Another weekend of...

[Flysmallie]

When did Chief and Smalliebigs swap bodies? It's weirding me out. 

[Smalliebigs]

10 minutes ago, Flysmallie said:

When did Chief and Smalliebigs swap bodies? It's weirding me out. 

Hahahaha.....I have great respect for all you guys.....I am on the verge of 50 and I am a lover now not a fighter

[Al Agnew]

Yep, I'm to the point where it's almost like, why bother?  The 6 fish limit is apparently sacred to MDC.  Since all their creel surveys show that only 10% of bass anglers keep their fish, they are convinced that killing 6 fish a day does no harm.  But we all know some smaller streams where just a couple of people killing 6 fish a day for a few days decimates the population of adult smallmouth in that stream, because it isn't big enough to produce huge numbers of adult bass.  I even understand to some extent why MDC believes it's okay, given what they've found in their studies.  But those 15 bass on that table are 15 fewer adults in the stream, and if say, there are 500 angler days on a given stretch in a year (x number of anglers times y number of days they fished), and 10% of those days were anglers keeping a limit, that's 300 adult bass taken from that stretch in a year.  And I'd say that's extremely conservative on most of these streams.

[Johnsfolly]

The creek that I fished on Sat could easily get overfished. I don't dislike folks keeping fish for the table. Need to get more folks to change their mindset that you don't need to keep more fish than you can eat in a meal. No reason to keep a cooler full of fish each time they go out. Sure everyone wants the credit of catching your limit, but you don't need to keep them all. I really am an advocate of the In-Fisherman idea of selective harvest. Keep what you can eat in a meal and keep those that are the mid sized fish. Let the big ones go to continue to breed and populate the system you are fishing.

[Gavin]

4 good fish in that pile, hate to see that. 

[Gavin]

4 good fish in that pile, hate to see that. 

[Chief Grey Bear]

8 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

Yep, I'm to the point where it's almost like, why bother?  The 6 fish limit is apparently sacred to MDC.  Since all their creel surveys show that only 10% of bass anglers keep their fish, they are convinced that killing 6 fish a day does no harm.  But we all know some smaller streams where just a couple of people killing 6 fish a day for a few days decimates the population of adult smallmouth in that stream, because it isn't big enough to produce huge numbers of adult bass.  I even understand to some extent why MDC believes it's okay, given what they've found in their studies.  But those 15 bass on that table are 15 fewer adults in the stream, and if say, there are 500 angler days on a given stretch in a year (x number of anglers times y number of days they fished), and 10% of those days were anglers keeping a limit, that's 300 adult bass taken from that stretch in a year.  And I'd say that's extremely conservative on most of these streams.

It looks like you are starting to come around to my way of thinking. 

[Mitch f]

1 hour ago, Chief Grey Bear said:

It looks like you are starting to come around to my way of thinking. 

No, it sounds like you're finally coming around to our way of thinking.

[Chief Grey Bear]

 Well I think you better go back and look at all the gigging threads. 

 I have  mentioned this exact same scenario for years and you East Coasters have dismissed it. 

[fishinwrench]

1 hour ago, Chief Grey Bear said:

 Well I think you better go back and look at all the gigging threads. 

 I have  mentioned this exact same scenario for years and you East Coasters have dismissed it. 

The argument about gigging that you always dismissed was that gigging doesn't just get a bunch of 12 inchers....it typically results in a bunch of dead 15-20 inchers.  Not to mention that it is totally illegal but very seldom policed.    Your position, as I understood it, has always been that it doesn't happen as much as we say it does so there's no urgent need for investigation.

I always figured that for every illegal gigger I've seen (or seen evidence of) there are probably 4-6 that I don't.  I think that's a pretty safe assumption.