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White Paper long term effects?


drew03cmc

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1 hour ago, tjm said:

No, didn't read the paper, was  unaware of it or the thread you refer to.  I was not even aware that bass had any concerns until they changed the Elk river rules, but I'll bet a nickle that the management or special management has zero effect.  I'm a great supporter of our MDC and it beats the dickens out of legislative fish and game management that other states have, but, all fish and game studies are self justifying and self proven.  The protocols are written to only examine things which are already known and to ignore 99% of all things that might not match the desired output and the samples used are minuscule and only have significance in statistics. .  Over any lengthy time span and in an uncontrolled situation (think natural atmosphere and environment) it is impossible that enough accurate information can be gathered to prove either myself or the writer of whatever study right or wrong.   There are  simply too many variables, any conclusion is but a guess. OTOH, those guys need the work and I'm fishing  less as I get old.  

@ollie was referencing the Elk, just FYI. The data was gathered over the course of nearly a decade, if I remember correctly, stream sections were surveyed, albeit not always in the most thorough manner or means and excluded for various reasons. The end result was a step towards creating better smallmouth fishing for our kids and grandkids. Did the regulations change to suit our desires? In nearly all situations, the answer is a resounding no. In this state, in the current time, with the current obstacles in front of all of us, did they make a stride? Yes. 

55 minutes ago, tjm said:

I'll even take a crack at why we have BBSMAs and why they are where they are; years and years  of black bass anglers (smb anglers specifically)  complaining to MDC about fish eaters, and how they were keeping the real anglers from catching trophies, caused public surveys to be started and as a result MDC discovered there were not as many fish eaters responding as there were Trophy Hunters, so, in an effort to appease the majority of their clientele they hit upon SMAs and they located them on portions of streams that had the biggest response to the surveys.  Those portions were probably chosen in part for ease of enforcement and in part for visibility of "management". (if they'd intensively manage a area with no access, no one would know about it and complaints would continue) 

Years ago they banned woods fires and had Smokey Bear give shows in schools and now they have learned that fire is essential to the Ozark habitat and would like to burn more areas for restoration, but they are encountering resistance to that from all those people whom they had previously programmed to oppose burning.  Some day they will admit that streams can not be managed, the best policy is let nature (or God ) take its course and for us to make adjustments accordingly. The only stream management we can really impact positively is waste water and runoff pollution.  That is DNR responsibility and MDC can't control that either. 

You're incorrect. Kevin Meneau was and is a vehement supporter of river smallie fishing and was instrumental in this program. MDC, as long as I can recall, has had creel surveys and other means of surveying the population in effect instead of simply shocking them up. Have you fished smallmouth bass on rivers elsewhere? We don't touch world class quality fishing and our rivers are capable of being much better. This paper was to analyze, expand or enact new SMAs. It has done that, again, not to everyone's desires. Catch and keep fishing will always be allowed in Missouri whether we like it or not. We will have to try and get more stringent regulations through in some way, shape or form as a gift to future generations of outdoorsmen and women. 

 

I guess I'm dense as I do not get the forest fire equivalency here. A deity isn't the answer here. We are dealing with science and scientific data. I'd like to see results from a shocking survey before new regs on the SMAs and now to see if there's been a change in the population density or the frequency of big smallmouth. 

Andy

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41 minutes ago, drew03cmc said:

We will have to try and get more stringent regulations through in some way, shape or form as a gift to future generations of outdoorsmen and women. 

 

How much cash do you have? Because, seriously, that is what it will take. And even after all that the fishing may not get any better. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Flysmallie said:

 

How much cash do you have? Because, seriously, that is what it will take. And even after all that the fishing may not get any better. 

I'd like to be able to say that you understand where I'm coming from. I hope that those of us conservation-minded individuals are all on the same page and desire the same thing, improved smallmouth fishing for size and numbers.

Andy

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20 minutes ago, drew03cmc said:

I'd like to be able to say that you understand where I'm coming from. I hope that those of us conservation-minded individuals are all on the same page and desire the same thing, improved smallmouth fishing for size and numbers.

 

I do. But at this point I'm going to just go fishing and not spend any effort on trying to convince a government entity to do anything for me. That would require getting involved in politics and I have quit that whole deal. Hell we can't get people to quit poaching so why would another regulation that's not going to be observed or enforced help? 

 

 

 

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I believe that what MDC found after the first special management stretches had been in effect for a few years is that the size structure of the population, and overall numbers, did improve with a 15 inch, one fish limit.  But the improvement wasn't quite as significant as they thought it would be.  The White Paper pointed out, rightly or wrongly, that something like 45% of smallmouth in any given age class die each year no matter what angling regs are.  That's kinda the background rate of die-offs.  On certain waters they found that angling was cropping off fish over and above that 45% figure, and that those areas would benefit from special management...but on some of them they got such resistance from tournament angling clubs that they decided to back off implementing special regs that would curtain bass tournaments.

My own experience is that the difference between special management areas and other parts of a given river isn't really big enough to make me want to fish nothing but the special management area.  The biggest single factor in the success you have on a given stretch is fishing pressure.  Doesn't really matter as much as you'd think whether the fishing being done was catch and kill or catch and release.  The harder it's fished, the tougher it is to catch fish from it.  That doesn't mean its fine for everybody to kill their limit every time...who knows how bad the stream would get if that was the case?   Probably a lot worse than it is now.

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This has been an interesting conversation and relevant to our side of the border. We are about to develop a 5-year fisheries management plan for Crooked Creek. Issues discussed in this thread will likely be topics that would need to be discussed and addressed during the development process. 

Hopefully by the end of the process, I won't be included in Gavin's list above, lol!!

Jeremy Risley

District Fisheries Supervisor
AGFC Mountain Home Office - 1-877-425-7577
Email: Jeremy.Risley@agfc.ar.gov
 

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1 hour ago, mojorig said:

This has been an interesting conversation and relevant to our side of the border. We are about to develop a 5-year fisheries management plan for Crooked Creek. Issues discussed in this thread will likely be topics that would need to be discussed and addressed during the development process. 

Hopefully by the end of the process, I won't be included in Gavin's list above, lol!!

If you ACTUALLY listen (pay attention) to guys that ACTUALLY fish and ACTUALLY know what they are talking about then you should do fine. 

And if you don't know who those guys are yet.....then you are not ready to consider doing anything.  Figure it out. 😊

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59 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

If you ACTUALLY listen (pay attention) to guys that ACTUALLY fish and ACTUALLY know what they are talking about then you should do fine. 

And if you don't know who those guys are yet.....then you are not ready to consider doing anything.  Figure it out. 😊

I would agree with listening to those anglers...

My family (including myself), along with another biologist working on this project family (including himself), have been fishing the creek for at least three generations. Hopefully that will help provide some historical perspective.

Jeremy Risley

District Fisheries Supervisor
AGFC Mountain Home Office - 1-877-425-7577
Email: Jeremy.Risley@agfc.ar.gov
 

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1 hour ago, mojorig said:

This has been an interesting conversation and relevant to our side of the border. We are about to develop a 5-year fisheries management plan for Crooked Creek. Issues discussed in this thread will likely be topics that would need to be discussed and addressed during the development process. 

Hopefully by the end of the process, I won't be included in Gavin's list above, lol!!

I think the biggest change in the Elk drainage over the last thirty years is the vastly improved sewage treatment on the Ar  side of Little Sugar Creek  and the almost total reduction of intense hog and and poultry farming in the two Sugar Creeks. I don't see enough fishing actually happening that a length limit could have a great effect on the overall fishery. (other than as a placebo)  I also don't see much enforcement, with many bass going to Ar. vehicles on stringers that are under 12". But I only fish a couple times a week and there are many miles of that system that I have not seen.  I believe that when a major tributary goes from a virtual sewer back to a bright clear flow, that  it makes changes that no amount of "fish management" can hope to achieve. Throw in several  extraordinary floods to scour the channels and rearrange the gravel bars and closing of a 50 year gravel mining operation , which of course MDC had no control of, and I guess there are lots of reasons to doubt that special regs are responsible for any improvement. I believe that the creek is cooler now than twenty years ago and blame that on drainage of the old Bella Vista Lake and the heat absorbed by it.  That doesn't mean that special regulations are a bad thing, we need and should have thousands more pages of regulations, when I fished in Me. about forty years ago the streams were all regulated by sections a few miles long and the fishing regs alone made a book the size of a paperback novel, residents told me that it generated much money from fines. It does kinda make sense too, that if we prohibit fishing altogether that the  fish would improve over time - given of  course that all the thousands of other factors also improved for them.  

Do smb like and do better in cool clear streams on in highly colored highly fertile streams? The only place I've fished for them other than here was in Pa. and there were lots more smb there in a warm river with almost zero clarity (visibility ~1') but they were all less than 15".

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