.FishingTN.com
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Commercial fishing for paddlefish <'TK><
Commercial Fish <'TK><
