Release boats?

[tjm]

1 hour ago, fishinwrench said:

If the number of fish constantly being relocated from their familiar living space at this time, doesn't negatively effect anything, then at what point would it ?

At what point DO you finally decide that "Hey, this is excessive and needs to be regulated down to a more reasonable level" ????

That point IMO has already passed.  If 74 tournaments per month is ok, then why not 140, or 280 ?     That be ok too?

74 x  10 months a year 740 on a single lake? 5 fish kept? and unknown, unlimited numbers in each tourney released after transport in the culling process?

And there are people who say this has no affect on the fishery? Do they actually believe what they are saying?  Or is this more indication of degrees of honesty?

[176champion]

When you release fish 20 - 50 miles from where they where caught you bet your bippy it has an effect on the fishery. Them fish have no way of finding there way back where they where transported from. Seen tournament guy's from out of state park on TRL all the way up to eagle rock and that's a pretty long haul.

[tjm]

My statement that I'm not opposed to tournament fishing is under a little strain here. Largely I am opposed to manmade lakes and consider them environmentally destructive, however in the interest of lemonade, they provide a number of artificial fisheries. Since I have considered all these fisheries to be unnatural from the beginning and the lakes a waste of perfectly good rivers, it has never really bothered me for "bass fishermen" to have their tourneys anymore than it bothers me for drunks and druggies to have their  parties at the lake. Sorta, I don't use it so they might as well attitude. I said I've never understood the fish tournament mind set, figured it was a tool compensation exercise. But comments on this board about the amounts of money being great enough to tempt "honest sportsmen" into fibbing or outright lying are causing me to rethink the whole tourney thing.

What is the competition? If it is best fisherman, take the first three fish caught and go weigh in. The first three are indicative of skill at locating the target fish  and of choosing the right bait and the right tackle for the conditions, as well as the skills in presentation needed to get the bigun first.

Culling fish, 100 mph boats , a separate rod and reel set up for every color and every type of lure  etc, is indicative that the competition may be more on who has the most money to spend and happens to luck out on a given day?

So I still don't understand the reasons for tournaments, but the fact that participants are admittedly    dishonest enough that they think transport and weigh in necessary to prevent cheating and possibly unintelligent enough to think relocation on a more or less regular basis  is of no consequence to the fishery is cause for me to think this over again.

[tjm]

10 minutes ago, 176champion said:

When you release fish 20 - 50 miles from where they where caught you bet your bippy it has an effect on the fishery. Them fish have no way of finding there way back where they where transported from. Seen tournament guy's from out of state park on TRL all the way up to eagle rock and that's a pretty long haul.

I bet they ain't going 15 miles to home, but just how far are black bass capable of returning home?

[176champion]

There have been several studies on bass returning home from where they where caught and results aren't that good in most instances ....just some googling i did..

https://www.bradwiegmann.com/fish-biology/39-fish-biologist/127-todd-driscoll-is-a-district-fisheries-management-biologist-for-texas-parks-and-wildlife-department-where-he-has-worked-for-10-years-he-received-a-bs-in-fisheries-biology-from-kansas-state-university-and-a-ms-in-fisheries-management-from-mississippi-.html

https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/24320/20140314/how-much-do-bass-fishing-tournaments-hurt-the-fish

[fishinwrench]

21 minutes ago, tjm said:

I bet they ain't going 15 miles to home, but just how far are black bass capable of returning home?

A tracking study was done years ago on a bowl shaped, and rather small natural lake up North.  A good number of fish ended up back where they were caught, but in a situation like that all a fish has to do is swim along the shoreline and eventually it will recognize it's original area.  No magical homing ability is being displayed there.   A fish taken from one cove on LO or TR and transported a mile straight across the lake and released in another cove is not going to know that all it has to do is just fin out over 120' of water to get back to his home range familiar area.    It is completely lost and has no idea where the good hiding/ambush spots are or where the crawdads are the most abundant.  It basically has to start life all over again.

[tjm]

I have read that bass don't often travel more than about a mile and that they don't usually cross deep water, true?maybe?; at any rate homing device or not and say they could go a bit farther, disorientation of being slapped around and plunged into a live well then battered as the boat speeds up and down and to and fro and at release time there is no way that a fish brain is even going to have any inkling of home's location. 

I really don't see much upside to this kind of release, if the fish do survive, the release area will be so overstocked that feed resources will be stressed or exhausted. Just thinking here today, my guess is many of these fish die weeks later or starve to point of near death. Spend any time around a trout park during the C&R season and you will get an idea of what C&R mortality can be even if "released immediately unharmed". I believe that the parks are restocked a couple times a month during the C&R just to maintain fishing numbers. Who is monitoring or restocking the lake bass?

[eyedabassman]

15 hours ago, abkeenan said:

I know but ain't tellin'.

I will pay big bucks!

[TRRANGER]

Direct quotes from 176Champ, google search.

At Lake Martin, Alabama (2005), bass moved an average of 5 miles from the release site after 10 weeks.  After 2 months, no fish were in close proximity to the release site, and all fish tracked over 3 months returned to within the same general area of capture.

 

In general, it appears that if largemouth bass are released after tournaments in good shape, only short-term stockpiling occurs at release sites, as most fish disperse from release sites within 2-3 months and up to 40% of these fish may return to original capture sites.  Although fish displaced up to 13 miles have demonstrated homing abilities, few make it back to original areas if displaced over 6 miles.

 

Most importantly, a study we conducted at Sam Rayburn in 2003-2004 indicates that population-level impacts of tournament-related bass relocation and concentration are likely low.  No question, stockpiling at release sites does occur, as we estimated that 31,050 bass were transported to weigh-in sites during the one-year study.  But, we also estimated that tournament anglers transport only 5% of the total largemouth bass population of legal-length (31,050 of the 621,000 available bass) in one year.  Simply put, only 1 out of 20 bass are subjected to relocation and potential crowding at release sites per year.

 Bass can and do work there way " HOME"

 

 

[Flysmallie]

8 minutes ago, TRRANGER said:

 Bass can and do work there way " HOME"

Interesting information there TRRANGER. Did it say how they tracked those fish? I'm not doubting you or them at all just curious. 

I'm also not that concerned about fish relocating. It's been going on for years and to say that a bass get's moved it all of a sudden doesn't know where to get food is kind of a long shot. I mean you can take me out of my city and drop me in another city pretty much anywhere in the world and I bet I can find a place to get some food. And a new place to sleep. 

But I do know that the point at KC usually holds a lot of quality fish.