New smallmouth and rock bass regs approved

[ozark trout fisher]

On 2/7/2017 at 4:13 AM, Chief Grey Bear said:

What was off?

Thank you.

Gavin, or anyone else, If you have evidence that the MDC is doing a shoddy job in their sampling work, fine. Present it, I'm interested. If not, saying "I think their studies were off" is meaningless, a disservice to the people who spent a heck of a lot of long, hard hours putting in the work, and generally just kind of a bizarre thing to say.

Is there error in every study that ever existed? Sure. So technically you can make this kind of one-liner and never be wrong. But unless you are volunteering to go out their and sweat yourself, forgive me for saying I'd rather not hear it. I've never personally participated in fisheries research but those who do it day in and day out are generally trying their hardest to be accurate and believe me they are earning their generally pretty meager paychecks. 

 

[fishinwrench]

I made a promise to never say a negative word about the MDC and their studies on a public forum ever again, but I can't help but point out that when the results and decisions made based on their "studies" turn out to be 180° from what genuinely dedicated and reasonably knowledgeable anglers either know, or have learned.....Then it isn't just BS when they claim that something "is off".  

The fact that the angler(s) have not recorded "data" all of their lives to use as future proof shouldn't make it annoying to hear, especially to folks that claim to care.

[snagged in outlet 3]

10 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

I made a promise to never say a negative word about the MDC and their studies on a public forum ever again,

When did you do this?  Is it in writing anywhere I could see it?

[fishinwrench]

Not in writing, but a promise is a promise.  I now have to adopt the Bambi's Dad philosophy when speaking openly about the dept. of Conservation or any of their doings (or lack thereof) unless I have rock solid undisputable proof of every word I type.   Otherwise potential retribution may be launched....and who has time for that? 

[snagged in outlet 3]

1 minute ago, fishinwrench said:

Not in writing, but a promise is a promise.  I now have to adopt the Bambi's Dad philosophy when speaking openly about the dept. of Conservation or any of their doings (or lack thereof) unless I have rock solid undisputable proof of every word I type.   Otherwise potential retribution may be launched....and who has time for that? 

You might as well sign off of this site forever

You'll crack.

[fishinwrench]

Nope.  Never.  My word is good. I'm a rock.  ?

[ozark trout fisher]

1 hour ago, fishinwrench said:

I made a promise to never say a negative word about the MDC and their studies on a public forum ever again, but I can't help but point out that when the results and decisions made based on their "studies" turn out to be 180° from what genuinely dedicated and reasonably knowledgeable anglers either know, or have learned.....Then it isn't just BS when they claim that something "is off".  

The fact that the angler(s) have not recorded "data" all of their lives to use as future proof shouldn't make it annoying to hear, especially to folks that claim to care.

I'm pretty sure we're not on the same page. 

It doesn't bother me when people criticize the MDC. It does bother me when people claim that a study is poorly done because it doesn't support their position (or because it doesn't line up with what they've noticed on the river over the years). I don't think that anyone would be intelligent if they didn't consider angler input, especially from those who have spent years on the river and have observed changes over that time. It's legitimately important and sometimes can give you knowledge with a wider breadth or time-scale than you could possibly get with any kind of formal research. 

But here's the problem:results from fishermen, wherein you are targeting a specific species, possibly a specific size class of that species, generally fishing in specific stretches and water types (they certainly are not "random") while useful, are not "scientific" in any meaningful sense. Are fish sampling techniques on our rivers perfectly random or accurate. No, of course not, but at least they try to control as many variables as possible.

And this is under the extremely unrealistic assumption that you are recording the size and species of every fish you catch while you're out on the water. If you do that while you're in the front of my canoe I'm liable to get pretty annoyed with you.

The point isn't that angler input/knowledge isn't important. Quite the opposite. It's just that there is no guarantee that it will relate in a meaningful sense to what is actually going on beneath the water. A perfect (if unrelated example) would be in the case of streams that contain both rainbow and brown trout. On a certain sections of the Current or Meramec River (and this certainly holds true in MANY western streams) browns outnumber rainbows by a pretty wide to extremely wide margin. Yet anglers in streams like this routinely report that a considerable majority of their catch is rainbows. To them it is a rainbow trout stream, and in terms of catching, they're not wrong. In terms of the species composition, they're WAY off. 

My point is that if you insinuate that a study is poorly conducted because it doesn't match your experience on the river...well, there are a lot of other possibilities you should probably consider first. Maybe that's how I should have said it from the beginning, but when you attempt to delegitimize the work that went into a study like that with one unsupported sentence on a forum...well, that's your right, but it doesn't sit well. 

And retribution? Come on, man. Reasoned disagreement=/=retribution. 

 

[Gavin]

I don't really care what you think OTF.  Those folks know what a smallmouth is, but they don't know smallmouth, IMO. Why the heck were they sampling on marginal smallmouth water like the Black, Castor, Courtois Creek, and the North Fork of the White River? There are smallmouth there...but those streams will never produce size and numbers like the Meramec, Niangua, Gasconade, B. Piney, James, or Eleven Point. The only decent bit of water that they sampled was the Current. And they said they could make it great again, and implied that they had a plan to do so. But, they waffled due to a little pressure from a small group of tournament anglers. I was not impressed and I'll say so. I think they owe folks an apology for their sloppy assumptions, and their inherent biases...Doubt if their work would pass a peer review, but they don't have to worry about that.

 

 

[ozark trout fisher]

Just now, Gavin said:

I don't really care what you think OTF. 

 

 

Ok. 

[fishinwrench]

9 minutes ago, ozark trout fisher said:

I'm pretty sure we're not on the same page. 

Not surprised.  I'm in an entirely different book because I've already read that one.

?