Originally Posted by
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.
My thoughts too
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