F&G Council meeting November:

[AndyS]

License sales this year and compared to last year, everything is down except for a few things. Fishing is down 4.9%, hunting is down 3.3%

Freshwater Fisheries:
Chief Lisa Barno reported that Largemouth Bass Virus was documented at our Hackettstown facility at the very end of September into October. We had largemouth in six different ponds and staff noticed some reddened fins. Jan Lovy was on site and thought it to be a bacterial infection which is fairly common, so the fish were distributed. With additional and more intensive testing a subsample of the fish taken tested positive for Largemouth Bass Virus. At that point we had two ponds left and we ceased stocking. Jan retested the fish and they were confirmed positive. There were about 3,000 fish left and they were all destroyed. The ponds have been drained and we are trying to dry them out and if we can get them dry that will kill off the virus. Because some of the fish that were stocked will be carriers of this virus, the actual impact is really difficult to say. Largemouth Bass Virus is a stress-related disease; we may see some mortality related with spawning stress in two years. If the summers are exceptionally hot, we may see issues in a couple of the smaller ponds that were stocked. Considering most of the waters that were stocked have already seen Largemouth Bass Virus we are not anticipating a significant impact to the fishery, but it is something we should monitor. We will be doing additional testing next year and the year after to document what the current status of the virus is in New Jersey waters.




A-1923 was substituted by S-1093 and passed to ban the use of elephants and other wild/exotic animals acts.

Councilman Robinson addressed the fall/winter trout stocking in Union County. He would like to see Echo Lake stocked.