1/24/16 Big M

[dtrs5kprs]

It is kind of like a jet.com commercial. 

[mixermarkb]

What's the science on delayed mortality after release? I'm not comfortable saying a large majority of tournament fish die, without seeing hard data. 

Having said that, I am totally in favor of MLF type tournament rules, because "know better, do better".

[abkeenan]

4 minutes ago, siusaluki said:

 

 

That doesn't take into account the number of fish that die after the weigh in.  Depending on water conditions delayed mortality can kill a large majority of fish released after weigh in.  I'd much rather those fish be eaten then become turtle food.  Eat the dinks if you want to keep some fish and release the 15+ inch bass where possible...and stop supporting catch transport and weigh tournaments, especially if they trailer the fish to a weigh in.

While that is true and I agree, fish RELEASED after a tournament have at least have a fighting chance to survive. Fish in the cooler/fryer have a mathematical chance of exactly 0. 

[dtrs5kprs]

MLF format just makes sense, especially at the club level. Cheaper, safer, simpler. Make it live and I think the fun factor would be a hoot. No reason for weekend guys to bang them through wakes and chop for 10 hours.

I get live weigh in for big $$$ tmts. Part of that is the entertainment value that sells the product, and makes it possible. Those events are also pretty good with the fish. BASS and FLW level stuff.

 

[mjk86]

26 minutes ago, abkeenan said:

I thought that was a little ironic. 

Well...Im an oddball..i wont argue with that.  Ya, I am weird about the environment, im very very strongly supportive of strict environmental regulation (I work in paint...we are big time polluters and will only do as much as we are forced to cuz its $$$$), as well as strict conservation management.  Id never poach, however I view life not as the individual so much, but more along the lines of proliferation of the species.  If the system is healthy, then so will its inhabitants.  Table rock is quite healthy, the conservation department thinks so, and my anecdotal evidence, as well as eveyone elses indicates the same thing.  So to me, a bag of dead fish isnt offensive anymore than a box of apples. 

25 minutes ago, BearFisher10 said:

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and throw a little math into that statement...If you look up any tournament results data, it will tell you how many dead fish were weighed in. If you take that number and divide it by the total amount of anglers, 9 times out of 10 it's going to average out much lower than .5 fish per person. If you take those numbers for a whole trails season, it MIGHT end up coming out to 1 dead fish per person. Say a tournament has 6 events and draws roughly 50 boats. If you had your dead fish per tournament average at 5, at the end of the season that would only come out to 30 dead fish for the season if they averaged 50 boats. Now let's say 50 boats with two guys go out and catch their limit 6 different times over the year and take them home to eat, that's 3600 fish. Math doesn't lie and I'm going to say that people keeping fish takes more out of the lake than tournament anglers do. 

This is very reasonable.

23 minutes ago, mixermarkb said:

First off- all fishing, catch and release, derbies, catch and keep, commercial- has an effect on the resource. 

Keeping your legal limit each time out, simply says to the world that you are such an inconsiderate jerk that the law has to step in and protect the resource, because you are totally incapable of sharing and leaving some for the next guy, or the next generation, on your own, without threat of brown suits putting your butt in jail.

Second- Outdoor sports, and sport fishing in particular, are one of the few ways the right and the left can come togther and protect our planet. Fishermen and outdoorsmen have been a driving force in the clean water regulations, and other needed conservation legislation, passed over the years. Personally, I'm a beliver in man made climate change, and I'm a beliver in man needing to be a good steward of this planet that we have been given by God. We may not agree on much, but those of us on the right and the left that like to see a bass explode on a spook, can get some things done to keep that around for the next generation, through our common bond of fishing.

Nets full of dead fish make the radical folks in PETA just as mad as it makes me and Champ188, and they will work even harder to make what do for fun illegal. Adding fuel to those sorts of fires further separates the right and the left, and makes finding common ground on conservation issues really freaking hard. 

So, yes, eat fish. Keep a few, but for *%#'s sake, don't be a total dick about it just because you have some point you think you are proving to the world. 

All you prove is that you are the one person I've met on this forum so far that wouldn't be welcome in my boat.

 

And so is this.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, mixermarkb said:

What's the science on delayed mortality after release? I'm not comfortable saying a large majority of tournament fish die, without seeing hard data. 

Having said that, I am totally in favor of MLF type tournament rules, because "know better, do better".

 

 

I don't have a lot of time to delve into it, but here you go.

 

Post release mortality is water quality dependent for the most part.  Higher water temperatures and decreased dissolved O2 = increased mortality.  This will vary from lake to lake, size of the fish, and even release points on the same lake and will vary according to the way fish are released.   It will also vary for the three species of bass. If they are acclimated to water quality differences there will be decreased mortality, but most of the fish are just dumped out of the bags at the ramp and aren't held in holding tanks with high O2 and acclimated back into the lake. Fish taken from deeper water in a lake like table rock and released into shallow water are also less likely to survive.

 

Check out the following studies.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1577/1548-8659%281987%297%3C394%3AEOPPAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2

Average of 11 tournaments was 18.6% total mortality

 

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1577/1548-8675%281997%29017%3C0131%3AEOOPOM%3E2.3.CO%3B2

Study done in the summer on lake eufala. Average mortality was ~30% with a maximum of 68%.

 

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1577/1548-8675%281994%29014%3C0460%3ASRMOTC%3E2.3.CO%3B2

This study showed a 30% mortality rate for LMB over 18" and 9 % mortality for 12-14"

 

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1577/M07-013.1

Here is a study done on smallmouth caught from deepwater...

 

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1577/1548-8675%281994%29014%3C0435%3ABDAMOA%3E2.3.CO%3B2

This study shows how bacterial disease such as columnaris and aeromonas can affect fish after tournaments.

 

There are lots of these studies out there but none that I could find on the white river lakes. The take home point for me is this...Weigh in style tournaments are bad for bass, plain and simple. 

 

[Sam]

I'll put my $.02 worth in about the growing number of bass derbies in this limited resource, because I've been thinking about that for a long time.  I'm commenting as an outsider because I never fish tournaments, and other than doing a little C/R bass fishing for fun when the pickings are easy (Ned!), I go strictly for crappie, white bass, black perch, and walleye, stay within all laws and limits - and then we eat em!

Seems to me that with so many cell-phone "apps" available now and more invented every day, someone could come up with a device that would record all information about each tournament bass caught (time, date, fisherman who caught it, length, weight, etc.) and attach that info to a photo of each fish, right on each boat.  Then all the fish could be released immediately right when and where they were caught.

Weigh-ins could still be suspenseful and real fun, because the "weigh-in" could be a viewing, on a projector screen, of those fish photos and info brought in by each boat.  Everybody could probably see better that way anyhow - and a computer would total the results up and determine winners after all the boats' fish pictures and info get "weighed" and the information gets sorted.  I'm thinking it would be an electronic gadget that works in conjunction with smart phones, coded to each boat, to be placed in each boat by the tournament organizer at the start of the tourney.

No, I don't have details figured out about foolproof security by which those devices could prevent cheating, but there are bound to be ways to do that.  It would do the fishery a lot of good, make some inventor a lot of money, and make tourneys even more fair and more fun if they could switch over to such a system, in my opinion.

[mixermarkb]

Thanks Saluki. 

30-40% is bad, but wouldn't say a majority.  I do hope the MLF format, or a gadget like Sam is talking about, takes off and replaces live weigh ins, but I'm still a supporter of tournament fishing, because I think it has helped popularize catch and release, and by doing so help to further conservation ideals among a political group that generally doesn't look at conservation of resources as a priority. I think tournament fishing is important to fishing a whole because of this, and originizations  like B.A.S.S. are vital to the protection of fisheries in North America. 

[abkeenan]

16 minutes ago, mixermarkb said:

Thanks Saluki. 

30-40% is bad, but wouldn't say a majority.  I do hope the MLF format, or a gadget like Sam is talking about, takes off and replaces live weigh ins, but I'm still a supporter of tournament fishing, because I think it has helped popularize catch and release, and further conservation ideals among a political group that generally doesn't look at conservation of resources as a big positive. I think tournament fishing is important to fishing a whole because of this, and originizations  like B.A.S.S. are vital to the protection of fisheries in North America. 

Not going there.

[mixermarkb]

Ok abk- that is a little harsh- I don't think you guys want to rape and pillage the world, but I do think that the attitude is business first, environment second. Isn't it the GOP line on clean energy that it is just too expensive to be practical? 

I'm sincerley asking and not trying to be insulting to my new friends