I've been guiding a lot of years, and I've seen some crazy things on the water. What took the cake for me was when the police came to the weigh-in site at the Guntersville Bassmaster last week and took Dustin Wilks off to the jailhouse for removing a gillnet from the lake.
Gillnet? Gillnets are legal in much of the navigable waters of Alabama. For the most part, they're not required to be marked in any real visible manner, and many are strung for hundreds of yards across prime bass migration routes and spawning flats during the peak pre-spawn and spawn cycle.
Some are marked with only an old coke bottle on one end of the net – others are not visibly marked from the surface at all. Anglers have no way of knowing where some of these gillnets are, or which way they run. And many anglers become caught in the mesh during the spring months.
Many bass also become caught in the nets during the spring run, and the low survival rate (due to delayed mortality) cannot be good for the recreational fisheries – especially since most of the bass hung in the nets are in the 4-pound class and up. Numerous reports of bass over 13 pounds hung in the nets have been reported on Lake Guntersville.
Legally placed nets are protected by law, and anglers who encounter a net or become hung in a net should not damage or remove the net from the target area. According to Wilks, the net he became entangled in was not clearly marked, and had no readable writing on any float connected to the net.
He removed the net because its floats were on the surface of the water after he'd become entangled in it, and that caused it to be a real hazard to the heavy boat traffic on the lake, which included both the Bassmaster and BFL tournaments.
To take a look at the big picture, legal netters have issues. Many of their nets are destroyed by boat propellers and anglers who cut their way out of the nets. And nets aren't cheap. Some anglers go beyond the law and cut the entire net or remove them altogether. As recreational traffic increases on our public waters, the gillnetters' way of life, and their nets, seem more and more in the way.
Recreational anglers have their own issues with gillnets each spring, and many have complained to authorities about the problem. I'm convinced that the enforcement division of Alabama saw the chance to make their own statement after a netter swore out a warrant for Wilks, and took advantage of the high-visibility media to arrest him during the weigh-in. Wilks is without question one of the finest and most respected pros on the tour.
I think with the huge and positive impact that's brought into the area by large events such as Bassmaster and FLW events, the way our enforcement division handled the situation could have been done with much less drama. If law enforcement wanted attention, they got it. Wilks in no way deserved to be arrested and hauled off to jail for doing what he thought was the right thing to do – especially since the gillnet he became hung in was apparently not properly marked.
Wilks also explained to me on the phone that while he was being hauled away to the jailhouse, one of the officers told him that he could not understand why the cities pay so much to have bass tournaments come to the area, because bass anglers kill all the bass. That's the spirit boys. One warden once told me and my clients that he never understood the whole "catch and release thing," and that the only good bass was a bass in his skillet.
Apparently the conservation efforts of bass anglers and organizations have gone unnoticed by the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and our concern for the future of bass angling is not appreciated. The attitude of some of the enforcement personnel in my opinion is pretty pathetic in this circumstance. But of course, they've had to deal with a lot of issues from both gillnet/commercial anglers, bass anglers and many other lake users.
Perhaps a little sensitivity training and the reintroduction of the word professionalism is in order.
I think it's time that Alabama catches up with the times and understands the enormous and positive contribution sportfishermen make to state revenue. Part of our job is to promote family tourism, and that's hard to do if we're going to be hauled off to the slammer when we get hung up in gillnets – nets that are killing our sport and gamefish on a day-to-day basis.
Dustin Wilks may have become hung in the mesh of a gillnet, but he is now caught up in a web of controversy. We're all behind him 100%, and maybe when it's all said and done, we'll have made some much needed progress with the long-running gillnet issue.
Troy Jens has been a professional fishing guide for 23 years. He's spent the last 10 of those years guiding on Lake Guntersville. He lives in Huntsville, Ala. and also fishes tournaments.
