Quote:
Originally Posted by HunterDave
Good point Goldscud. But what if you made the regs read 5 fish with a maximum size of 16". The fish that are left in the lake and make it past the legal keep size of +16" stay in the lake until they die of natural causes. Over time, there would be more and more big fish in the lake to catch.
The anglers, like me or people with kids, that like to go out and catch some smaller fish to keep and eat are happy and the trophy anglers that just want to catch a big fish to take a picture of should be happy. Everyone wins and no one has to give up anything! 
The only people that I can see as not being happy are the anglers that want easy to catch and keep big fish. To them I say.....Too bad!  If you want easy then join the Marines and if you want to eat big fish then go to the fish market! Smaller sized fish taste better anyway! 
I know that I'm joking around a bit and my thinking is totally outside the box from what goes on in Alberta right now, but, really, does any of what I'm posting make sense to anyone?  It's just an idea but great plans are developed from the smallest of ideas. |
I totally understand your point here, but I think that it wouldn't work in a lot of lakes. The simple reason is that if we allowed 5 fish under 16 inches to be kept, VERY few fish would make it to such a size. The fishing pressure it too heavy on a lot of lakes and ponds (including those that overwinter) to allow decent numbers of fish to grow for long enough to reach such a size. I do realize there are exceptions to this, but I think that many of our waters have too much pressure for this to work.