The James and Chickahominy Rivers boast strong largemouth-bass fisheries that attract anglers from across the country and play host to tournaments of varying sizes. Large tournaments typically launch from the James River, which offers excellent bass fishing. It also connects anglers with adjoining waters, such as the Chickahominy River.
Because of Chickahominy's reputation as a productive fishery, many anglers travel between it and the James to fish. As a result, during 2020, invasive Alabama bass were detected in Diascund Creek, a tributary of the Chickahominy. Additional detections of Alabama bass have been reported in the Chickahominy.
In April 2021, the Virginia DWR began a largemouth-bass tagging project to assess fish movement between the James and Chickahominy Rivers. The goals of the project are to estimate translocation between the rivers, assess the impact of translocation on the Chickahominy bass population, evaluate Alabama bass-dispersal vectors, and understand fish distribution post-release by anglers. This in turn will inform DWR management decisions, such as if and when stocking may be required to maintain the quality of the largemouth-bass fishery and identifying areas for Alabama-bass monitoring.
DWR tagged 648 preferred-size (greater than 12 inches) largemouth bass throughout the Chickahominy River with red-dart tags and monitored movement via angler reports and partnerships with B.A.S.S. and the Bass Federation to identify tagged fish at tournament weigh-ins.
Over the past year, DWR biologists were able to determine that largemouth-bass movement between the James and Chickahomy Rivers is largely driven by tournaments. This is because non-tournament anglers targeting Chickahominy bass overwhelmingly launch from and stay within the Chickahominy.
Despite this pattern, biologists found only 3.4 percent of largemouth bass were moved from the Chickahominy to the James River as part of large tournaments. Non-tournament anglers were responsible for 0.3 percent of observed translocation to the James River. Additionally, reported tagged bass released in the James River by anglers were later reported as being caught in the Chickahominy. Because of the long distance (greater than 35 miles), it's likely that these fish were translocated by anglers. However, this indicates movement in both directions between the two rivers.
Biologists also used data from creel surveys and field sampling to estimate the abundance of preferred-size bass in the Chickahominy River, as well as estimate the percentage of fish that are vulnerable to being caught and moved to the James River by anglers throughout the year. Overall, 12.5 percent of preferred-size largemouth bass were considered vulnerable to being moved from the Chickahominy to the James by anglers.
It's important to note that the 12.5 percent of vulnerable bass reflects the percentage of fish that are at-risk of being caught and translocated and represents an estimate of the maximum percentage of translocations. The observed percentage of bass translocated from the Chickahominy to the James was 3.7 percent over the course of a year.
Translocations by tournament and non-tournament anglers are very low, relative to the size of the bass population, and are not expected to negatively impact the Chickahominy largemouth-bass population.
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