The old story of catch and release

[Bobfish11]

I have always been a supporter of catch and release...mainly during spawning times..if you want your lake to be a trophy lake..then maybe you should release the bigger fish...according to the data i have read..crappie can live up to 8-9 years..some even older...it takes a fish 4-5 years just to reach 10in...so those big 15-17 in fish must be older than that..so if you let go a 15in fish.maybe next year it will be 16 in or bigger..another common sense approach would be to have fishing zones..certain areas of the body of water that would be off limits to fisherman during the major spawning months...this suggestion was also made for red snapper off the Louisiana coast..it doesnt close fishing..but if a certain percentage of the fish were allow to spawn without pressure..it would in theory enhance that particular fishery.

[CrappieSchocker]

I definitely agree with you on that. I was glad to hear that supposedly our California panfish limits have changed.

[sparkie51]

I totally agree with you Bobfish. You can not continuely remove the larger species without putting a hurt on the quality of fish from a lake. Just to support your post, quite a few years ago I caught a crappie that had been tagged 6 years prior and it was only 9 inches long. Now this may be the exception but I don't think so. The lake has a good amount of cover and feed. I see it on my local lakes where the size of fish goes through cycles. Sonme years the fish are very large and other years after a heavy catch the fish are 4-5 inches smaller. It seems to run in 5-7 year cycles. Take a picture of the fish and release it. No one needs to keep 40-50 fish, especially the larger 14+ inch fish. Catch the 10-11 inchers for a meal and let the others go.

[GCD]

I plan to keep everything I catch until they're all gone!

Then I'm going to sit around and whine about it and blame it on everything but myself.

[Psmith]

What about the lakes that are full of stunted fish cause there are to many of them. I agree though it can never hurt to turn the bigger ones back. Is it just me or there seems to be way more people fishing this year than ever.

[yankee doodler]

What about the lakes that are full of stunted fish cause there are to many of them. I agree though it can never hurt to turn the bigger ones back. Is it just me or there seems to be way more people fishing this year than ever.

No it's not you...but just so you know, we sent all out crappie fishers down to Alabama. It was gettin' too crowded up here. :D

[TapOut64]

I've never understood releasing 14" or 15" + fish with hopes of you or someone else catching it again later in life when it's even bigger. Maybe in a small pond but If you're fishing a large body of water I would bet chances are that fish will never be caught again and I've heard biologist state that a 15" + crappie will most likely die of natural causes in the next year or two anyways. I've read that people bring home 50+ crappie but will let one that weighs more than 2lbs go. I don't think that releasing one big one will do more for the crappie population than releasing the 50. I guess I'm the opposite of most here. I'm after the big ones. Had a somewhat slow day last weekend, me and my wife only caught 10 crappie but the biggest was 16" and weighed 2lbs 9oz. It's the only one we kept. The other 9 that we let go were 10"-13". You'll never convince me that keeping that one big one did more damage than had I kept the 9 smaller ones.

[Willie]

Maybe in a small pond but If you're fishing a large body of water I would bet chances are that fish will never be caught again

Hey Tap...my dad caught a white marlin back in the late 90's that they had tagged and released back in the early 90's...offshore of VB. It doesn't happen very often, but it was pretty cool.

[slickwater1]

you must "maintain" the hatchery as a whole if you want fish to get big. It is just like antlers on a buck. it takes three things working together and if any of these are missing then it just wont happen. age, nutrition, and genetics. But we must also look at the limiting factors of a hatchery. most of the time the biggest limiting factor is food availability. the main reason for limited food is over population. went to school five years to get a degree in wildlife biology. never understood why people want to argue with research.

[STUMP HUNTER]

I've never understood releasing 14" or 15" + fish with hopes of you or someone else catching it again later in life when it's even bigger. Maybe in a small pond but If you're fishing a large body of water I would bet chances are that fish will never be caught again and I've heard biologist state that a 15" + crappie will most likely die of natural causes in the next year or two anyways. I've read that people bring home 50+ crappie but will let one that weighs more than 2lbs go. I don't think that releasing one big one will do more for the crappie population than releasing the 50. I guess I'm the opposite of most here. I'm after the big ones. Had a somewhat slow day last weekend, me and my wife only caught 10 crappie but the biggest was 16" and weighed 2lbs 9oz. It's the only one we kept. The other 9 that we let go were 10"-13". You'll never convince me that keeping that one big one did more damage than had I kept the 9 smaller ones.

My thoughts too