Thread: Bluegill Conservation

Originally Posted by tnpondmanager

Crappiepappy, it seems you didn't read any of my posts closely. I already addressed every question you bring up. You obviously didn't read the studies I linked to, because those make it clear that there's a dynamic in any bluegill population that is upset when the largest males are removed, and it causes smaller males to mature sexually at a smaller size, which in the end greatly reduces their ultimate growth. As to the notion that the regulations in place must be appropriate because they were set by DNRs, I've already addressed that several times in the thread: there are a handful of states that actually care about bluegill and have implemented progressive regulations that are helping, but most states have not changed their bluegill regulations in fifty years or more, i.e. said regulations completely ignore all of the research from the past thirty years. Those regressive regulations are directly responsible for the decline of most public bluegill fisheries.

No, I have not read the studies in your links. But, did those studies also relate the information that even when the large parental males are left unharvested, there are always a subset of cuckolder males & satellite males in the population ... and they dilute the genetics all by themselves.

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copied from Oxford Journals :

Bluegill exhibit one of the most social and complex mating systems in nature. Males are characterized by a discrete polymorphism in life histories termed “parental” and “cuckolder”. Parental males delay maturation and compete to construct nests in colonies, court females, and provide sole parental care for the young within their nest. By contrast, cuckolder males do not build nests of their own or care for their offspring. Instead, cuckolders mature precociously and steal fertilizations in the nests of parental males through two tactics: younger and smaller “sneakers” hide behind plants and debris near the nest edge and opportunistically dart into the nest during female egg releases; older and larger “satellites” are about the size of mature females and by expressing female coloration and behavior are able to deceive the parental male into perceiving that he has two females in his nest. Bigamy, in which two females release eggs simultaneously in a nest, occurs naturally about 10% of the time and is the background against which mimicry has evolved. Parental males readily detect and chase sneakers out of their nest, but only rarely detect and chase satellites. Cuckolders die before the age of mature parentals and never themselves become parentals. Spawning involves interactions between numerous individuals, including a parental male, multiple cuckolder males, and females, and results in several thousand embryos of mixed parentage being raised by a single parental male.
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To which I would ask ... how do you know which ones of these "males" you're releasing or keeping ?? How do you know that the 8" fish you keep, isn't simply a young potential 12" fish ?
In order to not overharvest a small body of water, of it's Bluegill genetics, it would seem to me that catch & release of all Bluegill would be necessary. How many of these prize genetically inclined fish are caught & kept by anglers .... versus eaten by predators (including their own species). We don't know ... and likely can't know.

Are you also aware of the fact that most scientific "facts" are usually found to be "wrong", eventually. Studies are done, and contrasting outcomes are found ... sometimes even resulting in opposite conclusions.

I'm not a "meathog" of any species ... and probably haven't eaten more than a dozen Bluegill in my entire life. My dog is not in this hunt, unless/until site rules are being broken. Discuss & debate your opinions all you want ... just agree to disagree, and be civil about your disagreements. Leave all the 4th grade schoolyard name calling & taunting out of the conversation, and understand that you aren't going to change anyone's mind over to your way of thinking, by those tactics.

... cp

Originally Posted by 65pontiac

This is a fascinating thread that is also complex by nature. Like I stated previously in this thread, it's absolutely possible to wipe out smaller bodies of water when over harvesting big fish. Okachobee has been ravaged by the hurricanes as was stated by someone earlier and I don't think you can overstate that fact. Hurricanes have the potential to kill entire populations of fish if the storm is a direct hit and powerful enough. There's also invasive species of fish in Southern Florida that compete directly with bluegill and shellcracker for food, I wonder what impact those fish are having on the trophy populations in Southern Florida. I would suspect an environment like that to potentially have an up and down fishery, meaning it's good on a hit and miss basis.

OTOH, there's some small lakes in Alabama that get fished HEAVILY and are known to produce LARGE shellcracker and bluegill on a routine basis. These lakes have been giving up big fish for years and some of them aren't three hundred acre lakes. A nutrient rich or loaded lake has the ability to produce heavy stringers of fish on a yearly basis, it's known as a fertile lake. A non fertile lake generally has the ability to produce big fish but in small numbers and could be wiped out quickly. Lake Fertility is a key issue IMO.

All of the public lakes I mentioned in Tennessee that I personally witnessed the overharvest of, are very fertile, specifically because TWRA fertilizes them multiple times each year. The world record bluegill was caught from Alabama sixty-three years ago, but no bluegill even approaching that size has been caught from the state in many years. Back when I was in high school in the early eighties I read an article in one of the major fishing magazines in which a biologist for the state of Alabama named several of the top public waters in the state for bluegill; he stated that the bluegill averaged a pound each in Lamar County Public Fishing Lake. If you check the website for the Alabama DNR now, and go to the page for that same lake, they have a handful of photos of bluegill; one of them is a photo of a very excited angler, a grown man, holding up a bluegill as though it were a true trophy; the caption bears his name, and states he is holding a one-pound bluegill. The photo is from 2004, which implies that is one of the larger bluegill caught from the lake in the past ten years. So in twenty years, the lake went from having bluegill that average a pound each, to a population in which a one-pounder is rare.

Who knows but the world record would have been broken again by now if it were not for overharvest.

As to the contention that “most scientific facts are eventually proven to be false,” I think that takes the cake for the weakest single claim that has been made in this entire conversation. I think you have confused yahoo news articles on diet fads with actual science. I am by no means one who buys everything science says; for instance, I don’t believe humans evolved from primates. But to suggest that most science is false holds about as much water as asserting that the earth really is flat. If that were true, everyone who contracted cancer would die; there would be no such thing as nuclear weapons, or for that matter electricity, or engines, or airplanes, or modern medicine, or herbicides, or agriculture…Granted, some of the participants in this thread pretend as though science did not exist, or were not relevant to the lakes they fish.

As to the idea that sneaker male bluegill will ruin the genetics of a population with or without the presence of mature males - here again, this is simply specious reasoning. When mature males are present - as the excerpt posted above readily notes - they run off a good portion of the sneaker males and thereby greatly diminish their impact on the genetics. When the mature males are removed, the sneakers get free rein. And it's not just a matter of which males fertilize the eggs - as I noted, some biologists believe that many males in a population will delay sexual maturity when there are larger males present, but will mature at a much smaller size - as little as 3" - when said large males are absent. I have personally witnessed this, more than once, just in the past three years. But of course I know nothing at all about bluegill and all of the ones I've posted photos of were just luck; it's basic common sense that someone who only fishes for the species a handful of times a year, and has never managed it in dozens of waters, is going to know far more about said species than someone who has studied the species for over thirty years.

Originally Posted by tnpondmanager

As to the contention that “most scientific facts are eventually proven to be false,” I think that takes the cake for the weakest single claim that has been made in this entire conversation. I think you have confused yahoo news articles on diet fads with actual science. I am by no means one who buys everything science says; for instance, I don’t believe humans evolved from primates. But to suggest that most science is false holds about as much water as asserting that the earth really is flat. If that were true, everyone who contracted cancer would die; there would be no such thing as nuclear weapons, or for that matter electricity, or engines, or airplanes, or modern medicine, or herbicides, or agriculture…Granted, some of the participants in this thread pretend as though science did not exist, or were not relevant to the lakes they fish.

Hold on there a minute, hoss ... you've just proved my point --- we thought the earth WAS flat, and the center of the universe ... we thought the plague was "bad air" ... we thought it was impossible to fly ... we thought "cars" would never replace horses ... we thought the universe only included the Milky Way Galaxy ... and so on. Disproving what "science" says is possible/impossible is called progress. Even scientists will admit that a lot of what was once believed to be the "answer" to their question, turns out to be wrong ... that's where we get the saying "back to the drawing board".

As to the sneaker males/satellite males ... that was an excerpt from a scientific study. That it may disagree with "your" studies, is no fault of mine. It only serves to prove that not all studies agree with your contentions. The study also showed that many of the parental males LEFT the nest immediately after fertilization ... losing 100% of the clutch to predation. The fact that ANY sneaker males get in on the act, dilutes the genetics ... as does the satellite males "crossdressing" ruse.

As to this statement : "some biologists believe that many males in a population will delay sexual maturity when there are larger males present, but will mature at a much smaller size - as little as 3" ... I would have to wonder if they weren't referring to "sneaker males" ??

Again, I have to remark that bullying members that do not agree with your ideas, is no way to recruit anyone to your side of the discussion. "My way or the highway" attitude never has won any debate.

... cp