Thread: Friendly discussion about Bream Limits

I agree. Every lake is different, and so is every fisherman. There are many lakes in the south that have been known for producing limits of big bream for decades, and in many cases there was no limit at all. I'm one that prefers to catch and clean a bunch at a time rather than 6 - 10 per trip. I might have two catches of 30 bream each year and then it's catch and release the remainder of the year.

The Arkansas River which is around 1600 miles long and dumps into the Mississippi River which is around 2400 miles long can't be managed due to traversing multi states. Just my opinion. Take managing a small pond 120 acres and smaller I can agree with if that is the individuals desire.

I catch and release way more than I keep but nothing wrong with keeping some to eat.

I catch and release most bream, but when I am hungry for some, I keep enough for a mess for me and my wife. Around 10 out of every 100/200 or more I catch.

Originally Posted by arkansasbowhunter

The Arkansas River which is around 1600 miles long and dumps into the Mississippi River which is around 2400 miles long can't be managed due to traversing multi states. Just my opinion. Take managing a small pond 120 acres and smaller I can agree with if that is the individuals desire.

I catch and release way more than I keep but nothing wrong with keeping some to eat.

Couldn't agree with you more. Many states are way ahead of good management for bluegill than we are here in TN....including Arkansas. On our major reservoirs there are no limits on Gills. The big reservoirs are much more resilient than our agency lakes. It is the agency lakes that are seeing declines of large Gills. Just so many are taken out each year the average size is getting smaller as each year goes by. I keep fish also but am mainly catch and release....among other reasons I also don't enjoy cleaning a bunch of fish at one time...LOL. Large reservoirs are where I keep my fish from. On the agency lakes it is always catch and release for me. There are two reasons for that. I don't want to be the person that takes from the already over fished lakes and since I am blessed to travel the state fishing I need to leave those fish to the many people who can't travel any further to enjoy fishing and take a limit home. Our problem will get fixed simply because it will have to. May take a few years but as time goes by TWRA will see the decline and act on it. You remarked that your odds of you catching a trophy Gill on the Arkansas River was unlikely. In your posts I see many Gills that look as if they are at the 9 inch mark. To me anything that is 8 inches and above here in TN is a top quality fish. I catch a lot of 9 inch fish...and on occasion one that will go ten inches. A 10 inch Gill is rare unless one is fortunate to be fishing one of a few lakes around the county such as Lake Perris in California.....Lake Havasu in Arizona....and there are a few others. Am impressed with your ability to catch Gills in those numbers in winter. It is not easy catching them things in winter in big numbers.


Regards

Thank you. The lakes I fished as a kid have always had small gills. Large gills have never been common. I mean anything 10 inches of larger. Average gills here run 8-10 inches and I would rather keep them in the winter when they are far and offer better fillet of meat than in the spawn when they are thinner. I have caught my share in the spawn but I am getting into the less crowded winter time action. Been around this state for 40 plus years and have never caught fish larger than 10 inches in any lake I have fished.

Just what I have seen with the bass management in smaller lakes in the beginning its good but then the fish get stunted or it is hard to catch a fish above the minimum length required to keep one. A lot of study has been done on slot limits, length limits but here I have not seen any of them work. Prime example lake Monticello Arkansas. Was a one time the top fishery in Arkansas for bass greater 10 lb but now it's a joke. Had great crappie fishing too but that has went by the side.

I have been gill fishing 53 yrs... I agree ponds and land locked ponds can be trophy fisheries or fishedx out!!! Reservoirs and rivers are controlled more by nature. Therefore these fisheries can and will support Grocery Fishing!!

Anyone actually interested in facts rather than rationalization might want to read the studies I linked to. As I have already stated more than once, these studies were NOT done on small impoundments such as the TWRA fee lakes, nor were they done on ponds like I manage: they were done on large public lakes. And they found a consistent and undeniable trend of steadily-decreasing bluegill size structure in lakes that had liberal or no limits on bluegill. And, when stricter limits were imposed, bluegill size began to improve almost across the board.

A couple years ago a guy who guides on the St. Johns River in Florida argued with/mocked me on this forum because I took offense at him keeping coolerfuls of big bluegill from that river. He claimed it was too big to be influenced by fishing pressure. I fished the St. Johns twice this year, once in early June and once in November; both times were with experienced guides who make their living on the river; the guide I had in November specializes in bluegill. The biggest fish we caught either trip was 9". But of course that had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that that river gets more bluegill fishing pressure in one day in the spring than any 100 small lakes in this country.

I lived in southern California from 1997 through 2007. I fished Lake Perris, which is a large reservoir, 1,800 acres at 80% of full pool, a handful of times. I caught several pound-class bluegill, but never learned the lake well enough to catch the big ones; but at that time, two-pounders were pretty common; as an example, I saw a guy catch a bluegill from the bank one day that would've gone twenty-four ounces if it weighed an ounce, and he had one that was easily two pounds or better in his fish basket (it covered most of the bottom of the basket). In my observation, two-pounders are no longer common there, nor are twenty-four-ouncers.

There's another lake out there, Lake Skinner, that right now is producing the kind of bluegill fishing that Perris was producing when I lived out there. And just on another website I'm a member of, there are multiple guys on there who regularly post photos of big messes of giant bluegill they took home to clean from Skinner. It's just a matter of time until the fishing in that lake slips into the category of, "Man, I remember what it used to be like on that lake."

Just as large reservoirs and rivers can be fished out for big bass, so can they be fished out for big bluegill. You can rationalize and claim otherwise but your argument holds about as much water as saying the earth is flat, because the science is already out there, proven by fisheries biologists. Don't twist it to justify your actions.

There are several things happening with our fisheries' currently. Part is environmental impact and part of it is overfishing . It's a serious problem worldwide. Trying to accommodate the increasing population of people is going to be hard.If not for the mass production of food through fish farming we would already be in more trouble than we are. And yes this trickles down all the way to our pan fish in rural areas. If my memory is correct Missouri dept. of conservation spends 7 percent of its budget on fishery.We should be spending 40 percent.