Published 2026-10-22
North American Journal of Fisheries Management, 2026, 00, 1–14
https://doi.org/10.1093/najfmt/vqag087
Published: 22 October 2026
Special Section

Relationships between angler reported trophy bass catches and long-term submerged aquatic vegetation data in Florida lakes

Special Section on Black Bass 2025
AFS Symposium Proceedings

Kevin G. Johnson 1,*, Summer Lindelien2, Jason H. O’Connor1, Paul Schueller3, Kimberly I. Bonvechio 4, and Jennifer Moran4

1Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, Gainesville Freshwater Fisheries Research Office, Gainesville, Florida, USA

2Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Division of Freshwater Fisheries Management, Gainesville Freshwater Fisheries Research Office, Gainesville, Florida, USA

3Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, Center for Biostatistics and Modeling, Lovett E. Williams Jr. Wildlife Research Lab, Gainesville, Florida, USA

4Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, Eustis Fisheries Research
Laboratory, Eustis, Florida, USA

*Corresponding author: Kevin G. Johnson. Email: kevin. johnson@myfwc. com.

Abstract

Objective: TrophyCatch, led by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, began in 2012 as a citizen-science program in which bass anglers are rewarded for catching, documenting, and releasing Florida Bass
Micropterus salmoides and Largemouth Bass M. nigricans ≥3.63 kg. In 2015, standardized lake aquatic vegetation mapping began as part of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s freshwater fisheries long- term monitoring program to generate whole- lake submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) metrics for Florida lakes. Trophy bass and SAV data from both programs have proven invaluable in the management, research, and monitoring of Florida’s lentic freshwater fisheries. Our objective was to investigate the relationship between the number of angler reports of trophy- sized bass approved for TrophyCatch (i.e., TrophyCatch reports) and lake SAV metrics.

Methods: We used standardized methods to collect hydroacoustic data along predetermined equally spaced transect grids and the BioBase mapping system to generate estimates for whole- lake SAV percentage of area covered and percentage of volume infested (PVI). We also used vegetation point- intercept sampling along the lake transect grids to generate whole- lake SAV species frequency of occurrence (FO) estimates. Negative binomial regression models were used to identify which SAV metrics related to the number of TrophyCatch reports.

Results: Our data set included 121 Florida lakes that were sampled from 2015 to 2024. Over this time there were 1 to 1,070 TrophyCatch reports per lake, totaling 4,548 approved angler reports of trophy- sized bass. The SAV metrics (i.e., percentage of area covered, PVI, and FO of all SAV species; FO of native SAV species; and the FO of nonnative hydrilla Hydrilla verticillata) varied from ≤1% to 100%. The best fit model included overall PVI and the FO of native SAV species as significant predictor variables. At the mean of both predictor variables, TrophyCatch reports were approximately 9.75. As the FO of native SAV species increased, the number of TrophyCatch reports decreased. The number of predicted TrophyCatch reports increased as PVI increased; however, the negative effect of FO of native SAV species was larger than the positive effect of PVI.

BioBase Interpretation

This was one of the clearest and tightest links yet to the importance of aquatic vegetation ABUNDANCE (as measured by Biovolume or Percent Volume Infested-PVI) for healthy largemouth bass populations. We emphasize the word “abundance,” because despite fisheries researchers recognizing the generic importance of aquatic vegetation for largemouth bass populations, few investigators have been able to consistently link other coarse, two-dimensional vegetation metrics (e.g., frequency of occurrence from rake surveys alone) to largemouth bass population performance metrics. Researchers at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) Fisheries Research Institute (FWRI) have assembled a rich long-term data archive of detailed BioBase-assessed vegetation and species data that have allowed them to do detailed correlation analysis with their citizen-science Trophy-catch angling program.

PDF copies of the manuscript are available from BioBase upon request (info[at]biobasemaps.com)