Beaver Lake Live Bait

[Feathers and Fins]

You actually need multiple licenses depending on what you are doing.

To catch the bait for commercial sale $15.00 tackle license

To sell the bait commercially you need the $25.00 commercial sales license

It would be wise to have the Fish Farmers permit just in case of breeding $25.00

And then the dealers permit $10.00

Fish Farmers permit is $25.00

So 115 bucks in permits but that’s not a big deal a good haul could pay for that in a short order but it’s this one that makes it much more difficult I may be off on one or more permits but its all here http://www.agfc.com/fishing/Documents/regs_mussel_baitfish_fishfarmer.pdf

32.06 TAKING BAITFISH FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES IN CERTAIN WATERS

PROHIBITED. 08-11

It is unlawful to take or attempt to take baitfish for commercial purposes in: The Caddo River

and that portion of the Little Missouri River and its tributaries above Ozan Creek in Pike County;

all waters north of U.S. Highway 70 in Howard County; and all waters in Benton, Carroll, Clark,

Crawford, Franklin, Lawrence, Madison, Montgomery, Newton, Polk, Sebastian, Sevier and

Washington counties.

Here is the map of no take for commercial use.

The farming would be a great idea but the cost in setting up for actually breeding shad is high and a power outage could cost you thousands of dollars very quickly. It would be cheaper to be able to catch bait from creeks, rivers and lakes but for those in NWA it is another cost prohibitive issue as the nearest area would be The Arkansas River In Johnson county with any viable success.

It is at least a 2 hour and more realistically 2.5 to 3hr drive one way, the cost in gas and labor plus the tanks and everything else to do it would put the bait cost through the roof. You are talking $5.00 per shad at minimum at a store, and probably a more realistic number would be 7.00 to 10.00 per shad. Remember you have to have the tanks to keep them alive and healthy along with the chemicals, permits, filtration electric bill and all the other cost. It is not as simple as dumping them in a tank and turning on a bubbler.

You would need to catch a minimum of 250 shad a night / day get them to the store alive to make it profitable. The odds of mortality are high and each death cuts in to the profit margin and there is times during the year when the demand is not there so it is not a viable year round career yet you still have the high investment in it.

Cost wise it just does not make sense to and regulation wise doesn’t make sense. Now if you could catch and sell them from Beaver Lake or catch other baits from local waters such as chubs or suckers it would make a great deal of sense to do it. Beaver would be at best 30 minutes round trip to several local shops so you could catch shad and sell them at a more reasonable price of say 3.00 per shad.

Remember guides don’t count in all this as they are exempt 32.02 (1) Licensed fishing guides are not required to purchase a fish dealer’s license when providing

baitfish during the act of guiding.

So they can take and use the bait so long as they are guiding. But they still cannot go to Grand anymore nor Missouri and catching shad on Beaver is getting difficult so they must find new sources and possibly travel which could create and increase in the cost of a guide trip.

[bfishn]

For sale: Two insulated shad tanks (1-30 gal., 1-50 gal.), both plumbed with quick-dump inline filters and Keep Alive aeration. Both are fitted with oxygen flowmeters with 0.1 lpm graduation. Mini-C oxygen bottle and regulator included. Also 3 Betts Pro Series cast nets.*

In the interest of full disclosure I must advise interested parties that none of this gear will work for Beaver Lake shad, and the economics make hauling your own shad to fish with in Beaver from somewhere else totally unaffordable. Beaver is completely different from other lakes where live shad consistently outproduce all other baits for big fish by 10 to 1, the only baits that work there must be purchased at a bait shop.

*(Not).

[Feathers and Fins]

Big difference between catching your own and trying to make a business of it and you dang well know it lol. If shad was a viable commercial bait im pretty sure every bait shop would carry them as they are the Golden Egg on Beaver.

Though I have one I like much better than shad even and no its not trout although I wish they were legal as well.... Never have figured out why they arnt its just another fish not like if they got loose in Beaver they might breed or last long. Hey how do we propose a change in regs to allow for trout....

[bfishn]

Big difference between catching your own and trying to make a business of it and you dang well know it ...

That was exactly my point. None of the members here give a hoot about commercial uses. The premise of this thread seemed to infer that fishing with live shad on Beaver was doomed now that Grand is out, and that's simply not the case.

As for using trout in Beaver, I can tell you from (others) experience it's largely a waste of time. They are pretty awesome in lakes that are stocked with trout though. Since I closed up the last commercial Arkansas trout farm, any commercially produced trout would have to come from out of state, something the AGFC would be hard pressed to allow as they'd have no control over the disease/parasite aspect.

[Feathers and Fins]

No the premise was the difficulty in getting shad ( in general) and its availability on Beaver Lake and ( transporting from other states ) started from another thread. That is why my very first post had the laws for OK and MO in it as well as AGFC regs.

And I would say allowing anglers to catch trout on the white below beaver and say Lake Atlanta ( LA which feeds beaver lake ) would be something very viable.

[bfishn]

And I would say allowing anglers to catch trout on the white below beaver and say Lake Atlanta ( LA which feeds beaver lake ) would be something very viable.

That's how OK does it, but Okies seem to be far more forgiving when it comes to keeping fish, especially trout. Try that in the White River, and the resulting outcry would make smallmouth gigging rants pale by comparison.

.

[Feathers and Fins]

LMAO that could be a hilarious rant to see though.

I cant think of to many people who go on the white below the dam that arnt keeping the trout, seems every time I am there I see stringer upon stringer of trout, I would like to see a limit in my bait tank and headed up the hill make that left followed by a right and then right in Beaver, Heck only thing I would be doing is releasing them a little higher in elevation well that and upgrading their size and color lol.

[bfishn]

The only scenario I can see the AGFC abiding bait trout is in tailwaters that hold both trout and stripers (or walleye). Wasting a stocker or two to remove a predator that would otherwise eat several hundred would be a pitch they'd wisely consider. Not as effective as a shocking boat, but way cheaper. If the trout anglers saw some stripers hauled out, they might buy it too. Of course you'd have to keep the stripers.

[Feathers and Fins]

Funny thing is that is the one area ( Beaver TW ) I practice CnR on stripers. Not a ton of them and there size and fighting is much better than on the lake...

[JohnF52]

I think there will eventually be enough stripers in the TW to effectively make trout stocking too costly.