New fishing reg suggestions

[apb]

Ok, in a recent thread SSKY suggested some fishing reg changes. He and I got a little off track in the responses, so I thought this might be a good time to revisit reg changes and put us on track. Obviously this is all hypothetical as I have no pull with the state. I'll list some changes that I would like to see, followed by my reasoning.

Stripers. Since I typically fish for them at Cumberland, I'll direct my suggestions for that lake. December 1 - May 1, one fish, 36 inches in length. Summertime, 2 fish, 20 inch length. In addition, summer time, you catch your limit, you are done striper fishing for the day. Tournaments, Dec 1 to May 1 only.

Bass. Catch and immediate release only during the spawning season. Summertime tournys are night only, and no longer than 5 hours in length. In addition, fish are not all dumped back in the lake right at the ramp. Instead, they are released at various locations around the lake.

Regs for tournys on small, state owned lakes: limit the number of boats allowed on the lake at any given time. I.e., if it is determined that 20 boats should be allowed on the lake for a tourney, one tourney with 20 boats, or two with 10 each. There would be a sign up for the tournys, first come, first served (there is already a page on the web to do this, but most do not do it). Might also set up something similar with non-tourny anglers and recreational boats too. That is, only X number of boats on a specific body of water.

Here are my reasons. With stripers, once the water temps get into the 70's, you have increasing rates of post release mortality. During summer, this is something in the order of 80% of stripers released die. Mortality rates increase with the size of the fish. From what I have read, stripers less than 20 inches in length have a reasonable chance of survival after release even in warmer water. Above this size, summer release results in high rates of post release mortality. Cold water temps, good chance of survival for all stripers if they are not fought to complete exhaustion, handled as little as possible, and returned to the water quickly. By decreasing the size limit during the summer, people would not be releasing 20-23 7/8 inch stripers to die while trying to catch a 24 inch striper to keep. Increasing the size during the cold months would help to bring the average size of stripers up. Also increase the numbers of trophy fish in the lake.

Bass reasons: if you remove a bass from the nest, even for a short period of time, you lose those eggs. It has been shown that even immediate release of a bass caught off a nest can result in the bass not returning to the nest, or not guarding it as aggressively. Put it in the live well and take to another place on the lake, that nest is unguarded and the fry have little chance of survival (eggs are eaten before they hatch). This is one of the biggest pet peeves of mine, people activity fishing for spawning fish. I can not understand how people can preach catch and release year round, but still target nests. They want those fish released so they can spawn, but take them off the nests so the spawn doesn't matter. Studies have also shown that during the summer months, post release mortality increases, especially in day time tournys. It has been recommended that all summer tournys are night time. In addition, the same study indicated that post release mortality was decreased by shortening the time that bass stayed in the live well. The recommendation was for no more than 5 hours. There was also a study that examined the affect of releasing bass at the launch site. The finding was that if the launch site was close to bank fishing areas, something like 70% of the fish re-caught in such areas were kept. By continually releasing tournament fish at the launch site, the area was continuously stocked with keeper sized fish that were then being taken from the lake.

Limiting the number of boats on the smaller lakes is a combination of a safety issue and over fishing. For example, I've been on Guist Creek Lake when there were 3-4 tournys going on at the same time, on a weekend, plus non-tourny anglers and pleasure boats. A 300 acre lake with 80+ boats, not fun!!! You also have to consider how much fishing pressure these smaller lakes can take. Sure, larger lakes can handle a lot more fishing pressure, but the smaller lakes cannot.

Well, that's my rant. I'm interested to hear other people's opinions and suggestions as to what they would like to see if they had a say in the regs.

Andrew

[gettingonefishin]

I have been fishing for over 40 years and have noticed a decline in the catching of fish on a down hill ride. It seems like the past 10 years have been the worse. I myself use to fish 3 or 4 tourneys a week but no longer. I still fish a few open tourneys. However, I do beleive the decline is from the pressure of to many tournaments resulting in to much pressure.

As far as sight fishing bedding bass, not good. 1 person saying catching a bedding bass and releasing it at the weigh in and he or she makes their way back to the nest, NOT. Ya catch a spawning fish 20 miles from release point I dont think it will make it back.

Years ago Herrington was closed to fishin during the month of May. Before my time though.

I can remember goin to Herrington and catching Largemouth all night long in huge numbers of keepers. Dont happen any more, and I blame that on pressure. Up to about 10 years ago I use to catch largemouth out of the jumps every year, catching fish up to 6 lbs this way. And I tell ya I miss it alot. 2 people in the boat battling a 5 lb plus fish at the same time, it was a blast.

I live close to the Ky river near High Bridge, so I use to fish both pools aove and below Lock 7. Use to get off work hook up the boat drive to the river and have a good evening of fishing. Not no more. Fish all day for 4 or 5 fish. Back then all ya needed was a Spinner bait and Jig and Pig, catch numbers of fish in 1 evening. Lots and Lots of the largemouth spawning on the river is done in the creeks and what happens, April and May tourneys, Hey it's a race to the creeks. There goes all that fished worked for, finding his way up that creek to spawn to have an angler catch the easy prey and haul his butt 20 miles down river to get weighed for some money and prestige.

I am not saying do away with tournament fishing but lets cut back on the numbers. Monday and Wednsday is the only days or nights Herrington does not have at least 1 tournament. I look for that to change this year.

Way too much pressure.

Dont want to offend anyone but that's my opinion. Becuse I have witnessed the decline in catching fish as the the tournament fishing grew. Anglers my age surely have witnessed it as well. By the way I am 52 and I help start the first tournaments on Herrington Lake and if I knew then what I know today, I would have declined. It seems like everything else, wait until the worse happens before we change anything.

Dennis (Radar) Horton
[email protected]
(859)858-0909

[kc]

Amen brother. Another interesting note is that I just saw a statistic in In-fisherman magazine that the amount of bass fishing hours spent in this part of the country is decreasing and has been for some time. I believe the younger generation isn't taking to hunting and fishing like the older generations did. But the amount of time spent on tournament fishing has surely not decreased. They are being held year round now and have steadily increased over the past 10 - 15 years in both frequency and size. That means there has been a shift of people spending more of their bass fishing time on tournaments than for pleasure which is easy to see following posts on this board. Some folks seem to only fish because their are tournaments.

Even though I tend to get a bit excitable over tournaments and their impacts I fundamentally don't have a problem with tournament fishing. It is the unchecked growth that I have the biggest problem with and things only stand to get worst. I believe wildlife organizations like KDFW know these trends and actually try to promote tournaments to cater to a "growing segment of fishermen". I just wish they would step up and study the impacts of tournaments on the fishery and make adjustments in their management strategy to compensate.


kc

[ResidentCombo]

I also heard that a "first 2 fish" limit for stripers was tabled due to commercial concerns. I heard that the guides fought it because that would mean they would possibly have to bring their client back with 2 small fish.

Sounds like bad politics to me..

[mhall]

Dennis, tell it brother tell it. You have just said it all to well and I totally agree, and we'll both be darn lucky if we are not completely blasted for feeling this way. I guarantee there are alot if fishery biologist that would also agree, but changes are not going to happen because the $$$ always wins. Thankyou for your insight and if anyone can't read your post and find some truth in it they are really kidding themselves.

Mark Hall
{502} 649-2008

[mhall]

Interesting side note, I talked to some conservation officers about the possibilty of ever getting the slot put on the smalljaws at Cumberland and they said this. It has been brought up and talked about in Frankfort several times, and some like the idea and some don't. Evidently enough didn't like it so it did not go through, however they did do a questionare poll of fisherman at the ramps and at some tourney's. They said the tournament boy's were EXTREMELY against a slot on the smallmouth because it was going to be too hard to catch a weighable smallie then. Should competitive fishing and money carry any weight in what's best for a fishery????? IMHO, the answer is no, but obviously it does.

[GITZIT]

How about this? The fishing in this area seems to get better and better every year. Why not leave well enough alone?

[fishvagrent]

O.k. as an outdoorsman I completly understand the passion behind your sugestions. However I see some very bad words in what what you have written,like ban. When you give fish and wildlife that kind of power where would they stop. I mean if you ban tournements while bass are nesting or during the day why stop there. If its not ok to tournement fish for them at these times.Should people be allowed to fish at all during the mentioned times. As for the cumberland stryper and once you catch your limit you have to quite fishing I have expereianced such regs in alaska. Let me tell you its a long way to go and a lot of money to spend to catch to fish and not be allowed to fish in fresh water in the whole state for the rest of the day. New regulations are not the answer! Education is a much better solution. If enough people know what they are doing is bad for the resource they will do the right thing. Yes there will always be some who abuse. But new or old regs don't affect them. As for showing up at the lake and seeing a sign that says I can't put my boat in because there are allready to many. well thats just not a future I want to visulize.

[kc]

You mention something to the effect if tournament fishermen shouldn't be able to keep fish during the spawn then other anglers should do the same even going into not allowing fishing during the spawn. What about allowing fishing during the spawn but not keeping? The reason tournaments are targeted this way is although they do practice catch and release they target and take fish off nests which wipes out that nesting effort as the fish are transported away. I firmly believe that fish caught, handled properly, and released immediately (during any season)have a very high survival rate and they will go back to their nests during the spawn. This is true low impact catch-and-release.

I also disagree with the point that education will help this. Tournament anglers will not give up weigh-ins which is what requires holding the fish for long durations in the warm water seasons and taking fish of the nests in the spring. I don't think any amount of education will change the priority of tournament anglers because their priority is winning and money not minimizing the impact on the fish. Until we can come to terms with that basic premise many of us who do put the fish first will keep pointing out the negative affect tournaments are having on our fisheries (ie educating). Unfortunately our words fall mostly on deaf ears in the tournament circles. Money overrules resource every time.

I do agree with your thought on over regulating. For the most part more regulation is not a good thing. But tournaments keep increasing in size and frequency on our lakes and I just don't know how much more our waters (and fish) can take (look at Taylorsville). With that said more regulations may be needed to keep things in balance -- much like KDFW has size/creel limits as basic protections to the fishery. I still can't get over the fact that there can be (and often are) multiple, large tournaments on the same lake at the same time and there is no way of preventing that from happening. Why can't we establish "comfortable" usage limits by lake/ramp and require tournaments get a permit which would give oversight and make sure a particular lake/ramp isn't overbooked on a given day? Seems like a simple solution but many would rather have the "freedom" to have hundreds of tournament boats on the same water at the same time than to submit to a permit.

There is a balance to everything in life and when it comes to tournament fishing and protecting the fish unfortunately we are out of balance.

kc

[Chubminnow]

This is a very interesting thread indeed...if it's at all possible, I agree and disagree at the same time...although a good point has been raised in regards to catching fish on the nest.

Right or wrong, catching the nesting bass sure does seem to go against the grain of what all of us fish-heads seem to preach about catch and release, what's good (not harmful) for the fish, etc. I'm not a tournament guy at all, the main reason is due to lack of time plus I simply do not have a competitive personallity.

I've never realized or stopped to consider how many tournaments are actually held on any given body of water, but judging from what I read here on this site, there sure does seem to be a lot of tournaments going on now days. I have often entertained the thought of trying to hook into some tournaments simply for the fact that it would MAKE me fish more, MAKE me fish with different people and most likely the outcome of these two things would add up to making me a better fisherman...none the less, back to the original subject.

I'm against a ban and I sure don't have any answers to what has been posted here, but I do hope a few people out there are able to read this the postings on this thread and maybe stop to consider what's going on with our fishery's when they're catching those nesting bass...

Fish on men.

[redneckshadrap]

I for one would like to see the less tourneys during the spawn. I know they would'nt ban them unless they rotated no fishing during the spawn on a particular lake on a certain yr.



Think of it, how many fish are in Cumberland or Kentucky/Barkley, Barren?

1,000,000,000,000 give or take a few....LOL!!!!
Now of each specie?

1,000,000,000 give or take a few..LOL!!!!!!

Now many boats fish it each day?

Now this # could be reasonable. I'd say Dave Stewart could probably give an accout of his waters.(Kentucky/Barkley)

Need some help on Barren.
Some of you Cumberland fisherman could also shed us some light.APB, SSKY, ProLe, Duane and the other striper fisherman and guides could come up with some numbers on the Striper,/Walleye boats(guides ect)



Fish for what specie?

We all know that with the F-n-F gaining more and more popularity that the wintertime fishing catch-rate for Smallmouth bass has really grown off the charts"so-to-speak". And with that more winter tournaments themselves are spawing...
So that adds to the bass specie list....
APB, SSKY, ProLe, Duane and the other striper fisherman and guides could come up with some numbers on the Striper,/Walleye



How many are caught?

We'll we each now that the tourney guys C and R.
We know the meat fisherman do not.
APB, SSKY, ProLe, Duane and the other striper fisherman and guides could come up with some numbers on the Striper,/Walleye


How many are kept?
Meat fisherman will keep thier limits and it's THIER right.

APB, SSKY, ProLe, Duane and the other striper fisherman and guides could come up with some numbers on the Striper,/Walleye



How many die after riding around in a live well all day or during the fight(Stripers).?
Most of the tourney guys catch a limit...so that's 5(I think)...

Most of the tourney guys catch a limit...so that's 5(I think)...

How many does the spawn produce?

Need some great power that us to answer that one...

Let's give it a good shot in answering these questions. We have a lot of good fisherman on this board. SOme of us fish the same waters yr round and have for years. We may not be on the BASS tour, but experience on these waters is an overlooked comodity. We have OUR facts.

So let's stack some of OUR facts up and see what we come up with.

Andrew,

Excellent post......give me a call..

Billy



Redneckshadrap
www.thecreekbank.com
[email protected]

[Danny]

Billy,

I'm staying out of this one. I have come to respect the posts of both SSKY and Andrew. However since Andrew's post, which looked a lot like one of my old ones, I've been waiting for someone to make the same suggestion he did to SSKY. And that would be to have a certain lake all to himself.. etc... etc... LOL

I don't fish for bedding fish. I can make a logical argument, using the logical argument for bed fishing, against bed fishing. I think that is the wrong thing.. more government regulation is never the answer in my opinion.

But, if these things were to come to pass, it would be a logical extension to hunting. Obviously deer hunting during the rut would have to be stopped. After all, they are even more vulnerable during that time.

Perhaps what is needed is a law making it illeagle to ever even eat meat!! Leather shoes will have to be out as well. We will need to wear only synthetic clothes. Cotton plants should have their feelings considered as well. LMAO

See why I am trying to stay out of it???

Danny