Here is what Staggs sent out on the tournement rules:
Summary of important changes: 1. Organizer fees: We propose to significantly lower the required feesfor tournament organizers with the intent of recovering only our “new”costs relating to tournament fishing. Fees would be $25, $100, or $200depending on prize amounts and tournament format. Fees would be lowerfor “immediate release” tournaments less likely to incur incidentalmortality (a major issue for the NRB) with idea of providing a financialincentive to use tournament formats that minimize incidental mortality.Youth and disabled events would be exempt from fees. We could not comeup with a fair and enforceable definition for “charity” or “non-profit”tournaments but believe the lower fee structure will not be animpediment to those events. The $200 fee would be incurred only by”catch-hold-release” or “catch and kill” events awarding more than$10,000 in prizes.
2. Individual participant fees: We have removed the individualtournament participant fee. Although this was a highly recommendedoption by Fishing Tournament Advisory Committee (FTAC), DNR andlegislative legal staff believe the original legislation, 2003 WisconsinAct 249, only gives us authority to charge fees to tournament organizersto recover costs of administering the program.
3. Full recovery of costs: The Natural Resources Board throughmotions and instructions given during public NRB meetings has directedthe Department to recover the costs of administering the tournamentprogram entirely from the fees. Based on public input and advice of theFTAC, we have reduced the cost of the tournament program to only “new”program costs by not including law enforcement costs (on the assumptionthat no new staff or expenses are being incurred with these new rules),and tournament data collections (on the assumption that collectingvaluable biological information from tournaments is actually a benefitto all anglers and shouldn’t be paid for by the tournament anglersthemselves). With these changes, the new projected revenues closelymatch the projected new costs at around $33,000 per year.
4. Bass Culling Pilot Study: The NRB in an approved motion alsorequired us to recover any unreimbursed costs of the bass cullingtournament pilot study through fees. We originally prorated the costacross all tournaments, but public comment suggested it should beapplied only to bass tournaments and sunset when the money is collected.So we have proposed a $2/angler surcharge for bass tournaments (exceptimmediate release tournaments) for a six year period to recover thischarge. That fee would be added to the cost of the tournament permit.
5. Tournament limits: We recommend retaining the permit structure withlimits on the number of tournaments based on waterbody size – though weare responding to public input that the originally proposed numberswould be overly limiting on some waters by applying the limits based onthe specific waterbody or river pool where the weigh in will occurrather than pooling the water acreages for connecting waters or chains.This will have the effect of spreading out the effort out on lake chainsand allowing additional tournaments on the Mississippi River.
6. Incidental Mortality: We have learned that there will beincidental mortality of bass and walleyes in “catch-hold-and release”tournaments if the water temperature is above about 75 degrees, and todate there have been no studies or methods developed to improve handlingtechniques to make this go away. Mortalities observed in Wisconsin bassranged from 16-34% and nationally have averaged 25%. We proposed acomplete ban on this tournament format at the hearings but this washighly unpopular with bass tournament anglers. In this rule we proposean alternate strategy of an automatic bag limit reduction from 5 to 3for bass and walleyes during dates when the average water temperaturewould be above 70F for walleyes or 80F for bass. Those dates areapproximately the first week of July through the middle of August (80F)for bass and the middle of June to the first week of September forwalleye (70F).This does not make the incidental mortality issue go away- but it will reduce the mortality since fewer fish will be handled andstress in livewells will be reduced.
7. AIS: The NRB has expressed concern about tournaments spreading VHSand other invasive species. The hearing proposal included a requirementthat tournament organziers submit an AIS plan as part of theirapplication but there is understandably a lot of confusion as to whatthe plan would include and how it would be administered. Given therecent and proposed changes in boat and bait handling laws relating toVHS, we believe the AIS plan requirement is outdated and have replacedit with a requirement that tournament organizers and participants mustcomply with all existing state rules, and that the DNR has the authorityto include appropriate AIS protocols in tournament permits if there areinvasive species issues.
8. Tournament application process: The “open window” for tournamentapplications has been moved up to April 1st through June 30th in theyear prior to the tournament with final decisions made by August 1st.If limits are not reached, organizers can still apply for a permit up to30 days prior to the tournament. There will still be a lottery if limitson particular waterbodies is reached.
9. Other restrictions: The provisions that a fisheries biologist mayadd to the permit if the format is “catch-hold-release” includeredistribution of fish, restriction on the area that can be fished toreduce the time that fish are held in live wells, and the distance fishare transported to the weigh-in site. These conditions would be statedwhen the permit was issued.Hopefully this information will help in your review of the new rules.If you have any questions about the new rules please contact Dr. AndyFayram at [email protected] or 608-266-5250.