Quote Originally Posted by 365allout View Post
Taking release out of catch and release would be a loss to the fisheries without question. The very small percentage that was lost at that event was offset by the the much higher percentage of fish that were released, returned to enhance the population in opposition to another option, catch , weigh and eat. Keep in mind if a tournament wanted to they could allow double the limit now brought to the scales by allowing the legal limit per angler to be brought in, weigh and fillet. So there is no question the catch and release in a benefit as compared to some other options. Is care needed to be taken in the process, of course but that's old news, debated and decided decades ago. If one wanted to try and reach perfection one could make it law that any fish hooked but not landed, came free, broke line, no matter the reason, that fish could count toward your daily limit and it would without question enhance the fisheries. Now apply it to all species, crappie, cats, whites, hybrids, sounds crazy don't it?
It is true that tournaments and catch and release is old news. And there is no doubt that if they kept all of the fish by now our creel limit would be down to 1 or 2 with a 20 inch size limit. But this tournament as many are in the heat was a throw back to times when there were many, many fish killed by these large tournaments. It seemed with a lot of awareness by both anglers and tournament organizers that much of that improved. There is no such thing as perfection -- even a pure C&R non-tournament angler will occasionally gut hook and kill a fish but it just seems that this event was a step backward. We all care about the resource and these large tournaments - which are frequent on lakes like KY - take a toll and surely we can do better. Move away from weigh-ins - especially in the heat - or minimally keep pushing to improve handling and the successful release of these fish so that we don't have dozens of floaters washed up on the bank every weekend after tournament day...


kc