Thread: Listen up .... FYI

Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission Calls Special Meeting
Agenda for July 7 meeting includes fisheries, wildlife items

The Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission will meet in Frankfort for a special called session at 8:30 a.m. (Eastern time) July 7.
The commission will consider several fisheries and wildlife-related items. All recommendations made by the commission must be approved by legislators before they become law.
Items on the agenda include:
Establishing a statewide daily creel limit of 20 crappie;
Setting the statewide daily creel limit for trout at eight rainbow trout and one brown trout; brown trout must be at least 16 inches;
Adding five Fishing in Neighborhoods (FINs) lakes, removing three FINs lakes and restricting possession or use of live shad for bait on FINs lakes;
Removing the 15-inch size limit for largemouth bass on Beaver Lake;
Increasing the minimum size limit for crappie on Taylorsville Lake to 10 inches;
Removing special harvest regulations for crappie, sunfish and bluegill on Benjy Kinman Lake;
Adding special fish harvest regulations on Willisburg Park Pond;
Establishing a 15-inch minimum size limit for largemouth bass and a daily creel limit of 15 bluegill on Beech Fork Reservoir;
Implementing the same blue catfish regulations on Barren River Lake as those in effect on Taylorsville Lake;
Changing identification information requirements concerning jugs, trot lines and set-line (limb-line) fishing;
Allowing the use of dip nets statewide;
Clarifying that all shad restrictions refer to live shad;
Adding protections against raccoon rabies in the USDA surveillance zone in eastern Kentucky;
Meeting in executive session, if necessary.
Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission meetings are open to the public. Sessions are conducted at the Arnold Mitchell Building on the main campus of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. Kentucky Fish and Wildlife headquarters is located at 1 Sportsman’s Lane (formerly 1 Game Farm Road) in Frankfort. The entrance is located off U.S. 60, approximately 1½ miles west of U.S. 127.

Originally Posted by bandchaser

You might want to use the search function on this states page for this very subject. Paul Rister, western Kentucky state biologist, is a member and communicates with us here when he can. He also is very approachable and will talk to anyone with a sense of reason.
Trust me when I say this, I'm with you on the subject and wish it could be raised to 11". I fully understand and support the idea about not seeing dead fish. It comes down to science, and protecting the resource that we currently have.
I also fish Mississippi several times each year, and would love to have this fishery back to what it was several years ago. In my honest opinion, we have a potential threat from the Asian carp and why our fishery is suffering as well. We also have a lack of self control as sportsman, because we have to have a limit to be a true fisherman, so let's keep whatever size we catch.... I didn't get my limit this past week, so I'm gonna make up for it today.....and the out of state people are the problem.
These issues boil down to our biggest law breakers that reside right here within a 40 mile radius of the twin lakes and feel they own the lake.

So, I could continue but my blood pressure is already up. You are on a long blood trail that frankly will never lead anywhere. We all want better fish, but again it is up to us to help take care of this resource as well.

This topic is something we evaluate regularly at our district office. We evaluate several factors, chiefly growth, recruitment, and mortality, but also fishing pressure. Our goals as managers are to provide a balance between those anglers who want more numbers of fish vs. those anglers who want trophy fish. We can simulate those regulation changes using computer modeling of hypothetical populations. Both an 11" and 12" size limit result in more trophy status fish being caught, however, they come with significant reductions in harvest (meaning that anglers end up with less filets). the 11" limit actually results in similar yields of fish filets as the 10", but it comes with around a 25% reduction in the number of fish caught. The 12 " limit results in less pounds of filets and a 40% reduction in the number of fish caught. This is important to interpret correctly. That 40% reduction does not mean that those fish survive and are caught later, this means that they are never caught at all. This is due to natural mortality. Crappie are unique in that their total mortality very rarely dips below 40% a year regardless of fishing pressure. What makes them unique is that the fishing mortality and the natural mortality compensate for each other, as opposed to being additive. For example, if 45% of the fish are caught and harvested each year, and 20% die of natural mortality, this would result in a total mortality rate of 65% (close to the average for barkley. If for example we outlawed crappie fishing entirely, the total mortality rate would only drop to around 40%. This is not true for most species, but crappie are unique.

Long story short, we can change the limits, and it increase the number of trophy fish, but decrease the number of fish caught, and potentially the total pounds of filets(if we go higher than 11"). This will depend on angler demand and desire.

Crappie recruitment is primarily driven by environmental factors, rather than the number of adults. (obviously you need a certain minimum of adults to have a good spawn). I am not aware of any lakes which have shown a reduction in the variability of their spawns because they lowered the creel limit or raised the size limit.

This is definitely something we look at, because crappie fishing can be affected by our regs. Additionally, we ask each angler in our creel survey (around 5000 a year) which regs they would like to change. The crappie limit does come up quite a bit, so we monitor it closely.

Hope this helps, I'd love to discuss it more.