Quote:
Originally Posted by GaryF
9. It is a poor lesson in conservation to teach young anglers to keep large spawning sized fish and not smaller eating sized ones. But its better to fish out the small ones so that they can't get to spawning size? Lots of fish become sexually mature prior to being 20" long, others become 20" long prior to sexaul maturity. Will dig up some biological text books for you to read on that.
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More info on keeping smaller "eater" sized fish and letting the bigger "spawner" sized ones go:
http://www.ffc.org.au/FFC_files/Sust...BOFFFF_web.pdf
"Many fishers have understood the need to let the big breeders go for a long time now.....
What does BOFFFF mean?
BOFFFF = Big Old Fat Fecund Female Fish
BOFFFF are the larger, older females which, according
to recent research results, generally produce a lot more
offspring, more times per year, than younger females do.
Additionally, the offspring of larger females are often
healthier and more likely to survive. Older fi sh are more
likely to survive and contribute in the ‘bad years’ when
environmental factors mean reduced recruitment to the fish
stocks. For many species, one of the best ways to ensure long
term successful reproduction and replenishment of the fi sh
stocks is to protect the larger, healthy female breeders."