Releasing big fish

[johnk]

Seeing Yam's awesome 40" catch and release got me thinking about how important and rare the big ones are.

I looked back at the fish caught in the first six Striper Mafia events. I thought this might be useful because they are big fish events. On tournament days there are good fishermen all over the lake looking for the biggest fish they can find.

In the six events 275 fish were measured in.

Of the 275 fish, 148 or 53.8% were less than 30" long.

Of the 275 fish, 101 or 36.7% were between 30" and 35" long.

Of the 275 fish, 26 or 9.5% were over 35" long.

The 2 fish tournament limit resulted in 275 fish getting measured in. You can bet there were many more than 275 fish caught. I believe if the total number of fish caught were known, it would drive the 9.5% number of fish caught over 35" down drastically.

[mwardncsu]

Good data John - I'm sure the overall is well less than 10% as well. These are precious fish that deserve to be returned to grow and catch again.

Likewise - it takes small fish to become being fish. I was sent a pic today of what appeared to be three guys that had 10 fish and several that look to be in the slot - and stated to be caught on SML a couple of weekends ago. Possible there were 5 folks on the boat (though the pic was in front of a bass boat) and maybe the fish were all under the slot - but very questionable..... and sad if what it looked like was the case.

[johnr]

You know, I think people taking more than their limit is still commonplace on the lake. On more than one occasion I've talked to people at the ramp who were over the limit on stripers (and walleyes at philpott), and either had no idea or didn't care one bit.

Also, it seems that there is little regard for the slot limit based on these boat ramp interactions.

[Gator]

Jan 25, 2017 12:10:05 GMT -5 johnr said:

You know, I think people taking more than their limit is still commonplace on the lake. On more than one occasion I've talked to people at the ramp who were over the limit on stripers (and walleyes at philpott), and either had no idea or didn't care one bit.

Also, it seems that there is little regard for the slot limit based on these boat ramp interactions.

I talked to a guy a while back and he told me "he was on his third limit". Full disclosure, the first time I went striper fishing with a few local guys we wore them out and kept every one of them. I never fished with them again and hate that I was a part of that. Today I go above and beyond to preserve the fisheries that I use. 

[mwardncsu]

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