Riversmallies...

[Tim Smith]

You are right about it being more East Coast as opposed to all over and I used to visit and post over on the board as well as did Norm of Kankakee River fame. A National Organization would be difficult to form and I don't see it happening any time soon. Jim had tried to get it going at one time but could not find any interest in it from the other organizations. Where are you living now are you in Missouri or still up in Illinois? I am in Nixa, Mo. as you can see.

You're right that a national organization is a hard nut to crack.

I made calls all over the country looking for interested parties (including to Arkansas and Missouri). There was lip service here and there, but not many people were ready to pitch in. Jim and I did succeed in recruiting an Indiana group into the Alliance (great group over there with a super conservation ethic). That and the Alliance discussion board were about as far as it went.

To keep a national organization afloat, it needs to be big enough to support a professional staff. Professional staff requires financial support and that requires numbers of members and money. The ISA focuses on stream fishing and because those are more fragile populations they (admirably) don't support tournaments. That limits their connection to some of the more traditional sources of income for recreational fisheries groups, and their numbers really aren't that high compared to more well heeled groups like the TU, the Pheasants Forever and the National Wild Turkey Federation.

The total number of stream fishers for smallmouth isn't that high nation wide so that probably won't ever get much better. You could try to grow the group to reach that critical mass, but there were pitfalls to that as well. I estimated the maximum potential size for a national alliance would be 2,000 members with 1,000 being an ambitious 3 year goal. Without access to grants or a big (over)-emphasis on fund raising, that's a pretty small national group. You could try to beef up the group size by roping in the reservoir crowd, but it seems to me most of them fit better into BASS or the traditional fishing conservation groups. I don't see any conservation advantage for stream smallmouth from a group that wants to treat natural stream populations the same way it treats reservoirs.

And at the end of the day, all of that seemed to be detrimental to the group as it exists. I'm pretty sure there was a fear that once professionals were involved, local control would be diluted and that would demotivate the kind of volunteer spirit that makes the ISA a success. There's sort of an activation energy (many more members or a big infusion of cash) needed to make the leap from state chapters to a national group like Trout Unlimited. From the perspective of a volunteer member or officer, why would you want to take that leap and hand something to a professional staff that you already enjoyed doing yourself?

I felt there were ways around all that, but people were pretty happy with the model they had. Until those dynamics get resolved, things are pretty well stuck where they are for better or worse.

For myself, my agenda for recreational fisheries is pretty well embodied in the ISA Conservation Philosophies (I was the primary author of that) That can be found here I push that agenda wherever I am...

...which is just about everywhere. I wish I could tell you where I live, Gary, but in 2010 I split my time between Illinois, Colorado, Belize and Washington state.

I spent the majority of that time working on mangrove conservation and shrimp farm ecocertifications and water quality monitoring and improvement in Belize, Central America. I have more contracts lined up there next year and some people from Washington D. C. just contacted me. I'm not sure I want to live in Washington, but I'm listening.

[Gary Lange]

I understand the Potomac has a very nice population of Smallmouths. You are right about the national Organization. I tried to get a Southwestern Chapter of the Missouri Smallmouth Alliance going here in Springfield and the Southwestern section of the state but I could not find any interest except the same lip service you found with the National Alliance. I gave up and went fishing.