mean monroe, you should definitely believe your friend....i have a couple of photo albums of the "good 'ol days". the pics will show 4,5,6 fish between 35-45 lbs. yeah wish i had it to do over again but we all thought this was the ocean and there was an endless supply of these swimming fish fries. keep in mind most people considered these foul eating fish to be nothing more than drum that had alot of oily red meat in them! the discovery of red meat removal was in my opinion only a small part of the cumberland trophy fishery demise. face it alot of people have become very very good at doing something that was once considered a fine art mastered only by a handfull of guides.....in short, the pressure is overwhelming, a keeper doesnt stand a chance. and as boone put it he doesnt stand a chance whether he goes in the cooler or back in the lake. the KDFWR is not at this time willing to change a thing, just got off the phone with them a couple of weeks ago. so with that in mind lets see how many of us will protect our own resource...if ya start catching/killing short fish....QUIT! theres always later when the water is cooler, shoot go bass fishing, fish for whites, troll for walleye....anything that will reduce the pressure while the stripes are susceptible to high mortality. just my 2 cents