Same thing goes for walleye and pike, if you can take them it's 50cm and over or 63cm and over, which means just when the fish matured and is ready to spawn we remove it from it's waters. It makes more sense to take the smaller fish 30cm-45cm lets say and leave all the big ones in the given water, that's how you build up a good population and trophy fish.
Another problem i see often is how the fish is released after catching it, most people take no care at all and behave like it's a piece of wood or something. Pike are very troublesome if not released proper, their slime coat gets rubbed off either on net or boat floor, or rocks, and then people release it back into water, this fish becomes a buffet for parasites and bacteria, it has no self defense against it's surrounding habitat. Most fish you don't even have to pull out of the water to unhook, or if you really want to hold it, wet your hands, don't use some gripy gloves and squeeze the life out of it.
Just look at the Bow river, only one trout under 30cm, and i doubt anyone even takes them home for dinner, i know i never do, always c&r on the bow. The browns got massive and rainbows too, and both in very good numbers, when you go out on the water in evening it's spectacular to watch them rise.
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