Why are fish biologists always so quick to assure you that “catch and release” laws aren’t helpful in producing or sustaining healthy fish populations?

[Ohioguy25]

Of the multiple fish biologists I have spoken with over the years, they all seem to steer the conversation away from catch and release being of much value and suggest that it is a misguided measure in restoring or maintaining healthy fish populations. 
 

I am well aware of selective harvest, as well as all of the other factors that influence population dynamics. But on a smaller river, I can’t see how anyone could possibly Argue that allowing people to keep four to five 18”+ fish every day won’t negatively impact the population if not wipe it out entirely. 
 

Is there some underlying political reason or other bias influencing the aversion they all seem to have to this subject or is there science behind it? Obviously there are multiple variables involved, and the size of the body of water as well as the population are major factors. But overall I have seen an overwhelming skepticism among them regarding the effectiveness of catch and release.

[MIbassyaker]

You should ask them about their reasons rather than asking us about their motives.

[TLHSS]

The fish biologists I follow talk primarily about private pond management; not rivers.  And what I read from them is based on science and experience with client’s ponds. So I tend to believe it, even if it doesn’t match past beliefs. 

[greentrout]

The state of Texas is definitely a big proponent of catch-and-release. 

Good Fishing

https://tpwd.texas.gov/fishboat/fish/recreational/catchrelease/bassconserve.phtml

[MonsterZero]

Generally speaking, if you want to restore or maintain a damaged population, you should close fishing entirely to let it recover. We see this with moratoriums on at risk or protected species, particularly in saltwater, in my experience. Alternatively, you place restrictions on what tackle can be used, like barbless hook exclusivity in certain bodies of water or for certain species, like trout waters.

 

As someone with a strong background in ecology and who has spent a lot of time with scientists of other disciplines, including biology, I am...puzzled by this. Without being present for the actual conversation, I am thinking they may be referring to species overall, and not specific locations. That is, keeping fish or practicing catch and release in your neighborhood pond is not going to significantly impact LMB populations overall, so it really does not matter except for convenience. Could not say for certain, though.

[Glaucus]

Most water was unfished or hardly fished (especially by today's standards where everything is pounded). Seemed to work out throughout the entire history of the planet without man telling us how to control lakes.

[Susky River Rat]

Catch and release along with other precautions brought back the Susquehanna.

 

some bodies here also have bigger size limits with less slots to fill. 
 

I think if there is not enough natural predators to them in a body of water it does become an issue. i also think a majority of people bass fishing practice catch and release.  
 

now are they always correct? I am sure not. Do other things come into play I won’t mention here? Surely. For a majority of it though I believe they are doing the best they can for the information they have. 

[Choporoz]

I have no background or study in the field.  But, what I seem to have heard and read from biologists is that in most bodies of water, natural mortality absolutely dwarfs fishing mortality.  Fish recruitment is a very complicated concept, but natural variables are generally so much more impactful than harvest.

[Tennessee Boy]

Bass are able to reproduce at an extraordinary rate in a healthy fishery.  Two bass could probably repopulate Lake Michigan in 5 years.  The limiting factor on the population is the lakes ability to support the fish in it.  
 

 

[osummerer23]

12 hours ago, Ohioguy25 said:

I can’t see how anyone could possibly Argue that allowing people to keep four to five 18”+ fish every day won’t negatively impact the population if not wipe it out entirely. 

Because they know <20% will even keep bass. let alone fish every day, and catch 5 fish every day. 

 

Look at pan fish and live scope over the recent years. As they saw the impact of live scope on pan fish, states started reducing limits and seasons. From 25 fish a day to 10 because they know each angler that went out had more success than previously. 

[JHoss]

There's a number of reasons, but I'd say #1 is because the vast majorities of waters that we fish are overpopulated with bass. An acre of water can only sustain a certain amount of life (a few hundred pounds and varies by latitude) and most waters don't have enough natural predators of adult bass to keep them in check. So unless someone is removing adult bass, the population will stunt and you'll find very few fish at or above relative weight. 

 

@Tennessee Boy is right that it doesn't take a lot of bass to restock the population each year. Studies have been done time and time again that show that systems with low bass densities can be repopulated in short order if conditions are right for the fry to reach adulthood. 

[Swamp Girl]

In my childhood, I fished farm ponds and freeway ponds, where the pond was created by excavating dirt for an overpass. At one such pond, which we named Killer, we caught both quantity and quality, but then others started fishing it and we'd see them leaving with stringers of 16" bass, then stringers of 14" bass, and then stringers of 12" bass. They killed Killer. 

[Pat Brown]

The concept of selective harvest is merely selecting for bigger fish and helping the biomass distribute more evenly amongst the bigger fish so they can continue to grow before they reach their growth potential at about ~6 years old.

 

You don't have to do it if you don't want to.

 

It's not really anything new or bad.  In fact in Japan govt efforts to completely wipe out bass merely produced the current world record Florida strain bass by essentially culling out lake Biwa.

 

Don't keep giant fish.  Don't keep small itty bitty fish.  You will help bass by keeping more of the midsize fish every year which tend to be females that eat a large percentage of the available biomass in a body of water making it very difficult for the apex fish to get bigger than pretty big.

 

Or just go fishing and let them go.

 

That's the beauty of freedom.

 

The point is people keeping bass are almost certainly helping a fishery unless they're doing something incredible!

 

Remember 60% of all the fish on any body of water die every year. 

 

That's a statistic I've heard over and over again on lots of places and I believe it. It doesn't matter if it's us that kills them or a tree falling on their head or old age or starvation or whatever 60% of all of the fish are going to die. 

 

The best we can do is try to encourage the big ones to survive as anglers.

[Swamp Girl]

27 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

Remember 60% of all the fish on any body of water die every year. 

 

I suspect the bulk of this 60% are fry and baitfish that are eaten by bigger fish.

[Scott F]

14 hours ago, Ohioguy25 said:

I am well aware of selective harvest, as well as all of the other factors that influence population dynamics. But on a smaller river, I can’t see how anyone could possibly Argue that allowing people to keep four to five 18”+ fish every day won’t negatively impact the population if not wipe it out entirely. 

To use your example, on a small river, 18” smallmouth are old bass. They are near the end of their life cycle and often don’t even spawn. That’s why very large bass over 18” are so rare in smaller rivers, assuming they aren’t harvested, they don’t live long enough to get much bigger. At a fish hatchery near where I used to live, they removed the largest smallmouth (18-21 inch fish) and released them in a local small river because they no longer were reproducing. Instead of allowing them to die of old age in a tank, they gave anglers a chance to catch and harvest them if they wanted. If someone only kept the biggest fish out of your river, there would still be the smaller fish that would continue to spawn and the population would not negatively affect the population. True, there wouldn’t be as many large bass for you to enjoy, but those fish weren’t going to survive for a long time anyway.
There is no simple answer to cover every body of water. There are many things to consider. Science aside, the DNR has to keep the people who buy licenses happy. If regulations are too strict, and don’t allow harvest, many won’t buy a license. With no restrictions on harvest, the fisheries can get destroyed. 

[Pat Brown]

Basically slot limits are good.  Like 12-18" for example.  That's a nice one.

 

If you're worried about a body of water or your local fishery, best you can do is contact your local DNR and ask what they think on the matter.

 

I still think the long and short of it is looking down your nose at folks keeping fish is a choice but it's basically cultural.  Looking down your nose at folks releasing fish and not catching fish for food is a choice and it's cultural also.

 

I try to just practice compassion and tolerance and reserve judgement for very unique situations where I can specifically see harm being done.

[Bucks Bass and Bourbon]

I have read some informative articles on this topic lately, specifically regarding bass. I wish I could find them so I could link them. Something to consider is how varied a body of water can be from the next and how different the circumstances for a given population can be. There is definitely a stigma in the bass fishing community that seems to shame and ridicule anglers for keeping a catch based on the blanket belief that without catch and release the quality of the fishery will decline. That is simply not true. An overpopulated fishery is harmful to the quality of fish as well. Stunted growth and other harmful impacts begin to show themselves. A fishery that is struggling to repopulate of course benefits from catch and release but that is not a universal rule. 

[JHoss]

IMO, the best solution is also not even remotely realistic. Get rid of regulations based on length and go to relative weight. If a fish is less than 90% its relative weight, harvest it. But then anglers would be required to have a ruler, scale, and the ability to do math. 

[MonsterZero]

3 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

In my childhood, I fished farm ponds and freeway ponds, where the pond was created by excavating dirt for an overpass. At one such pond, which we named Killer, we caught both quantity and quality, but then others started fishing it and we'd see them leaving with stringers of 16" bass, then stringers of 14" bass, and then stringers of 12" bass. They killed Killer. 

We had a pond like that where I used to live, too. It was a permanent retention pond next to a nursing home. Had some great bass in it for a long time...until the employees started fishing after work. There are still fish in there today, but it is a shadow of what it used to be. Every fish caught goes home with someone.

[casts_by_fly]

The varying answers on this post are largely all correct- depending on the situation and what you ae trying to achieve.  A lake with high biomass will be very different from a lake with low biomass.  A lake managed for trophy caliber fish will be different to a lake managed for 'general public use'.  A lake with many bass but with low size diversity may require selective harvest or a slot limit.  A large lake with significant biomass and a diverse age structure may be fine with a 'free for all' approach.   Rivers and streams have their own challenges as well.  Then you have people.  The first thing is knowing what a lake needs, the second is having that applied in practice.  Bass anglers are largely C&R but some aren't.  What proportion of anglers fishing a given lake are going to keep fish?  What fish are they going to catch and keep?  How many?  How often?  Using the live scope example above, many states had assumptions about the effectiveness of anglers fishing for panfish.  Sure, set a limit of 50 for crappie because most guys can't catch that many anyway.  Live imaging has changed that.  Now do all of this analysis across all of the fish species and/or types for the state (panfish, bass, trout, walleye, Esox, 'other').

 

All of that is to say that state fisheries biologists have to manage all of those competing factors on a state wide scale.  And then have to recommend management plans and regulations that make sense for the waters they are responsible for, that fit within the overall set of regulations that the state uses, and that are simple enough for the average angler to understand.  Imagine having lake by lake regulations where in any given county/region you have multiple different sets of rules, different minimum or maximum lengths, some catch and release (but only during certain parts of the year), etc.  For an angler who only fishes a couple of those lakes it might be okay (especially if you're a C&R angler anyway) but what about the wardens who have to enforce it?  And then if you're setting rules that specific you need to be monitoring them every other year or so.

 

On top of all of that, there is a balance of setting regulations that are best for the water balanced with regulations that are acceptable to the public.  Imagine a world where the best regulation set for the entire state was catch and release.  If implemented, you would lose a considerable number of anglers who want to keep fish with implications on license sales and future recruitment.

 

In summary, the answer is "it's complicated".

[slowworm]

I would cull and eat the bass I catch, but I don't want to poison myself.  The result of a long industrial history in the North East.

 

New Hampshire Fish Consumption Guidelines

 

 

[Ohioguy25]

5 hours ago, Pat Brown said:

The concept of selective harvest is merely selecting for bigger fish and helping the biomass distribute more evenly amongst the bigger fish so they can continue to grow before they reach their growth potential at about ~6 years old.

 

You don't have to do it if you don't want to.

 

It's not really anything new or bad.  In fact in Japan govt efforts to completely wipe out bass merely produced the current world record Florida strain bass by essentially culling out lake Biwa.

 

Don't keep giant fish.  Don't keep small itty bitty fish.  You will help bass by keeping more of the midsize fish every year which tend to be females that eat a large percentage of the available biomass in a body of water making it very difficult for the apex fish to get bigger than pretty big.

 

Or just go fishing and let them go.

 

That's the beauty of freedom.

 

The point is people keeping bass are almost certainly helping a fishery unless they're doing something incredible!

 

Remember 60% of all the fish on any body of water die every year. 

 

That's a statistic I've heard over and over again on lots of places and I believe it. It doesn't matter if it's us that kills them or a tree falling on their head or old age or starvation or whatever 60% of all of the fish are going to die. 

 

The best we can do is try to encourage the big ones to survive as anglers.

Did you miss where I said my entire concern is people keeping 18-20” smallmouth?

4 hours ago, Scott F said:

Science aside, the DNR has to keep the people who buy licenses happy. If regulations are too strict, and don’t allow harvest, many won’t buy a license.

There we go, now we’re getting somewhere 

[TnRiver46]

Even the bassmaster classic champ didn’t catch 5 keepers on the final day where I live so not much to worry about, it’s impossible! 😂. He did say he could see hundreds of them on the graph ignoring his lure. Maybe if we weed out the smart ones, some dumber ones that bite will come along ? Haha

[Pat Brown]

6 minutes ago, Ohioguy25 said:

Did you miss where I said my entire concern is people keeping 18-20” smallmouth?

There we go, now we’re getting somewhere 

 

 

Just addressing the part where you said you don't trust all the scientists saying selective harvest is good.

 

It's nuanced.

 

I don't think people should keep overslot fish and if people are breaking the law, by all means report them to the game warden.

[TnRiver46]

11 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

 

 

Just addressing the part where you said you don't trust all the scientists saying selective harvest is good.

 

It's nuanced.

 

I don't think people should keep overslot fish and if people are breaking the law, by all means report them to the game warden.

18” minimum length to keep a smallmouth in almost all of East TN. I ain’t too proud to slice one up but I’d starve to death trying to catch enough. White bass is the way to go for legal keeper food