Fishing in Eufaula, Alabama

We do tournaments throughout the year, thus the majority of those were sponsored by the tourism council of the chamber of commerce. We work with different grades to bring those tournaments into town and we

have got a very good working relationship with most of the different tournament facilities. The lake plays a huge role in the economic development. If we bring in an ESPN Bass Master Tour and that's a one week long tournament, the economic impact of that one week is roughly 1.3 million dollars. So there is a huge economic impact from the tournament side. As far as development goes, if you look at the Lake Eufaula base and compare it to a lot of other lakes that are around, it's relatively young as far as being developed for residences and things such as that. There is a lot of untapped natural land that's still available on the lake. A lot of that has to do with the wildlife refuge and things that are going to stay preserved. Another aspect of that is that it has just been impounded until the early 60s. So it's just a young lake anyway relatively speaking and people are really beginning to discover the lake. We have a nearby company that is currently developing a housing area on the lake with waterfront property. It will be a gated community. It will be a very upscale gated community. It is just now being tapped into, so there are lot of opportunities for people to either come and move and live in a nice community on the water or have vacation homes on the water. Even still, they can get land on the water that is less developed. You will still have that rustic feel on the lake if you wanted to. So the lake really serves as a business to our economic development effort. We do all inclusive visitors guided tours that people can get either through our website or they can call. We can e-mail information to them and it covers the entire visitor's guide as to what we fish and when and where to try to catch them. So it tells you what months are the best and then where on the lake, whether it be a creek or a bridge or under a bridge. There are all sorts of things that the people can use to really try to find the best fishing. Some people do fly fish around here. I don't think it's as prominent as other places. That's not to say that no one fly fishes here but its not as popular as rod and reel bass fishing. That is our biggest aspect of fishing. The lake is even known as the Big Bass capital of the world. They had some pretty amazing catches on the lake.