The Best Time for Fishing

Fresh-water fishermen believe in a closed season at spawning time because they want to preserve the fish and because they think that fish bite better if they have an annual vacation. This year five Tennessee Valley states, setting out to disprove the old theory, have abolished a closed season in TVA's vast reservoirs.

The five experimenting states* are taking the word of balding, fortyish Dr. R. William Eschmeyer, who has made Tennessee's Norris Lake his laboratory for the past two years. Knowing that 71% of all fish caught were taken during June--the first month after the season opened--Dr. Eschmeyer suspected that thousands of fast-growing southern game fish were dying of old age. He went down with his gill nets, fished up some facts:

P: In summer, the catch drops off when adult fish change their diet from elusive one-year-olds to easy-to-catch newborns. (Most game fish are cannibals.) With full bellies and plenty more where that came from, they are not much interested in hunting around for plugs, spoons and spinners.

P: In fall, the angler's luck improves as the surviving little fish grow larger and harder for the big fish to catch. By winter, the fishing should be even better. But with cold weather, a fishes digestion slows down; it takes 350 hours to digest the same minnow it would digest in several summer hours.

With only about one-fourth of the legal-length game fish being taken from TVA lakes each year, Eschmeyer argued that the fishing should be best at a time when fishing was not permitted--during April and May. Last week thousands of fishermen were inclined to agree with him: they were taking advantage of a stretch of balmy Tennessee Valley weather to reel in heavy hauls of crappie and large-and smallmouth bass.

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