Should Money Be Spent On A Put-and-take Trout Lake?

[snagged in outlet 3]

I haven't chimed in yet but I'll answer the initial question. "Should Money Be Spent On A Put-and-take Trout Lake?"

I say yes, especially if it's near me. I found this with one google search. Munch on these facts.

http://www.gocolumbiamo.com/ParksandRec/Ac...out_fishing.php

No need to thank me, it's what I do.

SIO3

[Phil Lilley]

Table Rock Sales Tax Rev vs Taneycomo - no comparison. Consider Big Cedar Lodge - the taxes on that place alone is more than all the resorts and marinas on Taneycomo.

How many people come to Branson to fish for trout? A tiny, tiny percentage. Ask the chamber. They spend alot money promoting Table Rock, attractions and shows, and then they spend alittle money on trout and Taneycomo. They market people who will come to Branson and trout is one of the last draws on their list. Have we tried to move trout up on their list? Sure. But money talks and trout don't draw like shows and SDC.

I know what I pay in sales taxes, last 12 months - $103,000. MDC gets .25%, right? That's $325.

[patfish]

This is so much more fun than the heathcare debate!

or the Tiger Woods "scandal". :lol:

[Murdoc]

Whenever we get into one of these types of discussions on the forum I'm always enlighten and entertained by everyone’s remarks. The diversity of views are wonderful. Something we all have to remember is that most of the decisions that are made are made my people that don’t have our back grounds or know really what is going on in the real world. Most not all of these people make the decisions looking at numbers and listening to those that have their ear. The larger city’s will always get the better of the deals because of the population in their voting precincts. In the big city’s the dense population will drive the money to their areas. Until we change the way this is done nothing will ever change.

[mosouthpaw]

Habitat improvement for cold water fisheries in MO are much easier to perform because in those rivers the land the water is owned by the state. (taney is actually owned by Empire District Electric, up to a certain elevation im guessing) The state or Feds dont have to ask permission to enter land privately owned to alter the habitat.

Lakes too are easy to spend money on habitat, as most lakes are publicly owned entities.

Its the rivers that are owned by private people that make for the challenge of spending money to improve habitat. Using public money to fund private land improvement is a problem. It would be hard to sell to john q public to take streams owned by some dude and improve his land by reducing erosion, adding boulders, creating log jams and brush piles. At the end of the day private citizen has a wonderful scenic river, spent little or nothing himself to improve the land and he/she still controls the land and doesnt allow tresspassers. John Q Public generally hates this type of spending....

Private groups and foundations can go into private land easier then the govt. Ducks Unlimited is a prime example of private groups going into private land and improving habitat.

Spending money on trout in missouri is easy to do. easier with private money.... There are people in missouri who want to buy tags and go to taney just as there are people who buy tags to go fish LoZ, Truman, Pomme de Terre, Bull SHoals and table rock. Like it or not Taney exists, and with that comes opportunity to appease citizens.

Personally i see no reason not to spend money where people fish, so what if the fish arent native or the pompous self righteous fisherman thinks its wrong to give welfare to certain fish, people buy tags because they want to fish. Some people like walleye, others like bass, and some like trout. Boohoohoo if you are mad because money is going to fish A over your fish B just because you think its wrong. At the end of the day people are fishing and they are spending money in pursuit of that goal. Not only is Pittman-Robertson taxes and MDC sales tax going back to fish-n-game but local economies are helped in pursuits of fishing. If you want monies to go to your fish then push for crappie stamps, bass stamps, walleye stamps and maybe a musky stamp.

People are fishing, and personally i see nothing wrong with that.... I dont fish for walleye, but im not going to throw a fit if others do or some money is going to fund added opportunity for more walleyes in the lakes.

[ness]

Something we all have to remember is that most of the decisions that are made are made my people that don’t have our back grounds or know really what is going on in the real world.

[snipped]

Most not all of these people make the decisions looking at numbers and listening to those that have their ear.

BINGO! That's the real world, folks.

Turning back time and recreating the smallmouth rivers that were -- it's waste of time talking about it. Work within the framework if you want to get things done.

If you want to wax poetic, well, I suppose this is as good a place as any for that.

[Wayne SW/MO]

At taney that 7 dollars lasts all year.

My point is that Taney, at least in the Branson area gets a lot of out of state visitors, more so than Bennett for instance. The trout at Bennett are produced on the state dime, while all or some of the Taney fish are on the federal dime. My point is I doubt that the state is losing any money on Taney, and may well be making some.

I could also point out that a lot more fish are kept at Bennett than I've seen kept in the upper region of Taney.

[fiveweight]

$7 per fish sounds way high. Fifteen years ago I helped my uncle run an outdoor catering business in Nashville. They had a small stocked stream as an option for people to catch and grill their own lunch. The price we paid was fifty cents per trout, and they were 12" long. That included delivery and we were ordering maybe 500 a month. I can remember him always ordering about 20 extras that went straight into his own freezer from the stocking truck. Yes, inflation means that's probably about a buck or more per fish in modern currency but this was a tiny, private operation so that comprehensively includes the price of all their overhead and whatever profit they made.

Here is a link to the first private fish farm I could find:

http://www.stockrainbow.com/

Their price per fish is $2.00 per pound on orders as small as 100 pounds with volume discounts available, and this looks like another small private operation.

Shepherd of the Hills dwarfs an operation like this in scale, isn't for profit, doesn't pay corporate income tax, and is located within a few feet of where most are stocked. If it costs anywhere near $7 per fish from egg collection to delivery then this just screams out as a program that needs to be privatized, and let the DNR purchase those fish for a fraction of the cost.

[fiveweight]

Here's something else I came across: A paper called "Budgets for trout production" (in the south).

Average cost per pound in a large fish farm (example was 150,000 pounds - still much smaller than SOTH) 82 cents. Note that the paper is from 1990, so double that but since each Missouri rainbow is stocked a little over half a half pound you're still looking at something like a buck a fish. Not saying that's what it actually costs, government isn't going to be as efficient as an identical private operation but it should give a ballpark.

http://www.ustfa.org/Trout%20production/Bu...srac%201990.pdf

[Phil Lilley]

Alright.... very stupid error on my part. In my hast to get out the door to Springfield, I offered some off-the-mark figures in my last post. I was thinking about it on the drive up and it hit me... I knew something was wrong with $325.

1/4% of our total sales tax paid would be $2284 by my updated calculations... still not sure if I'm doing it right. Can't seem to get my head around it for some reason.

Taney gets about 200,000 rainbows from Neosho, the federal hatchery. The rest comes from Shepherd. So it's only partially funded be the feds.

I'm going to ask about the $7 price tag for trout. That info is coming way back in the outer reaches of my memory so it could be flawed.