Letting you know the first Technical Assistance Group (TAG) meeting for the development of the Florida’s Black Bass Management Plan will be on June 15^th at the Bass Conservation Center near Brooksville, Fl.

We have assembled a great group of stakeholders, with lots of diversity consisting of several Professional Anglers, Marina Owners, Outdoor Writers, Bass Club Representatives , Conservationist and Tourist specialist.

This particular meeting is closed to additional (TAG) members, but is open to the public. This is why we have provided notice giving you ample time to send in your suggestions to the Florida Freshwater Fishing Coalition on what you would like or not like to see in the new black bass management plan. The plan is ours to design, let’s build it together for the future!

Please send all comment regarding the Black Bass Management Plan to bassplan@flffc.org

Thanks once again to all of our  conservation and recreation advocate partners!

“We are standing together to protect our fisheries”

Whether you are an occasional angler or an avid, whether you fish with a cane pole in your back yard or traveling to Florida “The Fishing Capital of the World” from afar, or if you have a business that depends on quality sportfishing–we want your opinion. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is developing a “Long-Term Black Bass Management Plan” and is interested in your input.

The following links provide some introductory material that you may want to review prior to taking this survey, but it is not critical that you do so. We mostly need your opinions to help ensure that we create a plan that addresses everyone’s concerns.

Background article published by Fish Busters’
First-Draft Black Bass Management Plan.
PowerPoint presentation (PDF 3 mb), first given October 2009 to the Florida Freshwater Fishing Coalition.
To take the survey click HERE.

Thank you for participating,

Darrell Scovell, Director

Division of Freshwater Fisheries Management

Biologists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) will stock 150,000 Florida largemouth bass fingerlings in Lake Trafford, the largest lake south of Lake Okeechobee.  The 1,500-acre freshwater lake is an important resource for boating, fishing and wildlife-viewing.

Over the past few years, the lake has been the focus of a multimillion-dollar, multi-agency restoration project.  So far, participants have dredged the lake of 8 million cubic yards of muck that, in the past, triggered algal blooms and fish kills.  To date, the FWC has contributed over $3 million for dredging and re-vegetation of Lake Trafford.  Dredging could be complete by 2011.

As part of the restoration, the FWC will restock the lake with native largemouth bass on Thursday, April 22.  The agency will stock an additional 50,000 advanced fingerlings about four weeks from now. These fingerlings are from the Florida Bass Conservation Center in Richloam.

“We are working to re-establish a self-sustaining, healthy fish population in the lake,” said FWC freshwater fisheries administrator Barron Moody. “We anticipate that this stocking, and a similar effort planned for next year, will bring about the return of largemouth bass fishing to the lake.”

An 18-inch-minimum-length regulation for largemouth bass specific to Lake Trafford is in effect in anticipation of these stockings and to protect the fish from premature harvest.  For complete freshwater fishing regulations, go to MyFWC.com/Fishing.

Fishing license sales help pay for stocking and other bass conservation efforts. Currently, the FWC is offering freshwater anglers a special value-added bonus package when they upgrade to a five-year or lifetime freshwater fishing license.  For details, visit MyFWC.com/License.

In addition, the FWC is seeking angler input on the proposed draft Black Bass Management Plan. To learn more and complete a survey, go to MyFWC.com/BassPlan_Survey.

Tom Champeau FFWC Fisheries Administrator

Our first annual meeting kicked off with twenty-one stakeholders present, eager to hear the latest FLFFC news and progress since the last meeting in March.

FLFFC President Todd Kersey started things off by bringing everyone up to speed on the accomplishments which included, organizing and creating a non-for-profit corporation, a website, regular business meetings and operations, scheduled partnership conference calls, and a fully functioning “office” that processes and publishes the partnership organizations’ profiles and freshwater-issue positions.

FWC Regional Fisheries Administrator Tom Champeau, presented the Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission’s plan to create a Florida Black Bass Enhancement Program that would be a ”long-term” management plan spanning from 2010 – 2030.

Tom’s presentation, titled “Ensuring Trophy Bass Forever”, provided data that demonstrates that the Florida trophy bass populations have been in decline since the 1970′s. Even though “catch and release” is practised nationally in bass fisheries, here in Florida overharvesting of trophy-sized bass has occurred in many of the prominate fisheries. So the current regulatory approach along with angler harvest preferences could be affecting growth and survival rates of the larger bass.

The overall objective of this plan is to engage the public to develop strategies and projects that will improve bass fisheries and provide more opprotunities to pursue trophy bass.

The anglers and non-anglers’ attitudes, concerns, and desires, are the “critical” component in forming elements of the plan statewide in the numerous types of freshwater fisheries.

One goal the plan seeks to accomplish is to motivate anglers to report trophy bass catches for validation and recieve recognition through media programs and publications.

Other goals are;

1. To form a “Florida Bass Advisory Council” by March 2010 made up of stakeholders.
2. Hold public workshops to advance plan-development stages in strategic fishery areas throughout 2010
3. Promote the plan’s progress and status using media, publications, websites and events during 2010.
4. Finalize the plan and present it to the FWC commissioners for approval by February 2011.

The plan’s development will be completely transparent and all are welcome to become enthusiatically involved in examining the current approaches used, and the possibilities of how, or if, that should change, and what new strateiges should be considered for implementation.

This is a total joint grassroots effort. The FWC, stakeholder individuals and organizations, as well as all levels of lake-management government, and generally any “fishery-dependent” business, organization, group, or individual, are all encouraged to get involved in the formation of Florida’s first trophy bass program.

After the morning FWC Black Bass plan presentation the FLFFC participating partners hosted a “Stakeholder’s Roundtable” event where ideas, questions, comments, suggestions, and criticisms, where put on the table for group evaluation, strategy formation, and if possible, tentative conclusions of how to approach the drafting of the plan.

After four hours of aggressive interaction, one central issue emerged as essential in achieving success–a hydrilla management plan must be established because it is “the main challenge” in most of our fisheries. The eradication strategy must be replaced with adaptive management strategies–that allow areas of hydrilla to exist within stakeholder-determined locations.

Also the large-scale treatment events should be replaced by more frequent small-scale management events which would achieve the goal of resticting wide-expansion while preserving key hydrilla habitat for spawning and summer cover.

Many other important issues were presented for consideration. A Minutes File of the meeting will be provided soon, along with the FWC Power Point Presentation and the FWC’s conclusions of what the roundtable forum produced.

Please check back here during the week of November 8th for all the news and information. Our first annual meeting was a great success and the start of an essential important process of uniting Florida’s angling-interest community and working together to create Florida’s first trophy bass program.

FWC-Dennis Renfro, Facilitor-Perran Ross, FWC-Dale Jones

A

FLFFC Inc.  INAUGURAL ANNUAL OPEN MEETING

FWC’s – “ENSURING  TROPHY  BASS  FOREVER”

OCTOBER 26 & 27

BASS PRO SHOP – ORLANDO FLORIDA

Day One Guest Speakers:

• Darrell Scovell – FFWCC Freshwater Fisheries Division Director
• Tom Champeau – FFWCC Region Fisheries Director

Will Be Presenting a New Program First-Draft Plan,  FFWCC Florida Black Bass 2010-2030 Management Plan,  To Enhance All Species of Black Bass In The Statewide Freshwater Fisheries. 

All FWC Roundtable Stakeholders Are Encouraged To Attend And Take Part In The Development Stage Of the First-Ever Plan Of Its Kind.  Your Participation Is Essential For Its Formation And Success 

If The Freshwater Fishery Industry Is Your Interest, You Are Invited To Attend The FLFFC Inaugural Annual Open Meeting that will feature a FFWCC Stakeholder  ”First-Look”  Roundtable Forum of the proposed, first-draft, trophy bass enhancement management program.  

Day Two Featured Speakers:

• Todd Kersy – FLFFC President
• David Douglass – FLFFC Secretary
• Al Ovies – FLFFC Treasurer

All pro freshwater-fishery organizations and existing FWC Stakeholders and FLFFC partners and individual members are invited to attend and take part in the coalition’s first annual open meeting.

• Starts at 9 am  on both days
• Ends when there is a general consensus to do so on both days.

FLFFC Officers will present the fishing coalition’s, status, future vision, history, and a presentation titled,

“What the Coalition Can Do For You”

If you consider yourself a potential partner in the first-of-its-kind, statewide freshwater fishing coalition, we invite you to attend both day’s events at the Bass Pro Shop in Orlando Florida.

SEE THE COALITION IN ACTION

If you have any inquires please use our “Contact Us” page provided in the menubar above.

We Look Forward To Standing With You To Protect Our Fisheries.

For the sake of future ease of reference, allow me orthographical license to abbreviate an idea and a title with one acronym. Instead of refering to “bodies of freshwater” continually and combining the additional subject of “issues” to it, let’s reverse the first subject to “Freshwater Bodies” and add the second subject “Issues” to result in something easy to remember, “FBI“.

FBI’s are first created when people become involved with freshwater bodies in all the varities of ways they have interests in. Eventually when enough people are using them without the proper safeguards in place and proper implementation, the nature and state starts to change for the worse and responsible action is required to maintain an optimum level of health.

Herein lies the challenge which was first addressed by Florida’s people about a century ago. Without presenting a complete history of freshwater management in Florida, let’s start with the federal, state, and county agencies as they are today, in place and operating under the current State Statues the lawmakers put in place.

The people interested in FBs vary greatly in those interests, however many of the issues are shared in common within that diversity. It is this common ground that many FB users hope to build relationship upon in order to stand and be heard as one unified voice in the ears of the legislature.

A coalition is essentially a partnership centered on one or more reasons, efforts, and causes, that ulitimately have the same shared goal which all parties have a stake in.

Therefore their “issues” are defined as problems or deficiencies with the current plan, policy, and laws, that does not have an adequate or correct result as they veiw it. The end result is that people who expect to benefit from the lake management agencies plans and work, in the end do not, but instead suffer decline in the level of ability to enjoy their FB, thus an FBI is created and the need for responsible action arises on the part of the people involved.

The only way we can know what our issues are is for each one of us to sit down together in order to compare our information and understanding of situations we find unacceptable within the federal, state, and county management agencies’ end results and proposed future plans.

We hope you’ll partner with us so that we will work to define our issues correctly and form a plan by which those FBIs will ultimately become tomorrow’s optimum FB management plan, legislation, law and policy.

A Non-Voting Partner is an individual who is a licensed Florida angler that takes an active interest in the Mission and Purpose of FLFFC Inc. and is willing to consider joining the membership of one or more of the Coalition Partner Organizations of their choosing.

There is no coalition membership fee required, however we ask that you provide your name, address, phone and email address, along with a brief statement regarding Florida Freshwater Fishing Issues that you are concerned with.

Since we are primarily a coalition of organizations partnered together by “Issues”, it is essential for us to understand your freshwater fishery concerns and interests, and to introduce you to each one of our partner organizations so that you are able to make the best choice to address your needs.

We look forward to having a relationship with you through one or more of our partner organization’s memberships. The memberships of our partners is the strength of our coalition and the driving force that motivates us to work on your behalf.

A Voting Partner is any type of organization that has a supportive interest in Florida’s Freshwater Fisheries and then chooses one of three partnership-level options for their representative to participate within the coalition process.

The types of organizations who are interested in Florida’s various types of bodies of freshwater are many;

1. Anglers of every type of fish in Florida–”The Fishing Capitol of the World”.
2. Artists of all types, capturing freshwater places in time for all generations.
3. Boaters of all types enjoying bodies of freshwater in a varieties of ways.
4. Conservationist working to preserve bodies of freshwater for all.
5. Educators teaching students about freshwater body environments.
6. Hikers that prefer the freshwater-body perspective from dry land.
7. Hunters of wildlife which thrive in and around bodies of freshwater.
8. Lodging Industry, providing for all involved in lakes, rivers, etc.
9. Outdoor Activities Industry provides the ways of enjoying bodies of freshwater.
10. Photographers of freshwater fish, wildlife, and people, – framing the moment.
11. Scientists research and explore the riches of freshwater environments.
12. Underwater Divers enjoy the “Fishes’ Eye View” in the bodies of freshwater.

This is a partial list of the organization-types that have key interests in Florida’s bodies of freshwater. Many of them have similar challenges and issues and would therefore benefit from partnerships centered around those important issues.

The FLFFC provides a platform upon which organizations can form a “directory” of freshwater fishery issues and identities. Within this directory a partnership-process system provides participants with an exhaustive issues-vetting procedure which produces the broadest organizational support possible and thereby a greater possibility of success in the State Legislature in respect to the issue at hand.

So if you’re involved with an organization that is in some way connected to freshwater fisheries management directly (as in lake habitat management organizations or groups) or indirectly (as in recreational lake-user groups or associations)  or you are just a concerned citizen desiring to take part in the freshwater fishery users uniting within a statewide coalition,  please take the time to review our website and register. Post your comments and contact us with any thoughts and questions you might have.

We hope to hear from you

The Florida Freshwater Fishing Coalition held their inaugural meeting at the Bass Pro Shops store in Orlando, Florida.

The Tuesday 9am-5pm meeting featured guest speaker Darrell Scovel, the Director of the Division of Freshwater Fisheries Management within the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FFWCC).  

The Issues-Topic Presentation:  ”Florida’s Fisheries Funding Sources and Spending”

Also scheduled:  The FLFFC founders discussed, partnerships & issues management, the organizational structure, and the formation of the 2009-2010 agenda.

The immediate progress – organization business plan, coalition-engine mechanism, marketing strategies, and incorporation development schedule.

The established purpose - to provide a coalition-vehicle through which representation of freshwaterbody-users rights are voiced before the various levels of the Florida government.

All are invited to partner with us in this most important, essential, coalition organization.