Anglers: Natural Clean Energy Allies?

I started fishing when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. The earliest fish I can recall catching had to be a couple-pound catfish, but because I was so young, I could have swore (and did) it was the size of a full-sized shark. That fish became the first of what must be thousands, nay millions, by now that I pulled out of Grand Lake o' the Cherokees in northeast Oklahoma. I grew up in southwest Missouri, the Ozarks, but my family would visit my grandparent's cabin on the lake almost every weekend in the summertime.

For folks unfamiliar with Grand Lake, it's a manmade lake - a product of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal back in the 1930s. The local governing body is the Grand River Dam Authority - affectionately known by its acronym, GRDA (Gerduh). As a youngster, I was pretty familiar with GRDA, and its control of the lake. As I grew a little older (when I could read), I started seeing GRDA's acronym and logo in usual places - power line poles. At the time, I didn't realize that Grand Lake is the reservoir for a hydroelectric dam.

And that's the beginning of how my love of fishing led to a career in clean energy.

Anglers enjoy their favorite pastime on manmade power plant reservoirs, beneath hydroelectric power dams, and even nearby offshore energy platforms. Recently, Bassmasters hosted a tournament at Cherokee Lake in northeastern Tennessee - that lake is a Tennessee Valley Authority-managed reservoir for its 148 megawatt hydroelectric dam. Cherokee Lake also holds the world record for black buffalo. In fact, a number of power plant reservoirs and dams have supported world records for blue catfish (Wheeler's Reservoir, TN), brown trout (Little Red River, AR), smallmouth bass (Dale Hollow, TN), striped bass (O'Neill Forebay, CA), walleye (Old Hickory Lake, TN), white crappie (Enid Dam, MS) and whiterock bass (Greers Ferry Lake, AR), just to name a few.

Like many, my grandpa taught me about fishing. He'd tell me stories about how fishing use to be - he'd swear you'd have to bait your hook while standing behind a tree to avoid a fish jumping out of the water and snapping it out of your hand. While that may have been a bit of a fish story, the point remained that fishing use to be better. As I grew older, and expanded my fishing experience, I learned more about how not all fish are as safe to eat as they use to be. For instance, after visiting my uncle in Florida, I was told it's better to catch and release local barracuda (especially the big ones) because they accumulated some sort of toxin.

Large, predatory fish like like some species of bass, gar, catfish, tuna, shark and yes, barracuda, accumulate mercury from their smaller prey. A number of rivers, lakes and other waterways contain fish consumption advisories - warning certain anglers about the dangers of excessive mercury levels in certain fish. To be sure, not all waterways have mercury warnings, nor are all fish equally susceptible to mercury bioaccumulation (for instance, fish lower on the food chain accumulate less toxins). But, the largest source of manmade mercury pollution comes from coal-fired power plants.

By college, my fishing interest reached an apex. I began taking biology courses to better understand stream ecology, macroinvertebrates, and entomology. Some of the best fly-fishing waters in the Ozarks were just an hour away. For a part-time job, I even worked for the "granddaddy of all outdoor stores", Bass Pro Shop's in Springfield, Missouri. It was right around this time that my local electric company announced plans to build another coal-fired power plant nearby.

That's when everything clicked: If I don't want to watch fishing deteriorate, I had to pay more attention to my own energy habits and to how electricity gets generated. Anglers and electric companies, whether they think about it much or not, are intimately tied together. If you're a fellow angler, you're probably physically in touch with the nation's energy infrastructure more frequently than the average person.

It's the 21st Century. Now, there are many forms of clean, low-cost, renewable energy resources that can help protect natural resources to be enjoyed by everyone for generations to come, including anglers. Wind farms and solar panels emit no harmful air pollution, like mercury, to generate electricity. They also don't require vast sums of water to harness the power of nature. And wind farms and solar panels don't generate toxic waste, like coal ash or radioactive spent nuclear fuel that could harm local waterways. Anglers are on the front-lines of natural resource degradation, and are some of the best resources for conservation. Major conservation organizations like Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited recognize the impacts of energy on the outdoor industries.

So next time the fishing conditions aren't great, and you're stuck at home watching Bassmasters or perusing Facebook for fly-tying tips, consider getting in touch with your local, state and federal representatives and let them know that you're an angler, and you support renewable energy.

Tight lines.