TWRC Will Discuss State Law to Study Paddlefish Health and Possibility of Opening More Public Waters to Commercial Fishing

NASHVILLE --- The governing body of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency will discuss at its Oct. 13-14 meeting a number of recommendations of a Commercial Fishing Advisory Committee that could possibly open more public waters to gill netting of paddlefish and to other commercial fishing.

 

Passed near the end of last year’s legislative session, Public Chapter 338 requires that TWRA “develop a plan to study [paddlefish] sustainability, population conditions, and juvenile survival rates on waters not currently open to commercial roe fishing.”

 

Composed of commercial fishermen, the committee met after the bill’s passage and recently recommended to the 13-member Tennessee Wildlife Resources Commission that the studies begin in early 2012.

 

The advisory committee wants TWRA to study Cordell Hull and Old Hickory reservoirs in Middle Tennessee, and Norris, Melton Hill, and Watts Barr reservoirs in East Tennessee.

 

A portion of Old Hickory is already open to paddlefish nets, but the advisory committee has asked that the study include an approximately 50-mile stretch of water from where Highway 231 crosses the reservoir upstream to Cordell Hull Dam. That stretch has been closed to commercial netting.

 

The TWRC will next meet on Oct. 13 at TWRA’s Region II Ray Bell Building located inside the Ellington Agricultural Center. There are several other advisory board recommendations that the commission will discuss, including one that would remove a size limit restriction on catfish.

 

While paddlefish are not listed in Tennessee on any endangered or threatened list, there is concern among fish biologists on a national level that this particular fish is in decline and there are tight restrictions on the international sale of its roe that is used for caviar.

 

---TWRA---