A largemouth bass tracking study performed by Dr. Mark Ridgway and the Big Rideau Lake Association from 1996-1999 indicated that largemouth bass do not return to their home range after being displaced more than 8 km. It was also observed that largemouth bass will only move 400 m within a 15 day period after being displaced.

With these results in mind, a new partnership with tournament organizers, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Big Rideau Lake Association was formed to find solutions to minimize displacement and fish stockpiling.

Two meetings were held to resolve these findings. Following the May 30th, 2000 meeting, Kingston Bass Anglers approached the BRLA with a zonal release strategy. Two tournament organizations, Kingston Bass Anglers and Eastern Ontario Bassmasters both implemented this release system. Kingston Bass Anglers took this release system one step further by conducting a survey.

It is the purpose of this report to summarize the results of this survey. This data is not intended to be used for scientific purposes and will not be displayed to the public. However, it will be used as an insight into how many anglers fish above the Rocky Narrows and what percentage of fish are caught in which area of the lake during a tournament held out of Rideau Ferry.

For this zonal release system, the lake was divided into five different zones (Figure 1). Each angler noted in which zone the fish were caught. At the end of the day, the fish were returned to appropriate capture sites or were evenly distributed throughout the lake. Kingston Bass Anglers decided that they would conduct a survey with this release system. Each angler from this group recorded the number of species (largemouth or smallmouth bass) caught in each zone.

Analysis of the data indicates that the majority of teams (94%) (Total teams = 30) concentrated angling efforts in zones 1 and 2 (Figure 2). It was also noted that no teams angled in zone 4 and only 3% angled in zones 3 and 5 respectively, therefore only 6.7% of the teams angled above the Rocky Narrows (Figure 2). Given the percentage of effort in zones 1 and 2, the majority of fish caught at the Kingston Bass tournament were caught in these two zones (Figure 3). Only 4% of the fish were caught in zone 3 and 5 respectively and no fish were caught in zone 4. Of the fish caught, only 7.1% were smallmouth bass and 92.9% were largemouth bass.

Due to the following, the results indicate that only 6.7% of the teams angled above the Rocky Narrows. Possible reasons for this angling activity are outlined below:

Since all the boats launched at Rideau Ferry, it would be very expensive to travel down to zones four and five.

1. Because all the tournaments in the past have been out of Rideau Ferry, the anglers are more familiar with the lower zones of one and two.
2. The fishing may be better in zones one and two since many of the larger fish have been displaced into this area from years of tournaments and angling.
3. It can be assumed that since anglers target the larger largemouth bass compared to the smaller sized smallmouth bass, the habitat in zones one and two are more favourable for the largemouth bass. This would also explain why there was a larger percentage (92.9%) of largemouth bass angled compared to the smaller smallmouth bass (7.1%).

In conclusion, the zonal release system was successful for a smaller scale tournament (<35 teams). It would be recommended for all smaller tournaments to adopt this system in the future. The survey conducted by Kingston Bass Anglers was not intended to be used for scientific purposes, but provided key information on the locations anglers fish when launching from Rideau Ferry. This report on the survey and zonal release system will hopefully provide useful information for future decision making on different release strategies.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Kingston Bass Anglers and Eastern Ontario Bassmasters for their participation in this zonal release system. I would also like to thank Art Cunningham from Kingston Bass Anglers for approaching the BRLA with the zonal release system and providing us with the survey maps which allowed me to write this report.