MDC Public Comment Meetings - Part 2

[joeD]

Al, as a de facto smallmouth expert on this forum, I feel that you should be the first one to display frying a 14 inch or less smallie on your heritage cast iron skillet. If you should catch a 20 incher, smallmouth bass, that is, I assume you will grill it.

Because, those are the rules, right? As you have astutely presented? To improve our smallmouth fisheries? So, why don't you show us that keeping certain size smallies works by putting your money where your mouth is. Keep fish yourself. If not, don't tell us what we should do when you aren't willing to do it yourself.

Can't wait to see your stringer of legal smallies.

 

[Al Agnew]

Joe, in your own inimitable way, you HAVE brought up a point.  If a regulation encourages some harvest, should we as anglers who care about the resource actually harvest some fish?  If reducing the numbers of 10-14 inch smallmouth would increase growth rates for the fish within the slot, should we kill our limit (maybe 3 or 4 under the slot) instead of releasing everything?  I eat quite a few bass from select places where I know that they need thinning, private lakes that simply don't get enough fishing pressure.  Should I eat some smallish smallmouth?

However, I'm advocating the slot limit only in part because it MIGHT actually increase the growth rates of fish within the slot.  The other big reason for such a limit is to allow the catch and keep anglers to keep catching and keeping, while giving a lot more protection to the 18-20 inch fish that are approaching top end size and trophy status.  In effect, the difference between this idea and the normal 1 fish, 15 inch limit that we have now in the management areas is that it gives complete protection to fish up to 20 inches, instead of allowing them to be cropped off one at a time at 15 inches.  And maybe increases their growth rates at the same time.

And, of course, you DON'T have to take advantage of the regulation by keeping some fish, whether frying up four 13 inchers or baking that 21 incher.  Under such a regulation, I darned sure wouldn't kill any 20 inchers myself, and I'd seldom keep anything under the slot.

But I do think that we as catch and release anglers sometimes go overboard on the catch and release thing.  There are situations where we SHOULD be harvesting some fish.  The spotted bass situation on the Meramec and Gasconade river systems comes to mind.  In my opinion, anglers in those two river systems should be killing every spotted bass they catch, up to a legal limit.  It's 12 fish, no length limit in the Meramec system, while the Gasconade is still under the statewide regs for the most part, which means you could kill 6 spotted bass over 12 inches there.  I do that almost every time fishing Big River.  The unfortunate thing about it is that the spotted bass are often so full of yellow grubs that they end up feeding the raccoons and possums at the house when I get home, but if the worms aren't extremely bad, I pick them out and eat the fish--delicious.

But most catch and release anglers release all their fish indiscriminately, either because they have a misguided notion that they should, or because they don't like to clean and eat the fish.  I'm not sure that's a healthy thing to do.  There are simply times when a regulation encouraging harvest is there for a good reason, and it would be a good idea to know the reason and do what the regulation encourages you to do.

[fishinwrench]

Are the grubs strictly a spotted bass thing, or do the LM and Smallies have them too ?

On a float several years back we knifed some spots, a couple LM, and some green Sunny's, and only the spots had the worms. Why are spotted bass always loaded with them moreso than other species, or are they?  

[Brian Jones]

Are the grubs strictly a spotted bass thing, or do the LM and Smallies have them too ?

On a float several years back we knifed some spots, a couple LM, and some green Sunny's, and only the spots had the worms. Why are spotted bass always loaded with them moreso than other species, or are they?  

All of the bass I've ever cleaned from our rivers have been wormy; including largemouths and unfortunately smallmouths from a time in my life that I wasn't very well educated on the effects of keeping quality fish......  Now, I only keep spots during the cooler months of the year and they do not seem to be very wormy during this time.  In fact, I cannot think of a spot that I've had to discard because there were too many to pick out.  

[joeD]

Ach, don't listen to me. Listen to Al, who is too much of a gentleman to tell me..well, you know. 

One can take a point TOO far, which is what I did, as usual.  

Anyway. I find the similarities of us trying to influence MDC policy EXACTLY the same as Dave Peacock and his associates trying to keep the Rams in St Louis. Presenting everything under the sun to people who can't do a thing. The owners are the only thing that matters. In both cases.

[Hog Wally]

Since I don't eat raw fish I pay no mind to them worms, larvae or whatever   I've been eating them since I was a kid.  I feel fine.