As fishermen are finding out, the cost to participate in their favorite sport is going up. With gas soaring to more than $4 per gallon (diesel is now more than $5 per gallon), it”s getting so bad that one fisherman told me he was either going to have to cut back on his fishing trips or take out a loan.
The big question is will the high gas prices scare away fishermen from traveling to Clear Lake? As an example, consider a fisherman who tows a bass boat from Sacramento, a distance of about 130 miles. If the fisherman is pulling his boat with a diesel pickup and averages 12 miles a gallon, that”s a round-trip cost of about $100. Most fishermen say they use between 15 and 30 gallons a day in their bass boats and that adds up to another $120. So for just a single day of fishing, without even eating a lunch, the fisherman already has more than $200 tied up in fuel alone.
If the fisherman fishes for eight hours while at the lake, that comes to more than $25 per hour — more than most make in their regular day jobs. And for those who choose to stay in a local motel or resort, that”s an additional $60 to $100 per day.
All fishermen have to eat, so add in another $50 per day for food. Now we”re up to more than $40 per hour just to go fishing.
It”s even rougher for the tournament fishermen. Most of the bass tournaments held on Clear Lake are one-day team events. In addition to the actual tournament day, most of the fishermen either prefish one or two days prior to the tournament. The average cost to enter a team tournament runs about $300, which includes the option money. When you add in a day of prefishing and the entry fees, that fishing trip now costs approximately $1,000.
Typically most of the team tournaments pay the winning team about $2,000, while second place receives in the neighborhood of $1,000. Since paybacks are calculated by the number of teams entered and the average was 30 to 40 teams a tournament this past year, a team would have to finish in the top two places just to get expenses back.
Of course, added into the equation are the boat payments that will come to at least $400 per month. Typically a new bass boat costs from $40,000 to $60,000. And then there are the truck payments, which run close to $300 or more per month.
Another factor is that many bass fishermen work in the construction field and with the housing boom gone many are now without jobs. How long they can continue to travel and compete in bass tournaments is a good question.
If gas prices continue to skyrocket, I see a change in fishing habits in the future. Bass boats will be smaller. It wasn”t too long ago that most bass boats were equipped with 115 hp to 150 hp outboards. But as the economy boomed, bass fishermen wanted larger and faster boats. Now many boats are 22 feet long and rigged with 250 hp outboards. In fact, a few have 300 hp. Even with modern fuel-efficient engines they still burn a lot of gas.
A friend of mine recently bought a new 17-foot bass boat with a 115 hp outboard engine. His boat is every bit as comfortable as the bigger and more expensive boats and it burns a fraction of the fuel. He told me he launched at Clearlake Oaks and fished all the way to Nice, back to the state park and then back to where he launched his boat. He never went faster than 40 mph and he only burned five gallons of gas.
And the best part is he caught more than 25 bass. He also tows his boat with a small pickup. He competes in several team tournaments each year and catches as many fish as the other fishermen in the super fast boats.
If fuel costs continue to rise, I predict many fishermen will be forced to switch to the smaller boats. After all, a bass doesn”t know, or care, if you”re in a $60,000 bass boat or a $1,000 aluminum cartop boat.
