Quote Originally Posted by Amartinbio View Post
I definitely don't want anyone to feel guilty for keeping 20 fish. I wish everyone caught a limit every time. This year our limit meant quite a lot because the fishing was so good. In some years however, our limit is not as useful. I'm sure a lot of guys on here catch limits in bad years, but the average fishermen usually doesn't. (Based on thousands of interviews). This is similar in other states which have 20 or 30 fish limits. In order to significantly reduce harvest overall we would need a much lower limit in some years (5 or 10 fish).

At this point we don't see a need to reduce harvest. Again at this point we don't see a need to reduce harvest, so we are not recommending any harvest restrictions other than the 10" and 20 currently in place. However, if we did want to reduce harvest in the future a pole limit would be our first choice. It's true that a limit is a limit, but only if guys are willing to stay out there until they catch a limit regardless of how long it takes. We are still measuring the catch rates, but early results from our lakes and those in Mississippi show that spider riggers are more efficient. Hence, a pole limit would likely reduce harvest unless people just choose to fish much longer to get their limits.
I am also not in favor of a pole limit for a variety of reasons. (1) it makes our regs more complex. (2) I'm against most regs that simply make it harder to fish. (3) several anglers have invested heavily in equipment and prefer to fish this way. (4) this method is ideal for children since they don't need to actively hold the pole.

Once again, we don't need to reduce harvest and may never need to, but if we do, that's our first and best option. I like our current limits which allow anglers to take advantage of good fishing when it's here.
And again, the ones that are being legal, following the regulations and even being stewards of the resource by keeping 11" or bigger fish, are penalized by a restriction of poles. Remember, Mississippi just increased their pole limit on the "Big 4" but also reduced the harvest from 20 to 15. Reason, because they listened to the sportsman, a limit is a limit regardless.
It's also interesting that now you say this is the first option if needing to do something to help the crappie population. But just a few months ago, Paul said that this option basically was not valid and not to worry about it. It was brought to the surface due to the KY League of Sportsman and possibly another group that felt that trolling needed to be made illegal or controlled.
We have enough regulations already, but what we need is the enforcement.