No one is happy.
The angler who caught the never-before fish turned it over to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game where the bass spawned plenty of angst. Popular though largemouths are across most of the country, they are not welcome in the salmon state.
“Definitely an introduced invasive (species),” said the Department’s Katelyn Zonneville.
The Mother Nature Network lists the largemouth, also known as a black bass, on its top-10 list of “most invasive fish species in the world.”
A “favorite of anglers, the largemouth bass has made its way around the world because of the excitement of catching them. They tend to put up a good fight on the line, and that’s because they’re tough fish — tough enough to take on and beat native species,” wrote reporter Jaymi Heimbuch.
“Their big appetite and position at the top of the food chain mean that other native fish species are driven to extinction. They are responsible for the decline of native frogs in California as well as the California tiger salamander, the Chiricahua leopard frog in Arizona, and a wide variety of fish species across the world.”
The native range of the species ended at Minnesota’s Red River, but over the years the fish has been introduced to every other state but Alaska. Hawaii, however, believes to have rid the islands of the largemouths in 1984, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The closest Alaska has come to bass before this was when a Bass Pro Shop opened in the state’s then bass-less largest city in 2014.
Read the rest: https://craigmedred.news/2018/09/04/new-ak-record/
Advertising