252 Commercial Aspects of Sport Fishing 



even for funeral and burial expenses. This is believed to be true for 

 1960 also. 



Of some interest were the relative expenditures for things fishermen buy: 

 tackle made up about 11 per cent; camping equipment, outboard motors, 

 boats and trailers an additional 37 per cent; food and lodging accounted 

 for about 10 per cent; automobile expenses and cost of gasoline and oil 

 represented approximately 14 per cent. The remaining 28 per cent went 

 for miscellaneous items such as licenses, fees, live bait, etc. 



Costs Assigned to an End Product, Usually Fish. It is impossible to 

 measure in dollars the intangible benefits of fishing, such as mental re- 

 laxation, exercise, and "change of pace." Therefore some biologists have 

 assigned values to the end product of fishing, namely the fish themselves, 

 on the assumption that the fish caught were worth what the fisherman 

 was willing to pay in tackle expense, travel, meals, lodging, and other 

 costs, in order to catch them. This method of assigning values was not 

 acceptable to many economists because it was not a measure of the value 

 of the intangible benefits. A family may travel to a Canadian lake osten- 

 sibly to fish, but the reason for their going may be more related to the 

 climate and to the aesthetic attractiveness of the summer landscape than 

 to the fish that are brought to creel. While they probably would not go 

 to the Canadian lake if they could not fish, it is still unreasonable to 

 balance the large costs of the trip to Canada against the fish that they 

 may or may not catch. 



More justifiable is the assignment of costs of fishing to the end product 

 of fishing when this activity is done on a local basis. When one goes fish- 

 ing in a nearby reservoir where the climate has nothing unusual to offer 

 and the aesthetics are more commonplace, an angler's main interest must 

 be in a "change of pace" and in the fish that he catches; also his expenses 

 for this type of activity may be very comparable to those for other forms 

 of local recreational activity. Several estimates of recreational values as- 

 signed to fish have been published ''' ^ (U.S. F. and Wildlife Serv. Manual 

 of Instructions, River Basin Studies). In these the value of largemouth 

 bass has ranged from $2.00 to $8.66 per pound, with pan fish valued at a 

 lesser figure. 



Still another method of assigning recreational values to fishing and 

 hunting is to allow them to assume the value of lands or waters upon 

 which these activities may be followed with some assurance of success. 

 This idea may have originated from practices followed by U.S. Engineers 

 in their land appraisals for benefits from flood-control projects. For ex- 

 ample, in an early flood control report for the Illinois River (Illinois) 

 certain bottom land lakes that were to be made into corn-producing 

 fields through the construction of levees and through pumping were given, 



