Japan banning black bass

Boat/US Magazine, May, 2005

Bass fishing is big business in Japan--second only to the U.S.--but a sumo-sized battle is underway in the Land of the Rising Sun over the future of this tremendously popular sport fishery.

Japan's Ministry of the Environment is attempting to sink the country's non-native freshwater largemouth and smallmouth bass that it says are wiping out stocks of important food fish from the country's lakes. Government agencies are reportedly subsidizing gill-netters to remove the fish and pushing regulations that require anglers to keep and kill any bass they land. So much for catch-and-release fishing, the cornerstone of the sport everywhere else.

Standing in the ministry's way, however, are Japan's three million bass anglers as well as public backing for the $600-million industry they support. In Japan, where bass tournaments can draw hundreds of boats, top competitors gain rock star status, kids play bass fishing video games and newsstands boasts no less than five magazines devoted to the sport.

Last year, in fact, top Japanese pros took home two U.S. titles, the Wal-Mart/FLW Tour's Angler of the Year award and the CITGO Bassmaster Classic trophy.

The irony of it all, says Ken Duke of the U.S.-based Bass Anglers Sportsmen's Society, is that much of the equipment--rods, reels, lures, related gear and even the outboard motors--used worldwide for bass fishing, including in Japan, is made by Japanese companies.

"But their government considers the black bass an exotic species that's detrimental to native fish," Duke says. "What they overlook is that black bass have been in Japan for an awfully long time, at least 80 years, and the fish are found nearly everywhere."

Although the sport didn't catch on until the 1970s, bass have had a home in the country that gave the world sushi since a Japanese businessman brought back a supply of live fish from California in 1925. Once western-style fishing with lures began to catch on about 40 years later, the imports were well-established and it's likely anglers helped nature along by restocking bass in their favorite lakes.

Even the moat around the Imperial Palace in Tokyo has a healthy stock of largemouth bass today as well as bluegill, another sport fish imported from the U.S.

Duke says the Japanese Ministry of Environment blames declines in food fish on bass predation but the agency has no studies to back that up.

In 2001, the Japan Sportfishing Association collected over a million signatures on a petition urging a compromise to allow bass fishing in some areas and eliminate the fish from others. That approach proved unsuccessful and in February Japanese anglers lost a legal battle to reverse the ban on catch-and-release fishing.

In dismissing the anglers' lawsuit, according to an article in The Japan Times, a district court judge ruled that while "enjoyment of fishing" may be a basic human right under Japan's constitution, that right did not include release of the fish.