Early on a recent Thursday morning, my four-year-old daughter and I jumped in the car and merged into the stream of motorists heading off to do their part for the economy. We, on the other hand, were going fishing. Our destination was Lake Temescal, an East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) recreation area located about three miles from our home in Berkeley. Soon we were at the water's edge, where a stately black-crowned night heron perched motionless on a reed. Below him, a turtle was sunbathing. Diesel trucks rumbled up the highway in the distance. We cast our line and waited. Nothing. We packed up and continued walking along the shore, passing a Spandexed mom power-strollering her baby, then an elderly couple, who saw our fishing gear and pointed quietly to the water, where a trio of large bass were lingering, three feet from shore. My daughter grew excited, and we dangled some bait in front of their surly mouths. I could have sworn I saw the biggest one give an "are you kidding me?" look before he swam away. We tried a few more spots, without any luck. We could see only two other fisherman on the lake, both as still as the night heron, their rods unbent by fish. Then, right before leaving, we took a final cast and within seconds the line jerked. My daughter started jumping up and down and soon we'd pulled a flopping, foot-long, iridescent rainbow trout onto the shore. Before 9 a.m., we were home again, my daughter displaying the fish to her mom. Later that evening, we grilled the trout for dinner. *** It was both exciting and strange to fish for rainbow trout within earshot of a busy highway (and about five miles from the commercial high-rises of downtown Oakland). And maybe it was this odd comingling of city and country -- outdoorsy leisure so near to the working world -- that got me thinking about the money behind the fish. By catching and eating a fish from our local lake, were my daughter and I engaging in the local economy in a new way? In addition to the primal satisfaction of eating food we caught ourselves, could fishing actually help us save money in the same way that home vegetable gardening can -- in theory, anyway -- reduce our grocery bill? (The fact that our fish had been planted in Lake Temescal by the state complicates the picture -- but I'll get to that in a minute.) First, let's total up how much money that fish cost. I shelled out $80.49 for a rod, reel, tackle and bait at the Sports Authority in Emeryville. My California state sport-fishing license cost $43.46 (no license is required for a four-year-old). An honor-system drop box at the lake collects an additional $5 for an East Bay Parks one-day fishing permit. Gas cost about a dollar. Total expenses: $129.95. The fish we caught weighed a pound and a half, which means we paid a whopping $86.63 per pound. My local supermarket charges $4.99 a pound for (farm-raised) rainbow trout. From a dollars and cents perspective, it's clear we didn't get a very good deal. But of course, we didn't really set out to save money. A big part of what we paid for was the experience. Pulling a live fish from the depths of a still lake kind of blew my daughter's mind. It led us to talk about biology and anatomy (where fish live, how they breathe, why they have sharp teeth) and about where our food comes from. It excited her and gave her confidence (normally shy with strangers, she announced her catch proudly to passersby). The trip also evoked warm memories, for me, of fishing as a child. And being on a quiet lake in the early morning had a salutary effect on us both. So, is there a way to account for these non-monetary benefits? I asked John Loomis, a professor at Colorado State University's Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, how an economist might look at the worth of our fish in broader terms. Loomis, who studies "non-marketed" natural resources (things like rivers, fisheries and endangered species), said, "Chances are the experience was worth more than you spent." "Lots of times when we buy things," Loomis explained, "particularly those that have a lot of intangible qualities to them, we'd be willing to pay more than the admission price. This is especially the case with recreation on public lands, which often do not charge market-clearing prices." To measure the value of the fishing experience at Lake Temescal, Loomis said he might poll fishermen at the lake, asking if they'd pay, say, $7, $10 or $50 instead of $5 for a daily permit. The goal would be to calculate an average "maximum willingness to pay." And that amount, he said, would offer an alternative to the "accounting mentality," which looks only at a ledger of expenses and revenue, and ignores anything where there's not immediate cash flow. Return on investment from stocking a lake with fish might pop up in other ways -- in the "quality of life" measure of an area, or the reduction in public health costs that correlates with open-space recreation opportunities. In economic terms, we could also widen our "benefit" lens to factor in the revenue generated by recreational fishing. Andrew Hughan, the public information officer for the Department of Fish and Game, says his agency's research indicates that the stocking of salmon alone generates $280 million in annual spending on non-license fishing-related purchases, like gas, food and lodging. So the fish we caught that morning may be bringing value not just to the people like us who actually fish in the lake, but to the community and state as a whole. *** But if we think about the fish in the big picture, we also have to look at costs beyond my individual expenses. The trout and catfish in Lake Temescal are planted by two sources: the state's Department of Fish and Game and the East Bay Regional Park District. Pete Alexander, the Park District's fisheries program manager, said his department spent $14,934 to plant fish in the lake in 2010, whereas those $5 fishing permits brought in $8,750 in revenue. In other words, my fish was "subsidized" by the Park District, the majority of whose revenue comes from property taxes and special assessments. (Since I'm not a homeowner, you could say that I don't contribute to these costs.) But California's Department of Fish and Game also plants trout in Lake Temescal (and many other waterways throughout the state). The DFG's Hughan said the price of raising a fish is $3.01 per pound. Lake Temescal receives 2,000 pounds per year from the DFG, so the annual cost of the fish that the state plants in the lake is $6,020. But just as we used a non-accounting mentality to reveal some indirect benefits of a trout-stocked lake, there's also a case to be made for indirect costs. For example, some critics have argued that hatchery-raised trout threaten native fish, amphibians and other wildlife. An animal rights advocate might say that fishing is unethical, while non-fisherman could claim that anglers disturb their experience of the lake: At least one jogger who had to sidestep my daughter and I while we unhooked the fish on the narrow lakeside trail seemed mildly irritated by our presence. *** So how, finally, to assess the value of our rainbow trout? Using Professor Loomis' approach, I'd argue that the $129.95 we put into the experience (even if we never ended up distributing the cost of the gear over additional trips and fish) was well worth it. I wouldn't pay that much for the second trip, though. Instead of the $5 we stuffed into the Park District's daily permit box, I'd be willing to pay $8.50 per visit in the future. That's an increase of 70 percent over the current fee and, by my calculation based on last year's numbers, would have balanced the District's fish-stocking budget for Lake Temescal in 2010. Even without a fee increase, though, it seems to me that a fish-planting program subsidized by the Park District and the state to the tune of some $12,000 a year adds at least that much value to the community. There is, after all, something enchanting about being able to fish in Oakland for rainbow trout, a species that fisheries manager Alexander said existed naturally in all of the streams of the East Bay at one time. (Wild trout still exist in some of the area's waterways.) My daughter is too young to put a dollar value on our fishing trip, but I have a feeling we are on the same page about our experience. The day after our trip, she grew animated when she told our neighbor about the rainbow trout we'd caught, holding out her hands to indicate its size. Like any good fisherman, she exaggerated -- by my reckoning her hands described a fish that was about 70 percent larger than life. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/11/moneytales071111.DTL#ixzz1RoVQg8ZG
