Hypothetical ?

[Driftless]

Hypothetical.....

Would you support any part of your season being made c/r only?

1. No live bait.

2. Barbless hooks

3. ALL fish must be released immediately.

[Neighbor_guy]

Crappie fishing is already continuous.

It is here anyways.

Is that not the case in WI?

[Spearing Machine]

I thought the exact same thing. Been going to school here for over a year and was under the impression that it was open 365 days a year.

[Driftless]

not open year round by me in kickapoo river.

guys are missing the point of the question.

Would you support any part of your season being made c/r only?

[Spearing Machine]

Oh that makes sence...I definetly would support a catch and release or closed period during the year. Even if it was just closed for a month say from april 15 - may 15 to protect spawnng fish. I would go out on a limb and say we would have some lakes/rivers that would be much more productive for crappies.

[Drewski]

Would you support any part of your season being made c/r only?

I wouldn't hesitate to support it. IMO, they need to put a cnr only regulation out there that you have to release all fish during the spawning period. This would not be needed if people used some sense and and practiced selective harvest, but sadly most people don't.

I know of lakes where when the fish are up shallow spawning in the spring of the year, and people take bucket after bucket of crappies, day after day with no thoughts on cnr. It's really sad.

I've also seen a smaller lake get fished out by this too. People found out where there was crappies biting offshore a couple years ago and for a solid month, people didn't stop taking fish out. And what do ya know? The lake has never been good for crappies since.

Sorry about the rant, just my 2 cents.

[Scott M]

Hypothetical.....

Would you support any part of your season being made c/r only?

1. No live bait.

2. Barbless hooks

3. ALL fish must be released immediately.

Len,

You'll have to excuse me for jumping to conclusions, but is this a cross-species comparison of angler attitudes towards regulations, to be juxtaposed against trout?

*******

In MN those regs would never fly on biological grounds (given the reproductive output of panfish among other reasons), and would fail more completely in the social arena. People want to keep panfish year round. We already have to fight tooth and nail for decreased daily bag limits.

Strictly IMO, I could live with the regulations, as I rarely keep fish and am using live bait less and less...interestingly, my sticking point might be the barbless hooks...I'd have about 400-500 jigs that need to be filed down

[fisherdog19]

I'd support a C/R period, don't think the live bait or barbless hooks are necessary, the C/R would help enough. I'd much rather a minimum size and a lower limit.

[wildsmallie]

Catch and release seasons are great, --I love to eat fish, but catch and release allows more use of the resource while minimizing impact. I use a lot of barbless hooks no matter what the circumstances are--it makes unhooking fish so easy I'm surprised at how many people are unwilling to pinch barbs. It makes sense to stick to artificials during a catch and release season, but if someone wants to use bait, I say let them. It can be hard releasing fish like bluegills when using bait though.

[half-dutch]

No problem with catch and release on panfish for me. In fact that is what I do anyway. Best limited to artificials though, like is said above especially about sunfish on live bait. And it will work for panfish; the key to size for most of them is life span. The more you can extend it the better possibility for size you have. I would go so far as to suggest a reduced price catch and release, artificial only license to encourage decreased harvest and not just for the numbers but for the increased age possibilities, since it takes the better part of a decade in this country to produce a trophy bluegill.

[mainbutter]

There are two things that you can do to improve a sunfish fishery:

1) keep less big fish fish

2) cull undersized fish

They reproduce so well that after you take out the big ones, the small ones overpopulate an area, making it more difficult to grow them big again.

The second is at odds with a C/R season, but unfortunately people will always keep the big ones and throw the little ones back while they're able to keep them, especially with sunfish.

I always fish C/R with panfish of all sorts including crappie, except ONCE in my life where I kept a couple for my friend's mom who wanted to make some fish soup.

I wouldn't be vocal in any regards to a C/R season simply because I'm not one who is going to be affected by it.

When I do fish sunfish I'm often fishing with kids or something, and really for that, live bait is the way to go.

[half-dutch]

Stunted fish are only a problem with the very smallest waters. That goes back 40 years and has been superceded in the research a very large number of times over the past 15 years. It still holds in farm ponds which is where the initial research was developed, but not in anything over the very smallest lakes. Over harvest is the main reason that sunfish reproduce smaller, since the largest males actually inhibit the maturity of smaller juvenile males until they reach the sizes necessary to compete for the center of the beds. It is a matter of longevity not over reproduction which has been proven over and over on small lakes where when the harvest declines the size returns. The word gets out, the harvest increases the size disappears. More than any other factor it is the number of sunnies that humans take out of a lake, that determines the size of those left in it. The more taken, the smaller the remainder, the fewer the larger. Sunnies will make up the numbers themselves, but they need the time to make size.

Crappies are very similar. Except crappie spawn is not as yearly dependable this far north as the sunny spawn or as either of them are farther south; so we are more likely to get missing year classes in crappies. The biggest crappie females are perfectly capable of covering the gap by the extremely large numbers of eggs they produce.

The old saw about removing small sunnies to improve a lake's sunfish size is not actually true except in the very tiniest bodies of water. The best size recovery is when the waters have no harvest at all. The will do that by themselves if allowed to.

[Coach1310]

I don't disagree, but would love to see the studies and data you are using to base your opinion. You always hear keep the small ones and let the big ones go.... I have never heard the exact point you raise.... more info appreciated.

[fishuhalik]

I have never once seen a survey that supports that, half-dutch. This would apply in a lake that has not been fished. Sure, if it's natural and not fished you don't need to take out the smaller fish because the lake will be balanced. I can list example after example that shoots the surveys you're talking about down. To name a few, Medicine, Minnetonka, Prior, Bald Eagle, etc.

Matter of fact, I posted (I think last year sometime, I don't remember) the results of my own personal experiment on a sunfish lake next to my house that I grew up on. I put it in the panfish forum, not sure where, just look for topics that I started

[half-dutch]

The studies are going right here in Minnesota with what are called Heritage Lakes, among other research. Check out the history of Annie Battle up in Ottertail county. You can also go to the Illinois DNR; their studies are from the 90's. IIRC the bluegill is their state fish. So this isn't cutting edge, either. I went out and studied the fish on my own and found my own resources for my own information, because it had always been said that one kept the little ones and released the big ones, because otherwise they stunt, but that is not true except in the very smallest of waters like farm ponds. Additionally we have a far shorter growing season, with Wisconsin studies showing that large sunfish take the better part of a decade to make 8 or 9 inches that is backed up by age studies here in the state of Minnesota when they do lake surveys. That is not true down south where an 8 inch bluegill can grow fast enough to make size in as little as three years. So be very careful with southern data for northern panfish. It doesn't always hold true. Our panfish don't grow as fast, but they do live longer, and have to for them to make size. They are a more delicate resource in the North Country.

What is proven every where is that human fishing harvest decreases panfish size, if it is not carefully limited, and the biggest panfish are almost always the oldest in any given body of water. Longevity is the key to size. If left alone like in those lakes after all the big ones get fished out generally are, they recover on their own. Illinois found out that a single competent angler taking only legal limits could decrease the size of bluegills in a body of water just in a single season's fishing. Severely decreased fishing harvest allows the recovery of a natural size structure and the big ones return. They don't come back because the little ones get culled, they come back because the fishermen go elsewhere.

Also check out delayed maturation in bluegills. They have a natural inhibition to stunting if given a chance.

You can discard most studies on farm ponds, especially the older studies, because they are special situations that require special management and do not apply to waters big enough that individual fish are not confined. They are essentially over grown aquariums. If you just have to have farm pond data go to the Iowa DNR; they are probably the best informed in this area, because they help manage as many farm ponds as anybody, many of the private farm ponds are actually managed at state expense. There is some very interesting information there about how much of a special case farm ponds are. You essentially manage them for size in one species only, and you have do that very carefully. Iowa does not even recommend putting both crappies and bluegills in the same body. Nor do they think it is possible to manage any but the very largest ponds for both big bass and big bluegills. That is certainly not the case for our natural waters, where all three can make trophy size in even relatively small lakes. Most lakes that do not freeze out at least up through central Minnesota are fertile enough to manage that all by themselves in stark contrast to farm ponds.

I aint no college professor nor anybody's personal librarian, but I am an avid panfisherman. I wanted to know all the facts that I could gather. From those I have become almost completely catch and release, because I can take enough fish myself to damage the size structure in some waters. You want the studies do what I did and have enough curiosity and care about the resource to dig them out for yourself. I told you where they are.

I love to eat fish and crappies and bluegill fillets are my favorites, but I limit that very carefully to a very few treats a year and never the biggest fish. There is an added advantage with catch and release, I don't need to pay attention to limits. There is nothing I enjoy more than the Smack Down of an active bluegill bite or a crappie feeding frenzy. That's when you really find out what panfishing is all about. I have had 40 crappie hours. When you get into the bigger sizes in that sort of thing you really have some fun. Those are the highlights of my fishing experience which spans easily some 55 years. My beliefs are not because I am anti-fishing or don't like to eat fish. Our panfish are a far more fragile resource when it comes to a full range of potential sizes than most of us realize. They do breed well enough to keep up the numbers on their own however, but don't be fooled by that. It is more than anything babies making babies.