Thread: Gill Nets In Kentucky and Barkley lakes

Originally Posted by Quackrstackr

Can one not reasonably assume that the fish may act something like their cousins the salmon and move distances back and forth to spawn in the same areas? Salmon spend pretty much their entire lives in the sea only to come back to darn near the exact same river rock they hatched under to spawn themselves.

How do you explain the shift in fishing tactics from winter into spring where people are catching fish on main lake ledges and the bite progresses from there to the mouth of the bay and then on up into the embayments? Pure coincidence or do the fish just get hungry at different times?

The brunt of the crappie harvest appears to happen at around the same time as when the fish were captured and released. One would reasonably expect that they would be in the same place, if they do tend to move back to a traditional spawning area.

That was exactly the point I was going to make.

It would seem to reason that if a fish were captured in a bay, tagged and released during the spawning migration that the fish may spawn in that bay, leave the bay and simply return to that bay the next year around the same time. Now, if that fish was caught in say August in that bay, I might get on board. Fact is most people target crappie during the late winter/spring and fall. At that time the crappie are mostly in the bays. Just because the fish was caught in the bay doesn't prove it didn't leave and come back. Heck, you can't say a tire's not flat just because technically it still has air in it.

I agree that in bays like Jonathan and Blood the fish may stick around longer. They have access to deep water in those bays. Sledd however is flat and shallow. At winter pool you have a few pockets of 13' water but that's as deep as it gets. Summer pool your gonna have about 18' in the deepest spots. Water temps in summer in a bay that shallow won't hold that many crappie.

I'd be willing to bet that the majority of your tagged fish were caught in march and April.

Paul, I want to thank you for getting on here and debating this issue. I know you've got a lot on your table. I'm not trying to be a hard head or argue just to be arguing. You won't find may folks with a greater love for this sport. I want it to be around long after I'm gone.

You guys are making great strides towards improving the crappie fishery but we still have a long way to go and many challenges ahead.

Just remember, some of the greatest accomplishments of mankind have been spawned from contriversy and disagreement

Wiskers

I have a question about gill net fishing. The guys I have been seeing putting out there nets and then run there boat back and forth making humongous waves in front of there nets. It looks like to me they are trying to heard the fish into the net. I just took a boaters safety coarse and one of the laws states that is is illegal to harass wild life with a boat. Is this act illegal Paul or are they within the limits of commercial fishing?

In the floy tagging study, we started tagging crappie in early March. You are correct. A large percentage of the tags returned came during late March through April. However, (using Blood River as the example) there were tags returned from crappie caught in the months of May, June, July, August, Sept., October and November of the same year. And then we had a few returns from crappie caught the following year in January, March, April, June and November. All tagged in Blood River, and harvested in Blood River.

Regarding the comment about commercial fishermen harassing wildlife (fish) into their nets; I would assume that fishing and ski boats often make the same wave action as they move around.

Regarding the comment comparing the crappie to a salmon; both are fish, but they have completely different life cycles. The telemetry study showed that crappie move to shallow water to spawn, nothing new there. However, there seemed to be a trend that crappie tagged from the Irvin Cobb area toward the mouth, stayed in that area, while crappie tagged from Wildcat ramp toward Crappie Hollow seemed to stay in that area. In Sledd Creek, the crappie were tagged in the embayment, and some of the white crappie did move out to the secondary creek channel outside the mouth by July, while the blacks stayed in the embayment.

Crappie (more true with white crappie) move shallow to spawn, and then back to deeper water (ledges and channels), while the black crappie showed a trend to spawn shallow and then stayed shallow into July (last tracking until their radio went dead). In theory the white crappie prefer more turbid water than black crappie. This may be a reason why the white crappie moved back out to the deeper darker water, while the black crappie stayed shallow where the water was clearer.

One last thing to ponder, commercial netting has been happening for almost the life of the lake. There was a short period in the mid 70’s when netting was stopped. But, reinstated because of increase populations of rough fish. And, actually there have been more netters in the past than now. Through regulations we have capped the number of licenses sold. Given this, think about all the good years of crappie fishing and no one complained about the nets. TN has much more liberal commercial fishing regulations, but Big Sandy is a good place to go crappie fishing.

So to end this discussion, the lakes are here for multiple users, to manage the sport fish we have regulations, to manage the commercial fish we have regulations and will continue to allow fishing for both. It is in the best interest of sport fish that we allow some take of rough fish.

We know the crappie numbers are down right now. This decline is driven more by environmental causes, such as rainfall which effects turbidity, water level fluctuations, discharge, and retention time. The “legal” commercial fishing has little impact of sport fish populations.

One of the other (other than environmental) greater impacts on the sport fish populations is the anglers with over the limit and short fish. Just yesterday, 30 boats were checked of which four were ticketed for short fish and over the limit.

Originally Posted by prister

One of the other (other than environmental) greater impacts on the sport fish populations is the anglers with over the limit and short fish. Just yesterday, 30 boats were checked of which four were ticketed for short fish and over the limit.

Thank you for this response.

Ever thought about running an add in the local papers about tickets for illegal harvest and the fines imposed? Kinda like they do with drunk driving. Heck post it on this board every week. I can't speak for Slab or pappy but I wouldn't mind seeing it at all. The more people that are aware of the consequences of such actions and the efforts yall are putting towards catching violators, the less likely they are to do it!

Also I can buy into fish staying in Blood due to the deeper water available there.

Thanks again