Embarrassing and Costly Lesson

I had a fish Sunday that measured 12-1/16. I put him on ice and remeasured him and the rest of my shorter fish when we got ready to leave. He only measured 11-7/8. I had to throw him overboard. That's the first fish I've ever thrown over. I'll never keep another fish under 12-1/4 again in the summer if I can't keep him alive. I hated to waste one. I felt like a thief doing it. It stinks to waste a fish, and I should have put him back in the lake when I caught him. [emoji35][emoji35][emoji35] at myself.

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Originally Posted by Stickers

1/16th wow! Dang game wardens sound like trim carpenters> Ridiculous

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Short is short. Would have been illegal if it would have been 12" even.

I am gonna post this again. We have tested it, all fish shrink 1/8th inch when killed on ice. It doesn't matter if he's 16 inches or 11 inches u can bet it's gonna lose 1/8th inch. If u are using the fish checker/dropper/easy checker u need to subtract 1/8th inch because your fish isn't actually as big as u think because of the thickness of the plastic stopper. So get a ruler and lay the fish on it. Press him firmly against the stopper with mouth closed, pinch the tail until it's parallel, and chunk all of them back that are not over 12 1/8. U won't ever have to worry about it. Hopefully this will save y'all some tickets but this topic comes up several times a year.

Ding Ding Ding, we have a winner. That's all I use. I do not keep one unless it's 12 1/4 either Sucks but it is what it is

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Originally Posted by yikess

Golden Rule will solve the problem. Use what they use to measure.

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Originally Posted by BigRiverMarine

Short is short. Would have been illegal if it would have been 12" even.

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True. Glad I dont get a ticket every time I go down the interstate going 71mph. A "talking too" would have gone just as far as a ticket in this case.

In MS you arent going to get a "talking to" over a short fish, just the way it is.
I don't see anything embarrassing about this thread, you made a mistake, you owned it and are willing to pay your fines with no fuss. Your willingness to share the experience says more about the person you are, hopefully your encounter with Mr Green Jeans will help someone else.
Thanks for posting this.

What he said^^^^^^

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Originally Posted by Cap

Regardless, I have probably a $200 (or more) bag of crappie fillets at the house.

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You got lucky, same thing happened to my brother in law a few years ago on Sardis with one of those Frabill checkers and the warden took ALL their fish, legal and short. I think they had 3 short fish out of 20 or so between him and his fishing buddy. They probably had a pretty good fish fry at the warden station that night.

Caps and Coleman came out with their own version of the drop in checkers that were designed for bigger crappie, the Frabill ones are not big enough for the bigger fish to slide all the way down into so they measure longer than they actually are.

Bird Down..would love to see a picture of your checker

http://i1175.photobucket.com/albums/...sfxgprd0b.jpeg