MDC Smallmouth Regs Recommendations

[MOsmallies]

Man I would love to see the MDC pick just one stream today that has the potential of growing good numbers of big smallmouth (17" and above) and make it catch and release only. Let's just say the Meramec... Then patrol the hell out of it to enforce the C&R and poaching that takes place year round... Give it at least 5 years (if not more) and see what happens. That allows those wanting to keep fish to still fish other streams but lets us get some solid baseline data. It also makes it more manageable for the MDC to patrol and enforce as they only have to focus their main efforts on one stream. Just a thought on an experiment I'd love to see happen.

[Smalliebigs]

Man I would love to see the MDC pick just one stream today that has the potential of growing good numbers of big smallmouth (17" and above) and make it catch and release only. Let's just say the Meramec... Then patrol the hell out of it to enforce the C&R and poaching that takes place year round... Give it at least 5 years (if not more) and see what happens. That allows those wanting to keep fish to still fish other streams but lets us get some solid baseline data. It also makes it more manageable for the MDC to patrol and enforce as they only have to focus their main efforts on one stream. Just a thought on an experiment I'd love to see happen.

They did it twice that I know of and the results were pretty good from people who fished those streams during that time. We do know though if the MDC did that, the bass in that stream would become stunted and fishing would cease to exist as we know it because you couldn't keep some feesh......everybody would be sooo bummed they would just quit fishing.

[Mitch f]

There is validity to all comments. I daresay most make sense and are sensible for Missouri anglers. Change will happen due to political pressure on someone who can get things done. Who and how and when is any ones guess.

But it won't happen in our lifetime, unfortunately. Missouri right now is just too divided on too many issues, with no clear leadership or state identity.

To wit:

1. St Louis is still a dying and dysfunctional metro area due to a mostly city vs county partisanship and lack of a cohesive effort to bring the city into the 21st century.

2. East St Louis is in Illinois

3. Kansas City can be considered a Missouri City.

4. There is no consensus on the correct pronunciation of our state name.

5. There are entrenched rural traditions that are banned in most other states and are, due to political cowardice, allowed to continue and flourish.

5a. Mumps made a comeback due to the stupidity of people who didn't trust smart people and so, didn't get their children vaccinated. Now look. Childhood sicknesses easily vanquished making a comeback, despite all evidence supporting vaccinations.

6. Point being, until Missouri wakes up and realizes that it is OK to be smart and ambitious, and that, despite the protestations of a mulish rural (and self serving urban) constituency , smallmouth regulations that benefit the smallies, the anglers, and the state, won't happen until other state pathologies are resolved, or at least mitigated.

7. Arkansas is more advanced than us when it comes to the outdoors.

8. See #7

9. The fear offending anyone hamstrings decision making, thereby passing the buck to others. Paper shuffling bureaucracy at work.

10. I don't know, geez. Kind of all over the place. Anyhow, hmmh. Where was I....?

A passive public gets what others decide for them.

Don't be passive if you want things to change.

Right on

[Dan Kreher]

I think that stream Smallie Bigs is looking for is Big Buffalo Creek if I'm not mistaken. You might need to contact retired MDC biologist Spence Turner to have some of that data pulled from the MDC archives.

[joeD]

[SpoonDog]

Big difference is, they are paid to do this, and volunteers are not.

Would you rather be paid, or would you rather see results? Improving habitat, water quality, or voluntary release rates improves fishing...I was under the assumption that was the goal. Volunteers may not get paid, but they do receive benefits.

Man I would love to see the MDC pick just one stream today that has the potential of growing good numbers of big smallmouth (17" and above) and make it catch and release only. Let's just say the Meramec... Then patrol the hell out of it to enforce the C&R and poaching that takes place year round... Give it at least 5 years (if not more) and see what happens. That allows those wanting to keep fish to still fish other streams but lets us get some solid baseline data. It also makes it more manageable for the MDC to patrol and enforce as they only have to focus their main efforts on one stream. Just a thought on an experiment I'd love to see happen.

It would be a cool study, but it goes back to what I was saying in a previous post: even states with trophy smallmouth regs are doing the same thing MDC has- estimating parameters and plugging them into models. Those methods are fine when they justify trophy regs, but when MDC's results vary we suggest they close entire watersheds and shunt enforcement from elsewhere all so they can collect more "baseline data." No one else is doing that.

So far I've only been able to find the abstract, but someone may have access to the whole article if they'd make a trip to their university library, but it looks like the folks at MIzzou did a study in the 80's looking at the impact of C&R on Ozark smallmouth populations. Without harvest, without otters, and with a pretty broad definition of quality fish (11 inches), they suggest restrictive regs may have limited applications.

One of the things we keep doing is holding up examples of successful restrictive regs, and ignoring the examples where things don't pan out. It isn't a silver bullet, the literature isn't monolithic, and results range from dramatic to nonexistent. Just browsing online you see instances where fish size increases but population size decreases, or fish get bigger but they also get smarter, and catch rates decline. It isn't all one way.

[Al Agnew]

George Fleener was the main fisheries biologist during the days of the Courtois study and the subsequent 12 inch length limit. A long time ago, I talked to him at some length about those times. As I remember, he told me the smallmouth population on the Courtois definitely improved, with more adult fish and more quality fish, but the powers that be at the time were not willing to consider keeping the catch and release regs on Courtois or expanding them in any way. At that time, there was a huge bias among the MDC commissioners for harvest. And he also told me that at the time the 12 inch length limit was being considered, they were actually considering a 13 inch or 14 inch limit, and the science said that any of those limits would accomplish the same goals of more pounds of fish harvested and better size structure. The 12 inch limit was not a biology-based decision but a "political" one, given the bias toward harvest among the commissioners and the bias toward the least restrictive regs possible. Back then, there were very few catch and release anglers...heck, I was a catch and keep angler myself in those days. The 12 inch limit made a huge difference in the fishing in the first five years after it was implemented...but I'll always wonder how much better yet the fishing would be if they had decided instead to do the 14 inch limit.

[SpoonDog]

We don't even have to dust off a thirty year old study, though- the Courtois still has the lowest natural mortality, the lowest angler harvest, and the highest C&R rates of any of the streams they studied. Plus the watershed is still pretty undeveloped. If we're really interested in what an Ozark stream can produce with reduced harvest, determining a realistic baseline or a target for management- the Courtois looks like it. If we want to know how far reduced harvest and C&R will get us to the sort of fisheries we want, there it is. It'd be really interesting to see MDC's data (all of it- I'd imagine there's annual or at least routine numbers on catch rates and population structure), and if biologists or anglers are interested in doing more studies, really focusing in on it as some sort of reference.

If were interested in exploring whether habitat or outreach or other factors could play a role, Courtois seems pretty ideal too. It's a manageable sized watershed, the Corps ranks it as an outstanding water resource, it's a MDC Conservation Opportunity Area, there's a ton of other non-profit groups working in the Meramec watershed, it's reasonably close to major urban areas and it's practically in MSA's backyard, and there's a substantial amount of public property.

That said,looking through some of MDC's older stuff it sure looks like an 18" MLL improved some streams, notably the Gasconade. It also seems from their survey data anglers aren't as confused about the current trophy regs as MDC appears to believe. And if about as many folks support quality regs as support a single, statewide rule...I'm not sure how that gets turned into a single, statewide rule for the quality stream reaches.

[Dan Kreher]

We should be able to ask MDC representatives at the upcoming public comment meetings about why not keep 18-inch limit on Jacks and Gasconade rather than switch to 15 inch limits and/or why not institute some 18 inch MLLs or even C&R on a few stream sections in better quality watersheds if anglers who fish those areas will support them. Trying some of these things on a limited basis to provide sport anglers with some better opportunities to enjoy their sport at the highest level is really not that much to ask. Harvest oriented anglers have the vast majority the fisheries at their disposal under the 12-inch, 6 fish statewide limits today.

Again, I am encouraged that the MDC is looking to do more with expansion of 15/1 regs in selected areas. It just would be good for us to keep things rolling in this direction rather than settle for these upcoming regs to be the totality of what the MDC is willing to consider.

If angler harvest is already low on Courtois or Huzzah for that matter, then it is not likely that a large segment of the angling public would rise up against imposing more restrictive or even 'trophy' regs there.

However, the stated natural mortality rate on Courtois from the Exploitation Study was at 30% -- about on par with most of the other streams tested. So, this doesn't fit the MDC's modeling criteria for special regs as computed angler harvest mortality was only 7% there. Some have expressed their reservations about these calculated rates as they seem to vary widely depending on the fishery -- questions on this have been posed by MSA directly to the MDC within the past week.

There may be some possibility of getting a few test streams set up as Trophy Waters, but given where the MDC seems to be headed on this front, that would likely take a broad base of vocal angler support to make that happen.

[SpoonDog]

However, the stated natural mortality rate on Courtois from the Exploitation Study was at 30% -- about on par with most of the other streams tested. So, this doesn't fit the MDC's modeling criteria for special regs as computed angler harvest mortality was only 7% there. Some have expressed their reservations about these calculated rates as they seem to vary widely depending on the fishery -- questions on this have been posed by MSA directly to the MDC within the past week.

Sorry guys, more stream-of-conscious thought. It seems they're saying natural mortality is the driver of the smallmouth population in that system, regardless of whether you have trophy regs or not. If that's true, we need to figure out strategies to reduce natural mortality. I know baby whitetails up north have to get up above 50 lbs or so, otherwise they won't make it through the winter. And if brown trout can make it through the first two or three growing seasons their diet shifts to bigger prey items, and that's when they really get big. MDC's scale data may tell if that 18 inch fish bigger from Day 1, or whether there's some critical life stage- you must be *this* big to hop on the trophy smallmouth ride. From the scale data Al posted a while back, it looks like there's a jump around 12", maybe reducing mortality of the little guys would translate into more big guys. Or maybe growth is subject to things like water temperature, habitat quality/availability, or drought- then boring stuff like habitat management and watershed level issues may reduce natural mortality.

Their results also tell me anglers will adopt C&R in the absence of regs. My guess is folks got use to Courtois being a C&R stream and never went back to harvesting smallies, which is why it has such low angling mortality. If that's the case, I wonder what'll happen on the Gasconade and the Jacks Fork if they reduce the MLL. Courtois could make a pretty good case study for MDC to try implementing trophy regs, knowing release rates may bump up even if the reg is repealed down the road. Maybe MDC would bit on trophy regs on mid-sized, wadeable streams like the Courtois, Huzzah, Mineral Fork, Joachim, upper James, Little Piney or other Gasconade tribs, Bryant Creek...I'm sure there are others, but those come immediately to mind. Or if we have data suggesting the middle Current and the Black have serious potential- are there other streams that mimic their conditions- maybe the 11 Point or the NFOW? I get that a lot of smallmouth anglers are from the St. Louis area and a lot of interest in the Meramec ...but are we asking MDC to create trophy smallmouth fisheries generally or just in our backyard?

Busch CA has what, thirty lakes? All with different sets of regulations? Montauk and Bennett each have multiple fishing zones where gear type and creel are managed separately. We have at least three (if we're not including the urban lakes) sets of regulations for trout fishing outside the parks, and in many stretches you actually DO have a Blue Ribbon area butting up against a Red Ribbon area, or a Red right upstream of a White. You float from a less restricted reach into a more restricted reach regarding trout on the NFOW, on the Meramec, and on the Niangua and there doesn't seem to be a problem. Angling isn't a high priority for folks floating the Meramec, Jacks Fork, Elk or 11 Point this time of year, and the survey results suggest most anglers are wading. This move to "simplify regulations" seems pretty arbitrary, and I have to wonder if it's a solution looking for a problem.

Regardless of how it goes in the next few months, it'll be important to ask MDC not just what regulations they'll be adopting, but how those regs will be evaluated to determine their efficacy. If all we need is a 15/1 rule to produce better Ozark stream fisheries that's fantastic, but if it translates to reduced angling quality on stretches of streams where we've made improvements, I'd argue that's unacceptable.