Thread: Nets on Poverty Point

With that being said, it won't take many good comms long to put a hurting on a landlocked lake that small.

The problem with gill nets is that they are not discriminatory. Big bass, crappie, white bass will all get caught. If left too long in the net, will certainly die. I totally understand the reasoning. To remove the over abundance of carp, cats etc. If run properly, the fish should live, but i have seen too many cases with unattended nets and many dead fish..Hoping it does more good than harm.

That is true, gill nets are not discriminatory in theory, but mesh size plays a great part in what is caught. I would go as far to say mesh size can be species specific. For example, during shad season, we use 2" mesh, say we catch 50,000 lbs of fish in a season, 49000 lbs will be gizzard shad, 500 lbs will be skipjack herring, 495 lbs will be catfish, and 5 lbs will be bycatch.

It wont be as bad as y'all think. Sure some gamefish fish will be caught and killed by net fisherman. But I'd bet a pretty penny that many more fish will die after being caught-photographed-and released.

We've caught a couple million pounds of fish in our lifetimes in nets and we'd be hard pressed to fill up a 150 gt with the sac au lait we've caught.

I appreciate what you are saying for sure, I think what folks are worried about is pp has become a trophy crappie lake like Grenada and catching those big fish in nets will be detrimental. .in the long run most likely will help the populations of crappie by the small fish getting through the nets, but may hurt the trophy status and that goes for the really big bass there also. only time will tell..but to be honest fisherman keeping every crappie , especially the big ones is probably more detrimental than the nets will be.

I can understand the concern, but nets simply do not catch that many gamefish. Why? Not exactly sure. Some say it's because the gamefish are more sight oriented and avoid the nets. I dont know. What I do i know is that we catch more bass and sac sac au lait in crab traps than in nets.

Mike, you seem to be quite knowledgeable on the subject and I'm sure you can appreciate peoples apprehension. Good to hear that non target catches should be minimal. How do they regulate the number of netters/ nets allowed in the lake at a time? What about locations of the nets? I can see issues arising if recreational fishermen are forced out of their traditional areas. I only fish PP a couple of times a year when I'm down visiting my son, usually November and February, so anything I can learn about the subject would be helpful. Thanks, Mike.

From what I've read, netting will be allowed in certain parts of the lake. I would be willing to bet the well known spots will be offlimits. I didn't read anything about a limit of netters on the lake.