A Survey of Some Opinions of Michigan Sport Fishermen

Abstract

A two-stage sampling design with fishing license dealers as primary sampling units within which licensed fishermen were subsampled was used to obtain a sample of opinions on certain fish management practices from resident and nonresident anglers in Michigan. Fishing license dealers were divided into 96 groups (strata), each consisting of dealers in a restricted geographical area whose combined 1961 license sales totaled approximately 9,580. Two dealers were selected from each stratum with probability proportional to estimated size, i.e., the more licenses a dealer sold, the greater the chance of his being included in the sample. Approximately six fishermen per dealer were mailed postcard questionnaires. The sample thus included 192 out of some 4,116 fishing license dealers and, allowing for nonrespondents, 927 fishermen out of a total of 926,470. All licensed fishermen were equally likely to be included in the sample. Three mailings plus a fourth contact attempt by mail, telephone, or personal contact yielded responses from 85.7 percent of the 1,082 fishermen to whom questionnaires were sent. Respondents were distributed among the three Conservation Regions in about the same proportion as license sales. There was no substantial difference in opinions among the three Conservation Regions of the state. Among the opinions expressed by fishermen which are summarized and discussed in this paper, the following were considered especially pertinent to management programs. Few people think that too great a proportion of the Conservation Departmentˈs budget is spent on trout stocking. Among nontrout fishermen, who help to finance the trout stocking program through license fees, 52 percent have no opinion about the current expenditure. Among trout fishermen 42 percent desire to have more spent on trout stocking, while 58 percent are satisfied with the present level of expenditure, think too much is spent, have no opinion, or gave no answer to this question. Fifty-two percent of trout fishermen preferred to have trout stocked in streams, and 36 percent preferred stocking in lakes. The management activity most frequently selected as needing to be increased to meet future fishing needs was “lake and stream improvement,” followed by “research on improvement of fishing,” then “warmwater fish stocking” and “buying public fishing sites” mentioned with equal frequency in third and fourth places, and finally “law enforcement” and “trout stocking.”