Quote Originally Posted by crappiehunterchris View Post
If every bass is thrown back after catching even the wall hangers then eventually your lake or lakes will become over populated and no trophys will arise simple ya take away small fish that compete with big fish for food and your big ones will get bigger thats why i love putting dents in crappie and shell cracker and bluegill populations on a lake i fish i take hand size and a little bigger and leave the brutes alone so that they may eventualy become a state record plus i read a artical on crappie and gills saying that if you dont have atleast a 25 acre lake in 10 years they will over populate and u wont catch any good ones or have a decent spawn so i saw jerk yhe little terds out and stock in a creek or river a lake without a creek or spring into it is a finite resource as were a river or stream is as close to infinite as you can get when floods happen they bring new fish new bait and clean in a lake when a flood happens all it does is raise up no new food source (permanent) so its safe to say if your gonna cry about loosing a 5 lb bass out of lake dont in kentucky they are almost to old to breed anyways
Man your logic doesn't fit with this scenario at all. The guy threw back the smaller fish and kept the largest one he caught. And where do you get the idea that a 5lb bass is too old to breed? That fish, was probably no more than 7 years old, LM in KY have a much longer life span than just 7 years and that fish had many more egg laying years ahead of her, have you not seen LM on the nest before? most of the ones I see on the beds in the spring are well over 5lbs!! The KY State record was almost 14lbs and was probably close to 20 years old. I don't disagree that selective harvest can be a good thing, but this is just silly. Besides, after looking at that fish, it would be lucky to hit 4lbs.

http://www.fish.state.pa.us/pafish/b.../pics/fig1.gif