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COMMENTS BY KIM: Fifty-cent fishing and largemouth bass

Caught any largemouth bass on the the Souris River or Lake Darling lately? Do you own a 50-cent fishing license? Toss any sawdust on the ice?

Lately I’ve been looking through some old fishing proclamations, mostly stuff that my dad had in the bottom drawer of his old gun cabinet. Among the odd and interesting were several fifty-cent fishing licenses, one dating back to 1952 when H.R. Morgan was the North Dakota Game and Fish Commissioner.

Among the penalties noted in the 1952 proclamation was one for the “selling, bartering or trading to any person at any time for any bass” and “sale of bass prohibited if taken within or without the state.”

I found that interesting because bass are not native to North Dakota. As it turns out there was a stocking of “black bass” in the Souris River and Lake Darling dating all the way back to 1943. There was stocking of bass in 1944, 46 and 47 too. Records kept by the Game and Fish Department include the stocking of 4,025 fingerling bass in the Souris River in 1952.

Fast forward to the 1962 state fishing regulations.

“Souris River and tributary streams only lying above and below Lake Darling located within the counties of Ward, McHenry, Bottineau and Renville. The above described area shall again open to the taking of all species from May 5 to December 31 except that largemouth bass may not be taken prior to June 9.”

I noticed the name change from “black bass” to “largemouth.” Same fish, different name. And no, there are no largemouth bass found anywhere in the Souris or Lake Darling today. There’s year-round fishing too.

“They tried a lot of things back in the day and they didn’t do very well,” said Scott Gangle, NDGF fisheries section leader.

Greg Power, NDGF fisheries division chief, told me that “there was some strange rules” regarding fishing years ago in North Dakota.

“With hindsight you can say that,” said Power.

One of the regulations was that no sawdust be on the ice. Not quite sure why that regulation was in place, but it was. Apparently there were areas where sawdust was a problem, perhaps from cutting wood.

In the early 1950’s a number of old fishing regulation were trimmed from the proclamation, including one that prohibited fishing for a five-year period on any body of water where fish were stocked, no matter what the species.

Today there’s a number of fisheries in the state with great opportunities for smallmouth bass fishing, but that wasn’t always the case. Smallmouth, like largemouth, are not native to North Dakota. The smallmouth being caught across the state are the result of the first stocking efforts, probably sometime in the 1970s.

Other stocking efforts included Lake Audubon in 1990 and New Johns in 1991. However, there was a fishable population of smallmouth bass in Lake Sakakawea in the early 1980s. Those fish apparently came from fish hatchery brood stock transplanted on an experimental basis.

Today, there’s a growing number of smallmouth bass anglers taking advantage of tremendous fishing opportunities. It wasn’t always that way, and certainly not for 50-cents a season.

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