Ohio's 2006-Lake Erie Charter Fishing Industry

Abstract

Charter fishing provides important angler access to Lake Erie sport fishing and is economically important to local recreational harbor communities. To update information from our 2002 survey, we conducted a mail survey of 517 randomly selected Ohio charter boat captains in early 2007 and received usable information from 249 captains. In 2006, there were 786 Ohio licensed charter guides. This is a decline of 9% from the 861 licensed captains in 2002. Charter firms in 2006 made on average 2.6 more trips per firm (44.7) than in 2002 (42.1). These captains made an estimated 28,563 charter trips in 2006 of which almost 87% were full-day and just over 13% were half-day trips. Charter fishing continues to bring nature-based tourism dollars into local lakefront communities. Our survey data may be used to update the economic impact estimates of this significant sector of the coastal fishing economy.