Quote:
Originally Posted by Pudelpointer
You know, I do not have a problem with the 5 fish rule, but the size needs to change. How about 5 under 12"? That appears to be the vast majority of what is being caught in those lakes right now, so the kids can fish, the meat hunters can slaughter 5 a day, and a small but improved percentage of fish get to grow big - once they pass the 12" threshold.
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What an absolutely novel idea! Some anglers already practice that...........without any regulations forcing them to do so. It's called CONSERVATION! Unfortunately, this goes against everything that "quality" anglers support......Leave the small trout and only take the big trout. There are also those that will say that ALL of the stocked trout are taken out within 2 weeks of putting them in the lake..............yeah, right, and I'm your Irish uncle Jimmy too!
IMO the main reason reason for opposition to this idea is because it wouldn't make it easy enough to catch a big trout.
I'm all for it..............If you can't educate people to practice conservation then bring in regs to force it on them.
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! |