I can't stand eating catfish but I'll eat crappie and trout never eaten bluegill
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I can't stand eating catfish but I'll eat crappie and trout never eaten bluegill
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnpondmanager
I considered that statement to be such an argument, but I guess you don't even consider it to be a valid consideration. Apparently the self serving poorer folks that actually like to enjoy fish as food just need to be relegated to buying farmed fish so that the sportsman may enjoy every species under the sun to themselves.Quote:
I think if the laws were changed to greatly restrict the panfish harvest, most that fish for them would just stop. There would be more to go around for those anglers that persist, but there would be a lot less anglers. Fishing then starts to become a sport of privilege where the only people that can enjoy it are those that can afford to spend the time and money doing it purely for the sporting benefit.
I don't think calling people narcissists or meathogs or other derogatory titles is going to garner any support for the cause.
Unless/until the Bluegill are managed by stricter size/numbers limits, I see no potential for progress towards conservation. Those limits are maintained by each state's DNR & F&W officials, as they should be.
... cp :kewl
I am significantly poorer than the average angler in this country who keeps big stringers of bluegill. And, as I already noted in this thread, it is in no way necessary to keep the largest bluegill, in order to eat them; seven-inch bluegill eat just as well or better than nine- and ten-inchers. As far as keeping fifty or a hundred at a time, that is simply greed; as no one family can eat that many fish in a meal. Probably one thousandth of one percent of the people in this country who regularly keep large stringers, live at the poverty line and depend on those fish for basic survival. I haven't seen any photos lately of big stringers of bluegill taken in front of shanties, with the anglers dressed in rags; typically the stringer is laid out in front of a $20,000 bass boat which is parked behind a $30,000 SUV which is parked in front of a nice suburban house. It really doesn't hold water to suggest the majority of big stringers are being kept by subsistence anglers - we all know better.
As to the regulations being implemented by the various state agencies: as I already mentioned, there are a handful of DNRs that have very progressive, informed (strict) regulations on bluegill; but most states at present have regulations on bluegill that have not changed in many years while their regulations on every other gamefish species have undergone constant revision and progress. Said states are failing, badly, and said failure has resulted in most of the best public bluegill fisheries being wiped out. If those outdated regulations remain in place, the few public fisheries that still have good fishing will soon go the way of the rest.
As far as the terms I have used to refer to anglers who keep big stringers of bluegill: read Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." It's one of the most famous political writings of the eighteenth century, and the most famous example of satire in the English language; it is somewhat less than flattering toward not only a large segment of the population of Ireland at the time, but also entire other nations. Swift was frustrated because no one was listening.
The state of bluegill fishing is not as important as the welfare of children in eighteenth-century poverty-stricken Ireland; but it is definitely a topic for which, at present, there is a great amount of ridiculousness, and a great lack of consideration for others being displayed by a good number of people involved. Biologists in multiple states have written exhaustive studies that conclusively prove overharvest is destroying our public bluegill fisheries one by one; one noted bluegill angler after another has spoken out politely on the subject, imploring anglers to think of the future and release the bigger fish; and yet the stringer people continue merrily along as though nothing had been said, no studies had been done, no entreaties made. After a while it gets frustrating.
I doubt seriously that smokers, if the decision had been left to them, would ever have chosen of their own accord suddenly to have consideration for their non-smoker fellow man and not fill his lungs with carcinogens whenever he was unfortunate enough to come into their path in public.
I've seen overharvest happen at least twice in my lifetime at two small ponds in New Washington, Indiana. The first pond is a six to seven acre gem of a farm pond that has several natural springs feeding it. It was apparently built in the early 70's and stocked by the state of Indiana. By the mid 80's it was producing stringers of 11-13inch shellcrackers that were between 1.8lbs-2.25lbs...MONSTERS for any part of the country IMO. By the early 90's, it had petered completely out and a big catch was an 8in cracker. I must qualify this with one important fact though, someone introduced crappie into the pond during this window of time and I always thought that really hurt the crackers in the lake, not sure. I've always read that you never stock crappie in lakes smaller than about 10-15 acres because they can take over.
The second case involves a relative of mine who's famous for his bluegill/shellcracker fishing abilities but also famous for keeping 100 fish everytime he goes out. He wiped out a small three acre farm pond in the same community as the shellcracker pond mentioned above. This pond was producing large ten and eleven inch northern strain bluegill and they were a pound a piece....whoppers considering they were bluegill. The fourth season of fishing was a complete bust for him because he had wiped it out in three short years.
So I believe that small bodies of water are extremely vulnerable to being over fished, even 1000 acre lakes are vulnerable. Where I would differ just a little bit is on the overharvest of big shellcrackers on the bigger bodies of water. Let's take Ky Lake for example, it's 150,000 acres of bluegill habitat all the way across the board, not to mention it's connected to it's 50,000 acre sister lake, Lake Barkley. I don't think there's many people who're skilled enough to even pursue shellcracker and hurt the population. Even when they're in full bedding mode, they're not that easy to find when the water's high and murky. You've got to be pretty darn skilled to catch 25 big shellcracker, even when they're nesting. Bluegill are much more prone to being overharvested because they're easier to locate and catch IMO. The guides could certainly put a hurtin on the shellcracker population in these big lakes I guess but my goodness with that massive amount of water to live in you'd naturally assume it could stand up to most fishing pressure. My goodness, the stringers of crappie taken from Barkley and Ky Lake are insane but they keep pumping out not only quality fish but trophy fish year after year. So my outlook would match Walt's but differ a bit on the big water/shellcracker outlook. I'm fully aware of a 1500 acre lake here in Southern Indiana called Dogwood Lake being fished out but it stood up for about 25-30 years of POUNDING.
Ice fishing hurts lakes more than anything according to my resources....not sure about that though.
As was pointed out earlier, bluegill may have different responses to overfishing than crappie. However, being from TN, I'm quite sure the OP is familiar with a significant local portion of the population that may be seen on most days in local public waters sitting upon their buckets harvesting pretty much everything bluegill they catch and have been since the days of the civil war, and yet the bodies of waters they fish seemingly have always continued to yield quality fish year after year. Some days they catch a few small ones, some days they fill the bucket with big ones. I'm sure some years are leaner than others, but the well doesn't ever seem to run dry. I don't think I've kept and cleaned more than 50 bluegills myself over the last 3 years (19 of those just two weeks ago), but I sure don't begrudge those folks on the buckets the opportunity to keep all they can use whether they catch them all at once or a few every day.
The suggestion that many public waters in Tennessee still regularly produce numbers of large bluegill, could not be further from the truth. Thirty years ago, when I was in high school, that was indeed the case; Laurel Hill, for instance, a 325-acre lake managed by TWRA, produced several good days of several 12-ounce-class fish each day, for my grandfather and I. Unfortunately, years of regressive regulations have allowed the lake's large bluegill to be fished down to the point that the big ones are now rare. If you go to the facebook page for the lake, you'll see dozens of photos of good-sized bass, catfish, and crappie that have been caught this year - but only a handful of bluegill photos, and only one - 1 - photo of a catch of more than two decent-sized bluegill. From all of last year, there are two photos of catches of more than one decent-sized bluegill. One of the small handful of photos of a bluegill from last year is a man holding up a single bluegill, with the photo caption reading "fourteen-ounce bluegill," as though that were a big one and something special, when they were caught that size on a daily basis thirty years ago.
If ever there were a state that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that overharvest can and will wipe out populations of big bluegill, it is my state. I have personally witnessed it many times. That’s the reason I argue about it so passionately.
Yet I know of similar sized lakes in TN that produce the same large bluegill now that they did when I was a boy 40 years ago. Poplar Tree lake, which is very near Memphis and is heavily fished is one of them. Not to say that over fishing may not be the cause at Laurel Hill, but there are other factors that may be at play since similar bodies of water with similar regulations have not suffered the same fate.
Quote articles, quote authors, give references, do what you want. Keeping 200 gills a year out of a 8,000 sq mile fishery isn't going to hurt a thing, I don't care what you say. It's been proven year after year after year. We're not talking a farm pond or a small sized Reservior. We're talking a 310 mile river system that averages 3 miles across. Please don't even try and argue catching bluegill with 2nd hand smoke either, 2nd hand smoke gives you cancer, last time I checked catching or not checking bluegill does not. Also, of you think that 4 out of 5 people fishing for bluegill throw them back rather than keep them you have LOST YOUR MIND!!! You can go to any lake, almost any time and if people are bluegill fishing with crickets and worms you better believe they are keeping them. I have NEVER pulled up to someone bluegill or cracker fishing and asked them if they wanted some fish and they they say no. People fish for gills to eat them, the majority do anyway. Uless, you are talking pond fishing with kids, then yeah they get thrown back.........it doesn't matter if your a member of a forum that has 5000 members who feel the same as you, the other 500,000 who fish for a keep bluegill annually far outweigh y'all. My argument with you has nothing to do with how you feel about bluegill, it's your attitude and the way you go about it. You have jumped on numerous posts and stated you did not approve. Stay off other folks threads if you don't agree with what they post. A simple report and pictures does not need to be slammed by you.