So On Another Board I Frequent

[lmbfisherman]

...So I'm an American living in Ontario and I frequent a local fishing forum.  There was a discussion regarding out of season bass fishing and how some are doing it illegally.  Yeah I agree etc, but then someone brought up how the Northern States basically have their openers early or have C&R Bass fishing year round and they have productive fishery. 

 

Then one guy starts saying that is of course the US's choice, but they are happy to catch their numerous 1-2 lb fish all they want.  I for one am glad that we have to wait until end of June to target bass and it ends at the end of November.  It protects the fishery and while the northern US states continue to ruin their fishery by targeting bedding fish.  While we get catch our numerous 3+lb fish and up. 

 

So it got me thinking, is this reality or is this a myth?  I tried searching, albeit not really in depth about the average catches, not much I could really find hard data wise.  So I decided let me ask you guys up here in the Northeast.  Are you guys killing your trophy sized bass by targeting bedding fish?  are all you guys catching dinks?  Frankly, what he said kind of irked me because it seemed like an elitist statement personally.  I thought I understood no matter if the bass is guarding its fry or not...eventually the other smaller predators will get their fill and move on and not just eat'em all up.

 

Just to let you know, may be I'm fishing in the wrong places, but I certainly can assure that my average isn't 3+ lb fish where I live. 

[SirSnookalot]

I live in Florida and my average bass isn't 3# either.

[grampa1114]

Wow.....that's an interesting attitude....seems to me that the water's a little hard in Canada between November and May anyway. How do you keep from catching Bass through the ice. I, personally prefer not to fish for bedding bass but that stems from not liking to be disturbed when it was my turn to mate.

After the advent of Catch and Release, most fish remain in their environment anyway so adding one more predator, during the spawn, hasn't seemed to hurt the population. 

On a personal note, when I fish with my family and friends, we often catch mixed bags(figuratively) of fish from 5" to 5lb. Just like when we go to Memphremagog or northern Champlain. 

Perhaps you should stick around on our board for a while and get a feel for what we really catch in the Northeast.

 

Welcome aboard lmbfisherman

 

Grampa 

[Mainebass1984]

Opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one.   Look at the scientific evidence between both sides of the argument. You can find plenty of scientific studies online. Then you can form your own opinion.

 

  There seems to be plenty of 3 lb plus largemouth in the places I fish in New England including an occasional 7 or 8 lb lunker. The average fish is around 2 - 2 1/4 lbs, I will take those all day.

[Felix77]

They obviously haven't fished Rouses Point on the VT/NY side of the border.  I was up there this past Sunday and boy, oh boy did we have our fair share of very good size bass.  Were they all 3+ lbs ... no but a decent amount were right up there.

 

Funny because my boater and I ran into a Canadian pair of bass fishermen practicing for a tournament there in two weeks.  We stopped and chatted with them for a while and they were more interested in our experiences fishing Ticonderoga and the "legendary big bass" down there  than in the area we were in.  They were extremely friendly and certainly didn't seem to convey that same attitude.

 

[WIGuide]

It's a message board and there will be off the wall crap posted. There's some of it here just like everyone else. I'd like to tag along with them where 3+ Largemouth is an average fish.I'm not in the north east but I'm in northern Wisconsin and up until this year you could keep bass mid June through March in the "Northern Zone" You could catch and release them in May when fishing season started. We do not however have gigantic Largemouth. If you go to southern WI, the size of a big bass goes up a little, but I really doubt it has anything to do with a season being open or closed. As proof their season starts on opener in May so that pretty much debunks his thought process.  

[deaknh03]

Other forums exist? 

[lmbfisherman]

It's a message board and there will be off the wall crap posted. There's some of it here just like everyone else. I'd like to tag along with them where 3+ Largemouth is an average fish.I'm not in the north east but I'm in northern Wisconsin and up until this year you could keep bass mid June through March in the "Northern Zone" You could catch and release them in May when fishing season started. We do not however have gigantic Largemouth. If you go to southern WI, the size of a big bass goes up a little, but I really doubt it has anything to do with a season being open or closed. As proof their season starts on opener in May so that pretty much debunks his thought process.  

Yep I hear you...

 

After this guy stated his fun statement..all the others chimed in and supported the guy.  I guess it may have been American bashing day. 

[lmbfisherman]

They obviously haven't fished Rouses Point on the VT/NY side of the border.  I was up there this past Sunday and boy, oh boy did we have our fair share of very good size bass.  Were they all 3+ lbs ... no but a decent amount were right up there.

 

Funny because my boater and I ran into a Canadian pair of bass fishermen practicing for a tournament there in two weeks.  We stopped and chatted with them for a while and they were more interested in our experiences fishing Ticonderoga and the "legendary big bass" down there  than in the area we were in.  They were extremely friendly and certainly didn't seem to convey that same attitude.

 

HA, nice to your face I guess.  I wondered what they said about you after? 

[SirSnookalot]

Other forums exist? 

Yep

[somebassguy]

Bass fishing in Michigan is unbelievably amazing. We still have a closed bass season but it hasn't protected most of the bass spawn in the 'more sensitive' Northern and Upper Peninsula waters since it was changed to Memorial weekend 43 years ago. We've had legal catch-and-immediate-release statewide now since the 2006 season starting the last Saturday in April.

 

We still have bass. And those 'extra sensitive smallies'   are as big or bigger than ever. We had numerous weights on smaller inland lakes the last two summers over 20 to 25+ pounds for 5 bass. It's common on many parts of the Great Lakes to need over 25 pounds to win and even over 20 pounds to place in the money in tournaments. Most of the tournaments the first 4 to 6 weeks of the regular season are won off bedding bass every year and have been for as far back as I used to fish tournaments - I started in the mid-1980's.

 

If the lake has good habitat (usually weeds) and forage the bass fishing is usually really good. We've seen more 6 to over 7 pounds bass weighed in in tournaments the past 10 years than the previous 40 years of my life. We've even had bass over 8 pounds weighed in up North where the spawn starts AFTER the regular opener every single season since 1970.

 

Northern inland lakes that we started fishing regularly in the early 90's would take less than 3 pounds to win on now take over 5 pounds to almost 5 and 3/4 pounds average to win! And we've been bedfishing tournaments that whole time on the smallmouth bass.

 

We have lakes that have changed due to things like weed treatments or introduction of exotics that has swung from smallmouth-dominated or smallmouth-largemouth mix to mostly largemouth than now also put out 17 to 25 pound limits of largemouth bass. Sometimes these are inland lakes less than 1,000 acres. I don't need to leave my state to have awesome bass fishing, and I'm very thankful for that. Hopefully, next year we'll be able to bass fish all year.