Do you love big bluegill?

"Catch and Release Pros and Cons"

Gentlemen, give me your thoughts on ,"Catch and Release"....What is the best for our fisheries. I know what Bill Dance says , "Keep what you can eat and release the rest"..That was for all species, and at the time was a good thing, but I believe the catch and release bit for Large Mouth Bass and spotted bass needs to be looked at a little closer. BASS members look down on us meat eaters thinking that we are hurting their fishery and taking money out of their pockets when we take bass home for food. I say, "HOG WASH MEN". First studies have shown that some species will not live after you have handled them and kept them in a live well for tournaments for long periods of time. The Universities of Auburn and LSU and several more colledges have done extensive studies on actual BASS tournaments and have found that in some Hot weather tournaments around 60% of all fish returned died shortly after releasing. In milder conditions this falls to about 40%. Bluegil and other Sunfishes do real good when returned immediately to their enviorment. I am a firm believer in releasing any fish which cannot be fillet with an electric knife, small bluegill and always cull the bigger bulls to maintain the populations and to save these bigger gills genes for the next generations of fishes. I know of one incident where the BASS fishermen have raised Hell with the out of state fishermen who come down to Guntersville, Al and keep and fillet daily creel limits of 4 to 5 lb bass to take home. This they say is killing Guntersville Lakes fish population. Again I say, "HOG WASH MEN". Those out of state revenues help pay for things like restocking of species in our state, as well as all states fish programs. Any night my family wants a meal of fresh fish I want to make sure they can enjoy one. So my thoughts are as Bill would like to say but couldn't being a BASS member. "Keep what You can eat and Freeze the rest"...LOLRITFL

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Permalink Reply by Vic Tankersley on February 15, 2012 at 5:53am

I have found in some cases where fish slot limits have proved disastruos to the fishery. Here in my area the DNR put a slot limit on Spotted Bass at a fairly new body of water, RL Harris lake on the Tallapoosa River. After about !5 years they found that this perticular strain of spotted bass peak at a maximum lenght that was within the slot . No one could take a fish between 13 and 16 inches. The lake had gotten so far over populated with Spotted Bass, you could no longer even catch a Large Head and Crappie were becoming smaller due to the viscous feeding habits of Spotted Bass. They lifted the slot limit and have asked fisherman to keep all up to the creel limit to try and reduce these populations of Spotted Bass. This is only a one case senerio but it happens.

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Permalink Reply by Don Swearingen (Opa) on February 18, 2012 at 5:49am

I haven't read all of them, but here in CO we have impoundments that start out great. There are bluegills by the dozen. Then the lake is drawn down. That's because these lakes are water storage lakes, not sport fishing lakes. Disaster! At least for the bluegill population. They move into shallow water, and spawn and two weeks later, it's mud or dry land. Nothing we can do about it. Still, if there are no droughts, the fishery can recover in a few years. Especially with a lot of stocking. We have a limit of 20, and I try to stay in the 5-8 inch range. There are very few that are bigger.