Smallmouth Issues/msa Meeting

[ozark trout fisher]

Now where I agree catch and keep anglers can affect a creek, so long as a water is open to C&K then it is what it is. Raising the size limit wont change that. You will still have people who keep fish and then what raise the limit again or go to the MDCand request it be closed to C&K because you are not catching fish. Where is the line drawn.

C&R anglers drive me nuts, Ive ran into many that look at anyone keeping a fish as if they are sub-human. Its a resource for all to enjoy, If you want to release the fish thats great I release alot of fish to, If you want to keep some great as well I love to eat fish myself. But regulations need to be set so the RESOURCE remains viable. Not to make any one groups wishes before that of the resource.

Perhaps the old guy above liked to eat fish and kept a few. Then again a few kids you never saw or a few groups you never saw or even possibly otters might well have decided to take home some fish also.

Nobody is against people who want to take home fish to eat. I know I keep fish fairly often, bluegill, channel cats, stocker trout, etc. It's just about doing it responsibly. If the guy wanted fish to eat, the Niangua is just full of stocker rainbows. Those are stocked once a month, or something like that anyway. Not to mention all the goggle-eye, longear sunfish, and other panfish. Why not take a few of those home to eat instead of 14, 15 inch smallmouth which take years to replace?

[Feathers and Fins]

Maybe he liked Bass. Who are we to judge what someone likes best. If he was in his legal right to take bass and its what he wanted so be it. Playing Devils Advocate here.

[Outside Bend]

EXACTLY!

x3- I think MDC really underestimates winter harvest. I've watched a half-dozen folks limit out on smallies around some Ozark springs, and they'll do it three or four days a week. IMO they're just as vulnerable in winter as they are during spawning, and if we're going to protect them during that time of year, we ought to consider extending the no-kill stream closure to colder months of the year as well.

[Tim Smith]

Cricket, My point is so long as C&K is legal on a stream anywhere, it is possible that people will keep fish and that overfishing is highly likely. I have spent many days on small creeks and seen the affect of people keeping fish. However it is legal, I have also seen the otters do damage to a resource, the same as I have seen soil errosion and cattle influances on stream. They are fragile resources and without sound management which may have to include C&R only, then the resource is at the peril at any point from a host of influances.

Management of any resource is more than just an indivdual anglers or persons wishes, it is taking in to account all potential variables and comming up with a plan that benifits the resource before the wants of people. Florida for example saw a major decrease in the Snook fishery from harvest durring the summer spawn when they consentrate in inlets by the millions as well as in the winter when they go to the deep holes. They are easy pickings at these two times of year. Floridas responce was to make those times of year C&R only and the result was Snook population increase. Sometimes its as simple as protecting a species at the most vulnerable times. Good management of not just a species but of the resource taken as a whole is sound management.

Points:

1. Cricket, if you lipped 500 bass in a day, based on normal percentages of hooking mortality you probably killed more than a limit just from the random few that caught a hook in a pulmonary artery or gill or swallowed the hook. Catch and release has effects too. Go fish the Fox River in Chicago and see if you can land something without hook wounds in it's face. Those affect growth and probably contribute to mortality as well.

2. Strongly agree with back caster's practice of keeping panfish only, but there should be limits there too. I remember as a kid when we measured the success of bluegill fishing trips by how many ice chests we filled, not how many fish we caught total. Those trips might actually have paid for the gas and time but they're not sustainable and if those lakes had been properly managed we would not have been allowed to do that.

3. There is more to a slot limit than has been discussed here so far. The back half of the slot can be just as important as the front. Big fish make better eggs with higher lipid content, more eggs, and often have better genetics than smaller fish in the population (they got big and old for a reason). Keeping those few old fish in the population makes a big difference in the overall quality of the resource. I keep seeing people say that very large fish don't reproduce because they are too old but that's really not true until you reach the extreme ends of a fish's life. Keeping harvest pressure off trophy fish has benefits for the population as a whole. It's harder to measure those benefits, but they're probably real.

4. When we were working on the conservation philosophies at the ISA, there was some discussion about how to frame policy about catch and release. The success of catch and release is pretty much undeniable. The fact that it has been embraced so widely is probably one of the more stunning conservation victories of the modern era. So in some ways it didn't make sense to fix what wasn't broke. Keeping that ethic in place and not confusing the message that releasing fish is a good thing was the first goal. It's probably ok that some people take it overboard because there are probably other people out there who might behave destructively if they though no one would take exception. Creeling a supper from time to time isn't a terrible sin but it was decided that it's probably better just to keep things simple and say catch and release is what we support.

[Tim Smith]

x3- I think MDC really underestimates winter harvest. I've watched a half-dozen folks limit out on smallies around some Ozark springs, and they'll do it three or four days a week. IMO they're just as vulnerable in winter as they are during spawning, and if we're going to protect them during that time of year, we ought to consider extending the no-kill stream closure to colder months of the year as well.

This is extremely likely to be true. It's very hard to estimate events like that over the short term. I don't know about MO, but in IL creel clerks are hired seasonally and there is NO possibility of estimating winter harvest.

[Smalliebigs]

My last comment was tounge and cheek.......I know the MDC has a tough job and the average river fisherman really doesn't give a crap about which river holds nice fish, they just want to know where they can get more and when.

[Outside Bend]

The MDC paranoid of meat hunters feelings????

They don't want to alienate constituents. It's tough having a conversation on smallmouth regs when one party views any change as an assault on their personal liberties. It's not monolithic, but there's a lot of folks in the Ozarks who feel they're entitled to use the resource however they see fit.

Influencing mindsets is a lot tougher than adding verbiage to the wildlife code. But if more restrictive regs are going to go in place, MDC is going to need support from the locals. Otherwise it just feeds into the "Big Jeff-City Gubment Hot-Shots coming in and telling us folk what we can and can't do on the river a mile from our house."

[Feathers and Fins]

They don't want to alienate constituents. It's tough having a conversation on smallmouth regs when one party views any change as an assault on their personal liberties. It's not monolithic, but there's a lot of folks in the Ozarks who feel they're entitled to use the resource however they see fit.

Influencing mindsets is a lot tougher than adding verbiage to the wildlife code. But if more restrictive regs are going to go in place, MDC is going to need support from the locals. Otherwise it just feeds into the "Big Jeff-City Gubment Hot-Shots coming in and telling us folk what we can and can't do on the river a mile from our house."

I have never been a fan of the term Catch and Release, for that very reason OB, It is an alienation phrase that doesn’t help the cause of conservation in the minds of people who fish for food or wish to be able to keep fish as they feel it is the driving force in (keeping them from doing what they want).

I use to do a lot of Earth day events along with Wildlife educational lectures and shows and when asked my belief on (Catching and Releasing wildlife as a whole or related to fishing) my reply was simple. “Keep only what you need, release the others for your grandchildren”. This was a simple way of letting people know I believed in conservation of the resource while still letting them know I believed in use of the resource.

I might be strange but when I Deer hunt I shoot the first deer I see buck or doe, I cant eat antlers, but I do like to eat deer. As most deer hunters know you will see far more doe’s then bucks. Its not to say I do not keep a buck tag through the year just incase I luck into knowing where a big one will be. I did this year a nice 14 point with a double drop, but as my freezer had more than enough deer in it I passed on him and still have all but 1 tag that I filled with a doe.

I know you can’t release a shot animal, but why take the shot if you have enough meat already? Why keep more fish than you need? Why leave trash on a lake or stream? There is a great many why’s! What we need is outdoorsmen who are examples and teach the new generation’s conservation and utilization of the resource go hand in hand and work well together done properly

[eric1978]

What we need is outdoorsmen who are examples and teach the new generation’s conservation and utilization of the resource go hand in hand and work well together done properly

Humans have proven time and time again throughout history that they can't be trusted to do the right thing on their own. That's simply undeniable. And that's why, on occasion, the government has to step in and put restrictions on idiotic behavior. This is one of those cases. There are too many people fishing for smallmouth for the current regulations to make sense. Sorry, but I don't care what the people who keep smallmouth want. They are exploiting a resource while we C&R anglers are conserving the resource. Who should be pissed off, us or them?

If one species of fish was deemed off limits for keeping, they'd still have dozens and dozens of other species to catch and eat, and I wouldn't have the slightest shred of sympathy if they were upset that our will was imposed upon them...because they have no sympathy for us at present...never have, never will. They don't care, they just do what they want without a single thought of anyone else. They're selfish, and they need to be regulated for the benefit of all.

[Flysmallie]

They don't care, they just do what they want without a single thought of anyone else.

But those regulations won't fix that. I really don't care if it's made Catch and Release only, you know that. But the people that are the problem will still continue to keep whatever they want, whenever they want and they really don't care.