These are not gigged bass

[dtrs5kprs]

Gosh, I wish gigging was the only KS law I didn't approve of. 

[Chief Grey Bear]

Yeah, your liquor laws are whacko!

[dtrs5kprs]

6 minutes ago, Chief Grey Bear said:

Yeah, your liquor laws are whacko!

They've improved some. Sunday sales are legal now. Still won't let grocers sell wine and spirits. Arkansas is odd about that stuff too. The old personal property tax laws for boats were bizarre. Took several tries at amending the Constitution to even get the authority to change them. 

I'm not big on govt trying to legislate morality. 

[Chief Grey Bear]

Oklahoma is weird too with liquor laws!! 

Im 100% with you on legislating morality. 

[Chief Grey Bear]

Boy this thread has went everywhere!!

[SpoonDog]

20 hours ago, Mitch f said:

All the bass fishermen ask, is to be treated on the same level as the trout guys, who have managed to get gigging banned in certain management areas.

Again, (for the 10th time) we are not trying to ban gigging. Saying they are the adults and we are children reminds me of most government agencies, who operate like HAL 9000 with their "superior intellect" and have taken control. I actually think of them as the paid servants that they are. Most of the long belters I've seen at MDC meetings talk a good game. But the results take so long with so much red tape that we all feel like it's just talk. It's no wonder a Bully CEO type like Donal J Trump is so popular, people are so freaking tired of the status quo.... which is not working, and it needs to change.  

 

I'm not sure it was in MDC's power to decide trout and redhorse should look so similar when viewed from overhead, but if you guys want to use that fact as justification that they (MDC) has it out for smallmouth and smallmouth anglers, so be it.  And if you're willing to use the powers of the state to restrict one group's access to a public resource (I understand you may not want statewide bans, but let's not kid ourselves- "like the trout guys have" means banning gigging somewhere) then you're not opposed to authoritarianism generally, just one which doesn't serve your personal agenda.  As much as you may not like giggers (and I've said before I'm not a big fan), they're paying licenses, they're paying into the conservation sales tax.  They have just as much right to be there as anyone else.  If we're gonna say they don't have the right to access to a public resource because a few are bad actors, or worse yet, because we perceive a few as bad actors- then all of our heads are on the chopping block.

Look, I'm sorry if you see the 30+ free, public fishing accesses and conservation areas provided by MDC just within the Meramec watershed as evidence they don't value your fishing.  I promise most folks in most mid-south states don't have that level of access provided by their state fish and game agency, particularly so close to a major metro area.  And I'm sorry if by working to protect one of the most rapidly urbanizing watersheds in the state through habitat conservation and working with private landowners to maintain aquatic health, you feel MDC isn't interested in your smallmouth fishery.  I'm sorry you believe that because MDC won't adopt one specific policy which prevents access of an entire group of anglers, based entirely on the views of another group of anglers, that you're being screwed.  Considering everything MDC does, I'm just gonna float the possibility that's an extreme position. 

Quote

It's already been touched upon, but fish don't have the capacity for complex thought, including imagination, prediction, and deduction.  I've seined and trapped bunches of minnows and young game fish, carried them around in a minnow bucket for an hour or more, scooped them out with a hand net, and dumped them into my aquarium.  They immediately either swim frantically around for a few minutes or dive for the bottom and hunker down.  They appear totally freaked out.  But a half hour later they are back to acting normally and if you feed them at that point, most of them eat as if nothing is wrong.  Their fear, if it was true fear, is a direct result of the stimulus at that time, and they don't remember it and dwell upon it.  If the aliens plucked you out of your house, beamed you up to a spaceship, and stuck you in a cage, you think you'd be back to normal in a half hour?  Nope, you'd be scared to death about what else was going to happen...because you have that capacity for complex thought and imagination, and your imagination would be coming up with all kinds of horrible scenarios.  With fish, as soon as the trauma is past, they've probably forgotten about it except for a conditioned response that may or may not work to make them avoid it in the future.

 

Never thought I'd invoke Jonestown or ISIS on a thread ostensibly about gigging, but why not?  There's a lot of beaten housewives and beaten kids that go back to normal once the cops show up, it doesn't mean they're not stressed or freaked out and it doesn't excuse what's happened to them.  The flip side of this big brain is that it allows us to rationalize a whole lot of repugnant behavior.

I don't know how someone lives through Afghanistan or Sudan or Syria, but they do, and it just goes to show folks can be about as resilient as those minnows in a bucket.  "Fear" isn't even monolithic in humans- I know folks who lock up at just the sight of a snake, I practically can't help picking up every single one I see.  It's incomprehensible to me that someone could be that afraid of something which is basically harmless- then again, get me on a stepladder and I'm practically catatonic.  Mortally afraid of heights.  Point is- my inability to understand the mechanics of their fear doesn't negate their experience.

Some fish, minnows I think, release a chemical into the water when they're "frightened" or when they're attacked by predators that tells all the other members of the species to go berserk. It's one of the reason asian carp jump.  It's a chemical response and that makes it sound very clinical and we can divide that from "us," which is fantastic.  But it's the same adrenaline response people have when they're fighting a bear or saving an old lady from oncoming traffic.  Our feeling of "Zen" is a serotonin dump while the feeling you get when you see ScarJo's outfit in the new Avengers movie is likely the result of phenylethamine.  Dopamine kicks in once you've released that big un-gigged smallmouth, it's what we call "satisfaction."  Not only that, it's the same thing a drug addict feels- or someone who's had a profound religious experience.  It's us who are ascribing "feelings" to chemical reactions- we're anthropomorphizing(?) ourselves.

 

 

 

We're less different from everything in the world around us than we would like to believe. and that shouldn't be scary or weird.  it just is.

 

[grizwilson]

maybe restrict out of state anglers to specific waters, city anglers too, been on the White River Chain all my 58 years, gigged probably 50, not near as informed about gigging as many on this form claim to be. Why come to such a awful place to fish...... ???? IF you do not like, do not have to come.

[snagged in outlet 3]

Hey!!!  I'm a city angler.  Well, at least suburban.  Don't be cutting me out, Griz

[MOPanfisher]

I suspect the ones who might be targeting bigger smallies are not city or out of towners, they are likely very small select group of locals.  The city fellers and out of towners likely hit a few by mis-identification.  Besides I don't think that gigging draws a lot of tourists.

[Terrierman]

10 hours ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

Hey!!!  I'm a city angler.  Well, at least suburban.  Don't be cutting me out, Griz

Go home and stay home.