Thread: New Regs to Be Proposed Today

My wife and I have been coming to Grenada to fish for the giant crappie for 12 years. In that 12 years we have brought home 1 fish which we had mounted. We catch all the eating sized crappie we need on our lakes close to home. I know there are lots of out of state folks that come there and take all the fish they can back home but just wanted to let yall know that not everyone does that. I will continue to visit as often as I can no matter what the regs are changed to. Hope everyone has a blessed day.

Originally Posted by Rees Guide

I agree but it sure makes it harder to get with less poles.

Part of the problem is that folks have come to measure a successful day on the water as a day you limit out, I tend to disagree with this. 6 to 10 is a good mess of fish, specially if they are all over 12 inches. Heck have seen a couple days last year where 2 ole boys from up north came down and caught about 6 each of the 2 days they were here, smallest keeper around 2.5 pounds and the biggest was 2.80, those boys were very excited, iced them dudes down and carried them home to show off, said folks back home would never believe it, every keeper they caught was bigger than anything they had ever caught in their life, puts a different lite on it. We are spoiled!!!!

Rees speaks the truth. The simple fact is a half dozen broad backed slabs will yield more groceries than twice as many smaller fish.

I fish by myself more than anything else, so this is going to sound selfish, but I'd like to see a higher rod per person limit and a rod per boat limit. Fishing with three poles kind of stinks and I wish I could fish with at least four.

Originally Posted by hotrod1

Glad there making changes it's about time. You can't compare trot lines and yoyo's to a rod limit on a boat. When is the last time anybody seen a troller anchored down or tied up to a tree and stayed put all day that's what trot lines and yoyo's do they stay put and wait on the fish to come. Trolling is trolling to the fish not waiting on them. I was upset when Sardis changed from 5 poles to 3 but after thinking on it and going out in the spring and looking at about 300 trollers on a good spring day the crappie need all the help they can get. You will not catch a limit with 3 faster than 5 poles that's a fact and that's the thought process of changing it. Now with that said Iam going cranking for the first time this year this weekend and I will have my wife in the boat and 6 poles is perfect.

You can basically say I stay in one place. Most times I'll cover less ground rigging then I would single poling--but that's just me.

I use 1 pole most of the time and 3 spider rigging really don't see a problem with that a lot of folks get hung up on limits if I catch 10 or 12 single poling that is a good day and if I catch 10 spider rigging I am happy and thankful just to be fishing so I don't see no problems with the regs "FISH ON BROTHERS"!!!

Originally Posted by LowePro

If they do not already, a limit should be made based on the assumption that everyone will catch it everytime they go out. And the fish popultion be sustained. And not limit poles/methods/etc.

I am afraid if they assumed every fisherman would catch the limit every time, and based the take on that, the new limit would be something like 4 fish per person......
Lots and lots of fishermen hit the lakes and catch nowhere near the limit every day......

I agree with several others on here. I fish primarily by myself. The whole reason that I fished Enid instead of the other lakes was the pole limit. It is alot of expense to drive all the way over from cental AR and have to use 3 poles to pull cranks during the summertime. I'm all for a pole limit per boat, but after buying a year license this year it will be my last time to do that if they go to a 3 pole limit. I will just buy a weekend license when I fish 1 or 2 times a year at Washington and call it good. 15 fish is 15 fish no matter how you catch them. I know alot of you may catch more fish over 12" than I do, but when I have been over there it seemed like I threw a whole lot of 12" and under fish back looking for the ones that were 12 1/4+". I know that this is just an out of stater's view, but by the time the out of stater's buy gas, food, hotel and misc expenses we spend alot of money to try to catch these 15 fish.

I'd like to see 4 poles, with a 8 pole boat max on all the big 4 myself. Length limit dont matter to me, mother nature will take care of that. I would also like to see a short fish limit, like 3 fish under, hate putting fish back that aint gona live, especially when i see them floating dead a little later from deep hook or torn up gills. I usually just take my chances and put them in the well, if they live i turn them back, if not i keep them and take my chances at the ramp.

Originally Posted by footballcoach

A limit is not a limit? Guess thats why I teach history instead of Math. When I go speckeled trout fishing next week, 25 is going to be 25 whether it takes 30 min. or three hours.

I see the point of the OP. If you slow down the catching, or make catching a limit more difficult, many people will give up before catching a limit. By lowering the amount of poles allowed, they can effectively reduce the success rate of fishermen without having to lower the limit. This is the path of least resistance. If they tried to lower the limit further, across the board, there would be unified opposition. Single polers and trollers would have a dog in the fight..... This way, they only aggravate a part of the crappie fishing community.

Think of it this way... If you are catching one fish an hour, it would take you a whole day of fishing to catch the "limit". Many fishermen are not going to hang around all day at that catch rate, and will therefore go home with 5 fish, at lunch, instead of a limit at dark! You have to look at the end result to see what a law is really all about, whether that is a fishing reg, or a U.S. tax code.