Thanks for your post, yours is a firsthand account of interaction with a kdfwr representative that details and exposes how simple they must really think we are. Each and every one of your arguments proves this "mortality study" is total fertilizer. like you i wondered why this time of year, you could keep a fish alive in a 5 gallon bucket all day long right now, so the end result data that tournaments have very little impact on a fishery due to mortality is so misleading it would be comical if it wasnt so dangerous. Also i wonder why would they do a mortality study on a class of fish that is ILLEGAL to retain in the first place, in other words there should NEVER be any mortality on 12 inch fish that are kept in a livewell on lake cumberland, they should never be in a livewell to begin with......so WOW, i smell fertilizer again.
Just for common sense sake lets think about something else, why doesnt kdfwr just have these contestants fill out a survey questionere that details what they caught, size etc etc. it would seem to be a more complete harvest of data.

lets just go ahead and "out" the true intent of this size limit exemption, there was a lot of complaining and whining after last years cumberland event on how disappointing it was for the weigh in circus to see so few limits come to the scales.

big bags of big fish sell lures, rods, reels etc etc.

once again thank you for sharing your experience