On killing trout (or any fish imo)

[FishnDave]

I didn't see that Common Carp and Bullhead are raised in MDC hatcheries.... but MDC DOES stock them, too.  

https://fisheries.org/docs/books/54067C/18.pdf

[tjm]

1 hour ago, FishnDave said:

DOES

did

I wonder if all the warmwater stocking doesn't take place within St Louis or in private ponds.

 

[FishnDave]

The Urban Fishing Program is ongoing.  St Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Sedalia, St. Joseph.  Walleyes and paddlefish are stocked in Table Rock.  Walleye also stocked into Stockton, Bull Shoals, Lake of the Ozarks, and many other locations.  MDC stocks approximately 350 public lakes with catfish.

Probably way more than that with carp and bullhead. 😜 j/k

The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) also stocks bass in other lakes, including:

• Table Rock Lake

  A lake in southwestern Missouri that is considered one of the top 100 lakes in the US by Bassmaster

  (not a complete list)

[Quillback]

9 hours ago, dan hufferd said:

Bass out of the wintery deep are excellent !

Beaver lake -spotted bass of any size are fair game.  They are tasty.  I'm not a big fish eater, but every once in a while I'll keep some.  

[Al Agnew]

A lot of the mortality studies were done with tournament caught fish, because that's the easiest way to collect and study a  bunch of fish.  Tournament caught fish are kept in live wells, wrestled around to catch them to put them in the weigh in bag, carted off to the scales crowded together in the bag, weighed, held up for hero shots, and finally, hopefully, released into the area of the weigh-in instead of where they were living.  It's a wonder as many survive as they do...not to mention the guys who are fishing around the weigh in site from the last couple tournaments trying to catch the same fish.  

I highly doubt that I'm killing more than 5% of the bass I catch.  I've seen them survive bleeding gills and torn esophagus. (I know they did and know that it was long term survival because I'd caught them in my pond several times over a period of a year or more). I just caught a big flathead while bass fishing that had a big worm hook crossways in its gullet (I ate it).  But I do try to handle the bass as carefully as possible and I don't use a lot of lures that I might deep-hook fish.  If I had to guess (and yes, it's almost a WAG), I say the average of catch and immediately released fish mortality is somewhere around 5% in cold water and 10% in warm water.

The key question remains; is catch and release fishing depressing fish populations?  Is it having a significant impact upon size structure?  In other words, is the delayed and immediate mortality of these fish making fishing worse?