My buddy is trying to argue that catch and release & the assumed overpopulation this causes is negatively impacting the number of big fish caught more than delayed mortality and fishing pressure

[txchaser]

On 2/2/2025 at 5:15 PM, AlabamaSpothunter said:

Short of an actual shock study Katie, using your relative weight chart and the fish you catch is the best tool/gauge you have for determining that.    If the fish in your lake are like the typical fish you post, I'd say the lake is perfectly okay and doesn't really need any culling.    You rarely if ever catch a bunch of fat 3-4lb fish from overpopulated small lakes.     If it's a problem, usually all the fish you catch are dinks and are skinny.     

 

Your right around the size where a body of water kind of self regulates itself.   My home lake is about that size......the current biologist and manager of the lake doesn't believe we should cull any Bass, while biologists with the company who came out and did a shock study on it last March wanted us to remove a number of small Bass, and Crappie.     My thought is that we should be culling the smaller Spotted Bass at minimum, but ultimately we must manage the fishery for all anglers, not just the trophy Bass anglers.     Right now it's a pretty good balance, lots of fish to catch for lower skill anglers, and enough outlier trophy caliber fish to appease folks like myself.   I have no doubts though that if we started culling the small Bass extensively, we'd have significantly more and larger top end fish.     

@Swamp Girl 100% agree with the relative weight comment. If you have skinny fish something has to change. If you don't, it is probably fine. 

[Swamp Girl]

@txchaser: Here are a couple bass from my pond.

 

 

[txchaser]

Not a 

2 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

@txchaser: Here are a couple bass from my pond.

 

 

IMO (not a biologist) but those look fine to me. It's the flat stomach or lack of shoulders (eg narrow and long) that would give me pause. When they get over 5 are they footballs or long? Oh one other cue for me that I don't hear people talk about - mouth size to body weight on a largemouth. 5lb fish with a 2lb'ers head? YAY.

Anyway this is probably like looking at any other animal - you can kinda tell 'well fed' from 'normal' from 'is this thing sick?'

 

[Swamp Girl]

10 hours ago, txchaser said:

When they get over 5 are they footballs or long?

 

I haven't caught one over five...yet. I think I had one that size hit based upon the amount of water it moved, but who knows...not me. So far, they're nearly all 15.5 to 18.5 inches and chunky. 

 

10 hours ago, txchaser said:

Anyway this is probably like looking at any other animal

 

Exactly. I had a bear cut across my path once in northwestern Ontario, one of many bears I've seen, and it was so big and glossy that I smiled, happy to see a thriving animal. 

[J Francho]

People will come up with all sorts of excuses for failing.

[Junk Fisherman]

On 2/4/2025 at 8:43 AM, Pumpkin Lizard said:

It seems that with technology, weigh ins should be a thing of the past.

 But getting rid of weigh-ins would eliminate the hero shots needed for social media.

[MN Fisher]

24 minutes ago, Junk Fisherman said:

 But getting rid of weigh-ins would eliminate the hero shots needed for social media.

Take the single fish hero shots on the boat and display them on a big screen on the stage...problem solved.

[Pumpkin Lizard]

2 hours ago, Junk Fisherman said:

 But getting rid of weigh-ins would eliminate the hero shots needed for social media.

They figured it out for Kayak Fishing. But yeah. Tough to replace the spectacle of a weigh in.

 

 

[Swamp Girl]

31 minutes ago, Pumpkin Lizard said:

They figured it out for Kayak Fishing. But yeah. Tough to replace the spectacle of a weigh in.

 

 

 

To me, pulling a bass straight out of the lake and recording that catch then and there is much more exciting than pulling a bass out of a bag. When I lift a bass to photograph it, it's generally flopping and when I release it, it often splashes me because it's fresh from its home. Those limp bass that they pull from bags are stale, made so by hours in a livewell and many minutes in a bag. Filming the catches of still-fighting, fresh fish and then playing that footage at the stage gets my vote.

[TnRiver46]

I like to see the fish at a weigh in. Kayak tournament competitors could slit a fish’s gills after the photo or photograph a dead fish and nobody would know 

 

they aren’t lifeless at the weigh ins I have attended, they are usually going bananas and hard to hold onto 

[Cuivre]

28 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

I like to see the fish at a weigh in. Kayak tournament competitors could slit a fish’s gills after the photo or photograph a dead fish and nobody would know 

That doesn't make sense on many levels, the least of which is "why would they want to do that?"  The current requirement is CPRR, which requires the angler to record the fish being released live, swimming away and the empty Ketch board being shown.  That has the added benefit of insuring the same fish isn't measured, stringered, and submitted twice and that the fish is alive.    Any other on the water video of the fish/angler using a GoPro or even just a phone video will be much better than a still picture at a weigh in for use in marketing and social media.  Plus- it reinforces and expands Ray Scott's ethic of Catch and Release, by using technology that has been available to anglers for years- cell phones, video, electronic submission and second party judging of the catch's length and health (standards have always been the clear and healthy eye must be visible on all photos and the fingers cannot be under the operculum).  Constant relocation of fish just for the ability of angler to prance around on stage waving a dying fish around is just indulgence of shallow ego and false bravado.  

[TnRiver46]

So they have to video the fish swimming away? I didn’t know that, watched many kayak tourneys on YouTube and they rarely video the release 

[Cuivre]

That is a new requirement of KBF and affiliate local clubs-if that video is requested, it has to be available.  Not every fish will be checked for a release video-that would be too ponderous.  The last Hobie BOS tournament had the same fish submitted and counted twice by a high placing competitor.  It cost another angler a lot of money due to them not catching that double counted fish, since he would have jumped up to that placing- I think it was over a $10,000 mistake, if I remember, plus the intangible impact.   There was no way of knowing if it was a second unique catch of the same fish, or something more nefarious.  Hobie BOS is no longer happening in 2025, but KBF learned a lesson from that incident.