Thread: Closing bays for spring spawn

But, many of the bays have easy to fish areas, and easy to fish habitat that makes it easy for people to catch fish. If the bays were closed it would have an affect on the entire lake. Many Out Of State fisherman only know how to fish habitat, and steak beds. So they focus on the coves during the spring.

Originally Posted by prister

Quackrstackr you are correct in your thinking. Protecting crappie in one embayment will do nothing or very little for another embayment. The big problem is not really that the fish need more protection while spawning, although in theory it make sense; but might only work in a small inland lake and not a 160,000 reservoir. In the article that I posted, I had hoped to make it clear to anglers what is driving the population. The bottom line is we could close a few embayments, we could change the size limit, we could change the creel limit, we could stock, we could add more habitat, we could limit the number of poles anglers fish with... the population is driven more by things we have no control over. Yes, a change in limits to a drastic number might help at times, but to smooth out the highs and lows of this fishes cyclic life, then no.

I agree with many on here, the lack of law enforcement on the water is an issue. But think of the highways, how many people break the speed limit and get caught, as compared to those that don't get caught. Maybe not a good analogy, but there is a lack of man power for both branches of law enforcement. Our officers, which is normally one per county, have a lot of ground to cover, plus work the lakes. I have a staff of three, and we cover the western 14 counties, from the Mississippi River to the Tradewater. I worked with an officer last spring and just in a few hours one day on Blood River; several anglers were cited for having short fish. So I know it happens. However, anglers need to know, the fine is $50 per short fish plus court cost ($153). So do the math, is it worth it? If you know a repeat offender, let me know, name, boat number, what ever you can, and we will follow the lead; maybe not the moment you call, but someone will check into it. If you see undersize fish at the cleaning station; I would shame the guilty angler and stand in front of them while I called 1-800-25-ALERT.

I agree with the comment about throwing back deep hooked short fish. I hate to throw a wounded fish back that I know will probably die, but if we allowed it, then a lot of anglers would start ripping the gills out of short fish, just to be able to keep them.

A few referred to increasing the size limit. This would potentially have a negative impact because of growth rates. Yes, this might work in more southern states, but they have longer growing season. The farthest extreme is Lake Monroe in Florida where they have a 12 inch size limit, but the crappie are 15 inches by age 3. At KY Lake at age 3 they are only 10 inches. So you can't compare tobacco to oranges.

Thanks Mr. Briggs, all these comments and opinions just make my job interesting. The fish part is easy. As one old timer biologist told me, "fisheries management is 10% managing the fish and 90% managing the anglers".

Keep up the good discussion, if we talk long enough, the white crappie fishery will bround in 2012, and then we can talk about bass since bass and crappie in KY and Barkley lakes seem to operate in an inverse relationship.