The American Sportfishing Association (ASA) is the sportfishing industry’s trade association committed to representing the interests of the entire sportfishing community. We give the industry a unified voice, speaking out on behalf of sportfishing and boating industries, state and federal natural resource agencies, conservation organizations, angler advocacy groups and outdoor journalists when emerging laws and policies could significantly affect sportfishing business or sportfishing itself. ASA invests in long-term ventures to ensure the industry will remain strong and prosperous, as well as safeguard and promote the enduring social, economic and conservation values of sportfishing in America. ASA also gives America’s ™ 60 million anglers a voice in policy decisions that affect their ability to sustainably fish on our nation’s waterways through KeepAmericaFishing, our angler advocacy campaign. ASA also represents the interests of America’s nearly 60 million anglers who generated $48 billion in retail sales with a $115 billion impact on the nation’s economy creating employment for more than 828,000 people in 2011.
This publication was funded by Multistate Conservation Grant VA F12AP00137, VA M-26-R awarded by the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Programs of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, jointly managed with the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.
AMERICAN SPORTFISHING ASSOCIATION 1001 North Fairfax Street, Suite 501, Alexandria VA 22314. www.ASAfishing.org.
QUESTIONS AND INQUIRIES Rob Southwick, Southwick Associates, rob@southwickassociates.com
RESEARCH, AUTHORSHIP AND EDITING Southwick Associates: Tom Allen, Rob Southwick and Doug Howlett American Sportfishing Association: Edited by Mary Jane Williamson
LAYOUT AND DESIGN Havit Advertising
PHOTO CREDITS Doug Howlett; Marc Gorelnik; Doug Olander; Rob Southwick; bagraphix/123RF.com; CharlesWilliams/123RF.com; FabienMONTEIL/123RF.com; HONGQI ZHANG/123RF.com; kzenon/123RF.com; max5128/123RF.com; mmorell/123RF.com; Robert Mobley/123RF.com; and wajan/123RF.com.
REPORT CITATION Southwick Associates. Sportfishing in America: An Economic Force for Conservation. Produced for the American Sportfishing Association (ASA) under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Sport Fish Restoration grant (F12AP00137, VA M-26-R) awarded by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA), 2012.
Data sources for “U.S. Fishing Facts” and “Quick Fishing Facts:” U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Commerce, Fortune magazine, National Sporting Goods Association, ESPN and Southwick Associates.
Methodology: Data were obtained from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation . Impacts were developed using the IMPLAN from MIG, Inc. of Stillwater, Minn.
Special notes include:
• F or some expenditures, the state where the purchase was made was not identified. These were assigned to the angler’s state of residence.
• T he estimates of anglers and angler days do not exactly match numbers reported by the USFWS. The sum of the state-level numbers are reported here, whereas the USFWS calculated a single number at the national level. Either method is appropriate.
• T he expenditures reported here may be higher than those reported by the USFWS. This is due to expenditures made by an individual for both fishing and hunting. In such cases, the USFWS reports these separately and not part of their fishing-only estimates. In this report, such expenditures are pro-rated into hunting and fishing portions based on the individual’s total days of hunting and fishing, and then assigned to each activity as appropriate. Using either approach, the USFWS’s or the method used here, the results are accurate and acceptable.
• T he results can be combined with the hunting impacts reported in the hunting economics publication from the National Shooting Sports Foundation to gain a comprehensive picture of the returns from all sportsmen and women.