Catch & Release Vs. Keep and eat

[Muddy]

Guess the same reason you get a red head drunk, she pukes in your car, sleep when you get home, then you take her back to her car in the bar parking lot in the morning

[Uncle Leo]

A friend of mine has a farm with 6 ponds. He is an avid hunter, fisherman, and pond manager. My 3 biggest bass this year (any my PB) have come from these ponds.

He opens 3 of his best ponds to the girl scouts and boy scouts in the spring, and let's these kids, and their parents, keep whatever they want within legal limits. Most of the folks who come are worm and bobber fishermen, and they catch a lot of nice bluegill and the occasional bass. Sometimes a kid will catch a big bass and the whole group will go absolutely nuts! It's really neat to see.

Last year a kid caught a 6 pounder and another caught a 4 pounder. Both fish were taken home and mounted. Many other 2 and 3 pounders were kept. This drove me crazy, but the kids loved it.

I asked my friend why he lets them harvest big bass from his ponds and he had 2 responses. First, he says, they've been doing it for years and for every big one they pull out, another one always seems to take it's place. Second, they were having so much fun that he just didn't have the heart to tell them to put it back.

He's not looking to raise a state record, he just wants ponds that are fun to fish and offer a good chance at a lunker. That's exactly what he's got.

I personally practice catch and release. Your friend I have to say does a great service, 1) He takes responsibility of managing the ponds, 2) He puts a smile on our young folks face. We need more like him, I applaud him JOB WELL DONE.

[Terex]

"selective harvest" is a valid means of regulating the population of any game species. You say "hoa" as in "home owners association"

and that is my only concern. It's likely these guys know nothing about how to manage your lake for trophy bass. The end result of all this culling of smaller fish could very well be damage to the fishery.

One area that I fish in has extreme game warden surveillance. The rule of thumb is 12"-15", catch and release. The smaller ones and the bigger ones are keepers. The idea is to allow the ones that reach "prime" spawning size a chance to repopulate the lakes.

I don't think his hoa is too far off the mark.

[TSPfishing]

I'm predominantly catch and release...

I don't have any issue with harvesting when done within the guidlines set by the state's fish creel and size limits.  

Rmbr to always check your state's guidelines, many lakes and/or areas can differ.  

[FR0G]

Myself, I wouldnt be able to eat a largemouth. I guess I appreciate them that much.

Then why do you ram a hook into their mouth, pull them to the surface, suffocate them, take pictures of them while they're suffocating, then put them back and hope that they don't die from any complications from the fight? ;D

Sorry, just thought that was funny. Hopefully, it is taken as an attempt at humor.

Hey, at least I am not catching them, and letting them suffer on a stringer or in a cooler.

[bmuskin]

There are some strip pit areas that I fish. I do not think they get fished at all as you have to cut your way into them through briars and chest high grass. I do keep fish from these as they are loaded. One of the other reasons they seem to not get fished much is there is a 92, 100, and 375 acres lake(s) within 30 minutes of these smallish strip pits. I keep these fish a lot. The heavily fished areas around Kansas City I catch and release as I know a lot of kids and teenagers as well as other people fish them.

[B-o-b]

I don't like when people keep the big fish on the lake i live on, but, its legal, so they have every right to do that. I don't care what people are doing as long as it's legal and they know what they're doing.

I will only keep badly wounded fish, which i give to my neighbor, who loves bass.

[shorefisher]

I practice catch and release but seeing as I fish with dynamite the release part doesn't work as well as I'd hoped.

[Grey Wolf]

I practice catch and release but seeing as I fish with dynamite the release part doesn't work as well as I'd hoped.

Did you just make a funny ?

[FishingBuds]

catch and release on all bass family's, Croppy & red ears

Only time I have ever keep and eat is the Cat fish(tatse so much better). but I haven't done that in years, Use to do it several nights thru the summer when I was a young lad on my own. its been so long I may have for gotten how to clean'em :

[pafishslayer]

Excellent post!

I have another perspective on the c&r deal. I personally dont like fish much so I dont keep any unless someone wanted some that did not or could not catch tany themselves.

Now my 6 yr old son loves to fish and I cant expect him to fish with artificial bait all the time. If I did he wouldnt catch anything and probably would love video games instead of fishing. Since he's been 2, any fish that he hooks deep, we keep and he really enjoys fish and now with the deer meat we harvest, he associates food with the earth and nature. Not that we need to hunt and fish to sustain ourselves these days, but we do need to respect our natural resources and the value the earth has towards all of our future.

He will not hurt the fish population any time soon and in time he will get better at fishing different artificials and wont deep hook so many fish. I think he values the resource and understands that food doesnt just magically come from the super market. Keep in mind that as we're fishing we discuss c&r and he knows that I prefer to release them to enjoy another day. Im putting a lot of stock in the lessons learned outdoors and hopefully he will grow up to be a steward of our land and water, not to mention that while he's hunting and fishing he's not getting into trouble somewhere else. I know thats a lesson that we all hope are children will learn.

Thanks for a forum where you can express your feelings and interests without making enimies.

Mike

[avid]

[Terex]

The lake you talk about with the "extreme game warden surveillance" has a slot limit. The slot limits are set by professional fisheries managers and the game wardens enforce the regs put into place. Slot limits like the ones you describe are arrived at after professionals study a particular body of water and determine that certain spawn years were poor, so harvest is illegal, and others were plentiful hence those fish (by size based on growth rate) are legal to keep. that is a far far cry from a local guy deciding that killing all small bass will create a trophy fishery. He could very well be advocating killing of fish in a poor spawn year and risk setting back his "trophy" program by years, or worse.

Balance is the key to a healthy system. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Let the fisheries managers manage the fishery.

Then the professionals are shooting themselves in the foot since many people keep the smaller ones as well as the larger ones.  We agree the local man is advocating destroying of the smaller fish.  The professionals are allowing the same.  

That is why I said it wasn't too far off the mark.

[Muddy]

I don't understand? I don't get this guys point. The slots are designed so that you take an overpopulated class of fish out, We have a 15 inch minimum here and what we have is a lot of 14 3/4 fish. S A slot might help change this big time.

[PoBoy]

I have eaten bass and really liked it.  I just can't bring myself to keep a bass because I love to catch them so much that I want to catch them again another day.  Another reason is that there are plenty of people that keep everything that they catch, so I really doubt that keeping fish is going to be good for the bodies of water that I fish.

[Robert Jackson]

Yesterday my wife and I had a great day bass fishing.

From 7 AM to Noon, we caught 43 bass.

The largest weighed 6 pounds 5 ounces.

The rest ranged from about a pound to 5 pounds plus.

We kept 10 (legal limit) of the smaller ones and released

all of the larger ones.

The lake is planning to become catch-and-release only in the future.

I'm not sure that is going to turn out well.  There are so many

bass now that I think they will decimate the forage fish over time.

[Woody B]

Pay attention to where you're catching them and how often you eat.  For instance Lake Wylie (NC and SC) has a warning not to eat bass more than 1 meal a week due to PCB's.   Make sure to follow any warnings for where ever the fish were caught.   

[jbsoonerfan]

I guess I didn't answer this way back in 2008, that being said, I will keep a few farm pond fish to eat every once in a while. 

[MN Fisher]

I know I've answered in a similar thread that's more recent...but here goes.

 

I practice 'selective harvest' - basically any 2#-3# LMB has a 50% chance of going into my freezer. The rest get put back in the water ASAP.

[cyclops2]

The work from home is going to increase the number of bass being taken home ALL year long.

 

Oh well.  Enjoy them.

[Choporoz]

The shaming hasn't diminished in the past 14 years.  If you see a pic of someone holding a bass in a kitchen or backyard on FB, it is guaranteed to bring out someone to complain very quickly. 

[bassh8er]

No on bass but crappie and walleye get kept 99% of the time.

[cyclops2]

All my legal medium sized Yellow Perch go to old friends.

[thediscochef]

This thread is older than most of my friends kids lol

I have only ever kept one fish outside of guided trips. It's not that I have some moral whatever with it - it's that I fish enough to see how poorly some follow fishery rules and enough people at the fish cleaning station, etc that I know fish of all sizes are being harvested at a pretty solid pace. I don't see a need to contribute to that, especially when I don't enjoy cleaning fish. It's not going to kill the fishery for me to keep what I catch, but it sure is easier to just pack up and leave when I'm done at the water.

[gim]

5 hours ago, thediscochef said:

This thread is older than most of my friends kids

I wasn't even a member of BR when this thread started!

 

There's nothing wrong with selective harvest of smaller bass out of a system.  Studies have actually proven that removing a few 12 inch bass from time to time is beneficial.  I don't personally keep them because there are better table options here, but then again I am almost exclusively a catch n release kinda guy with every species.  I certainly would not keep a fish of any species while it is spawning either.

 

The problem starts when you start removing larger fish from the system regularly.  Medium to large sized fish are the female spawning biomass.  If you want it to self-reproduce, you should be releasing those fish.  Nothing over about 2 pounds should be kept.  A 3 pounder is too big to keep IMO.  This problem is very evident with our stunted pike population here in Minnesota.  Too many large pike were harvested and now our lakes are primarily composed of aggressive overpopulated small hammer handles.