Assessing the Economic Impact of Tournament Black Bass Angling on Lake Guntersville, Alabama

Lake Guntersville, Alabama boasts one of the most popular Largemouth Bass Micropterus salmoides fisheries in the United States and as such competitive bass fishermen constitute a large proportion of angling effort on the lake.  Black Bass Micropterus spp.  tournaments bring in additional  revenue into local communities surrounding the reservoirs they occur on.   We look to quantify the economic impact of these competitive events over the course of one year from February 2013 through January 2014 on Lake Guntersville.  All tournaments occurring on Lake Guntersville were identified if possible and randomly sampled.  At the completion of a tournament, anglers were directly contacted at access points and were given a survey packet to complete and return via postage paid envelope. 76 tournaments were sampled during the study and 1672 surveys were distributed with 442 returned.  Preliminary findings show mean trip expenditures ranged from $134 for wildcat tournaments to $872 for professional tournaments and an average trip expenditure of $481 across all tournament anglers surveyed.   Data collected during this project will be valuable to policymakers and stakeholders to demonstrate the importance of tournament angling on the Lake Guntersville area and how management plans can be adopted to increase local expenditures.