Officials seek to create single fishing permit for South Holston Lake

BRISTOL, Tenn. – An imaginary line cuts across South Holston Lake between Painter Creek Marina and the Washington County Park boat ramp.

It’s a 200-year-old demarcation, marking the border separating Tennessee from Virginia – but for fishermen, crossing that line means the difference between a $40 nonresident license and a $220 fine.

“There’s nothing bigger than this that will tell you where it is,” Painter Creek Marina Manager Jon Brown said, holding his hands a few feet apart to illustrate the size of the signs marking the border. The signs hang from a tree on either side of South Holston’s shores.

For the past 28 years, Tennessee residents including Brown have had to buy a special nonresident license to fish on the Virginia side of the lake. Virginia residents have had to do the same if they wanted to fish on the lake’s Tennessee side.

But all of that is about to change. Wildlife officials from both states have been working all winter on a special agreement that could be ready in time for the lake’s busiest weekend – July 4th.

The end result would be a fishing permit specifically tailored to South Holston Lake that residents of both states could buy for about half the cost of the current nonresident licenses.

The agreement also will establish a uniform set of policies and regulations for agencies on both sides that deal with everything from cooperative stocking agreements to size and creel limits for the smallmouth bass, rainbow trout and catfish that bring thousands of anglers to South Holston’s banks each year.

“The ultimate goal is to make fishing on South Holston Lake a better experience,” said Bill Kittrell, regional fisheries manager for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries’ office in Marion, Va.

The licenses

Impounded by a dam the Tennessee Valley Authority built in 1950, South Holston Lake covers 7,580 acres stretching from Alvarado, Va., to Emmett, Tenn. Kittrell’s agency manages one-fifth of that surface area, or about 1,600 acres. The remaining 6,000 acres fall under the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency’s domain.

Depending on their county of residence, Virginians must spend between $11 and $18 to get a year-long permit to fish in their state’s 1,600 acres of South Holston. If they want to fish in the remaining 6,000 acres, they’ll need to spend another $41 to get a year-round nonresident license from Tennessee.

Tennessee residents must spend $9 to $28 for a license to fish on their state’s four-fifths of South Holston Lake, then another $36 to get a nonresident license from Virginia.

That brings the total cost for a year’s worth of fishing on the lake to about $60 a person, excluding the price of a boat, fishing poles, tackle, bait, beer and the other special permits residents of either state need to fish in state or national forests and in stocked trout waters.

Failure to have the proper licenses in your possession – even if someone is floating just over the state line – can cost even more, said Allen Ricks, a spokesman for Tennessee’s wildlife agency office in Morristown, Tenn.

“A Virginian caught fishing in the Tennessee side of the lake without a [nonresident] license will get a ticket,” Ricks said. These tickets carry a $25 fine, he said, and that comes with an additional $198 in court costs.

Fishing without a license in Virginia carries a $60 fine, said Sgt. Jamie Davis with Virginia’s game and fisheries office in Marion. As an extra penalty, the circuit court clerk adds the price of a proper license – either resident or nonresident – when he or she collects the fine.

The agents

Both states sell fishing licenses over the Internet, but any angler trying to buy one over the counter faces another problem: Only Tennessee businesses can sell Tennessee fishing licenses and only Virginia businesses can sell Virginia licenses. So anglers heading to South Holston most likely must shop twice.

The rural, sparsely populated areas surrounding South Holston Lake complicates the matter –because the businesses approved as license sales sites by their respective state’s aren’t exactly close to each other.

“We’ve had a lot of people ask for Virginia licenses,” said Brown, whose marina is one of the 18 Tennessee wildlife agency-approved license agents operating in Sullivan County, Tenn. “But there’s nobody on the lake that sells them.”

The closest Virginia license agents are in Abingdon, a town 22 minutes from the Painter Creek Marina on State Route 75. Making that trip north, drivers pass roads leading to two other boat docks: at the Washington County Park and the Sportsman’s Marina.

While neither place sells licenses, they do give fishermen a place to put their boats in the water, or buy supplies they’ll need for a weekend out on the lake – two services Brown can provide them at Painter Creek.

It’s an equally difficult obstacle for people who want to buy licenses from Kevin Morefield, owner of Big John’s Market and Deli in Abingdon. Morefield’s deli on U.S. Highway 19 is one of six businesses in Abingdon that sell hunting and fishing licenses for Virginia, but not for Tennessee.

Washington County is home to 10 license agents. There are another two about 25 minutes away from South Holston Lake in Bristol, Va.

“It’s very popular,” Morefield said when asked about fishing on the lake. “They’ll start hitting it pretty heavily in March.”

Big John’s Market has sold 534 hunting and fishing licenses since Jan. 1, 2009. About half of the licenses have been for hunting and half for fishing, Morefield said, but none of them have brought in very much money.

“If you got into this business just to sell licenses, you’d actually go into the hole,” Morefield said, referring to his license sales as a being “more of a service to his customers” than a way of making money for his business.

The money Big John’s makes from selling nearly 600 licenses a year, he said, doesn’t come close to covering the money spent on a reliable high-speed Internet service connection to the Virginia game and fisheries office and the related credit card transaction fees required to sell those licenses.

But while it might not make him that much money, Morefield said, selling licenses helps his business because it brings customers to his store who might not otherwise stop there to buy bait and other supplies they’ll need for a trip out on the lake.

But because of the two-license system, Morefield also must send his customers to another store – such as Darter’s Sports Center, The Store, or the one at Painter Creek Marina – so they can get the Tennessee license they need to fish 80 percent of the lake.

Referring someone to a potential competitor is giving Morefield even more grief, he said, because business on the lake has been picking up recently as people hit by the Great Recession are doing more local activities rather than travel for vacations.“We’ve probably had some of our better years right now,” said Morefield, who noticed another twist in the two-license arrangement when he reviewed his sales records Thursday.

While he can’t sell a license letting people fish in Tennessee, the licenses Morefield can sell allow anglers to fish in waters that Virginia shares with North Carolina and Maryland.

“That is odd,” Morefield said, wondering why the permits he offers work in a body of water some 360 miles from his store but not in the bottom half of South Holston Lake. “I’ve never really thought about it.”

The money

Because of a reciprocal agreement Virginia has with North Carolina and Maryland, the state’s fishing licenses allow anglers to cast their lines in Bugg’s Island Lake, Gaston Lake, the waters surrounding the Blue Ridge Parkway and most of the Potomac River watershed.

Virginia started a similar agreement with Tennessee in 1966, Kittrell said, but Tennessee’s wildlife agency dissolved the agreement in 1982 due to concerns involving revenue losses.

Sales of hunting and fishing licenses make up a significant chunk of both wildlife agency’s budgets for the current fiscal year: Virginia’s expects to receive $20 million from license sales, about 40 percent of its total budget; Tennessee’s expects to see $3 million, which is a little more than a third of the fisheries division’s $8 million budget.

Fear of losing a significant chunk of that revenue has kept the two states from reconsidering the original reciprocal agreement – but it also is at the crux of the current pact the two states’ wildlife agencies hope to have ready in time for the July 4th weekend.

Under a dual-license agreement, Virginia residents stand to benefit the most because they would get access to the four-fifths of South Holston Lake south of the state line. Tennessee residents would get access to an additional one-fifth, but would pay the same price.

“We weren’t so much in favor of having the Virginia folks fish in the 80 percent part [of the lake we manage] for nothing,” said Bill Reeves, chief of Tennessee’s fisheries division.

Since dissolving the original reciprocal agreement more than 20 years ago, the two agencies have gone back and forth trying to reach a compromise that gives Virginia anglers access to Reeves’ side of the lake without costing his state too much money.

“Last year we finally hit upon something where we could all agree,” Reeves said of the $20 permit both agencies plan to roll out this summer and the dual management agreement that comes along with it.

The trade-off

The proposed arrangement won’t be a reciprocal license, such as the one Virginia has with Maryland and North Carolina, Kittrell said. Instead, it will be a special stamp that allows people to cross the state line and it applies only to South Holston Lake.

“You could buy the $20 license and that would allow you to fish all of South Holston, all the way down to the dam, for an entire year,” Kittrell said, adding that anglers don’t need to buy the permit if they don’t want to fish in the other half of the lake.

The permit will not be required for anglers who have a nonresident license and the money generated from its sale will be periodically transferred from one state to the next.

Attached to the stamp plan is a new management agreement that Reeves presented to members of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Commission at its Thursday meeting in Nashville. The commission approved the concept in January and got a first-hand look at the details last week, Reeves said.

The agreement calls for the states to have a series of standard regulations including: a 15-inch minimum for smallmouth bass; and daily creel limits of five for white bass, 20 for rock bass, seven for trout and 20 for catfish.

It also spells out a fish-stocking arrangement that will be updated every two years depending on the revenue each state receives from the license sales and the money spent on stocking.

Under the most recent draft of the agreement, Virginia will stock the lake with 14,500 pounds of rainbow trout, 2,000 pounds of brown trout and 189,500 walleye fingerlings. But Tennessee will chip in only 3,000 pounds of lake trout each year, something that could provide a good illustration of how much money the state expects to lose from its sales of nonresident licenses.

The Volunteer State also is limiting the new license to what’s above the South Holston Dam – meaning Virginians must still buy a nonresident license to fish the Weir Dam, which sits below the main dam and is one of the region’s top fly-fishing spots.

With the commission squarely behind the concept of the agreement, Reeves said, the proposal now only needs to clear the Virginia General Assembly, because it deals with revenue and fees that a state agency charges for a certain service.

Delegate Joe Johnson, an Abingdon Democrat who fished South Holston when he was younger, sponsored that legislation, which has unanimously passed both houses. The bill was signed by House Speaker Bill Howell on Feb. 17 and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling on Feb. 18.

“They’re waiting on the governor to sign it,” Reeves said. Once Gov. Bob McDonnell signs the bill into law, he said, the commission and the game and fisheries department will work out the final details.

So by July 1 – the date when a bill that passes the Virginia General Assembly during the legislative session typically goes into effect – Southwest Virginians will get access 80 percent of a lake they surround at half its current price.

“That’s good for the Commonwealth of Virginia and I can live with that,” said Charles Graybeal Jr., president of the Twin States Bass Club and of the Tennessee Bass Federation Nation. “There’s die-hards who will fish that lake all the time.”

But even with the new $20 permit, Graybeal said, he will still buy the nonresident fishing license the Erwin, Tenn., resident normally buys from Virginia each year.

“If you come down to fish Boone Lake, you’ll still need a nonresident license,” Graybeal said to a Virginia resident. “If I want to fish Claytor Lake [in Dublin, Va.] I still need to get a Virginia license anyhow.”

Licenses from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries can be found at the following retailers, by location:

Tennessee
Blountville

 Mel-Bro Wholesale Bait
 Sullivan County Clerk

Bluff City

 Hickory Tree Store
 K-Mart Store #3022
 Lake View Dock
 Laurel Marina and Yacht Club

Bristol Tennessee

 Darter’s Sports Center
 Guns R Us
 Painter Creek Marina
 Stophel Brothers & Co.
 The Store
 Walmart Store #620

Kingsport

 The Gun Rack
 K-Mart Store #3147
 M & M Sporting Goods
 Smith’s Feed and Farm Supplies
 Walmart Super Center #599
 Walmart Store #742

Virginia

Abingdon

 Big John’s Market and Deli Inc.
 Food City Store #823
 K-MART Store #3689
 Mahoney’s of Abingdon
 Tobacco Shack and Outdoorsmen
 Washington County Clerk of Circuit Court

Bristol Virginia

 Buck N Bass Outfitters
 Walmart Store #2089

Damascus

 Food City Store #860

Meadowview

 Jane’s Kitchen

Saltville

 Carol’s Country Store

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