Nimrod did not say he keeps large crappie - he said that he had asked a state biologist if the people keeping the big crappie were hurting the gene pool by doing so, by allowing the fish with lesser genetics to take over. And when to say that all fish have the same genetics, is to reveal the depth of one's ignorance regarding fish - that's akin to saying that every human can grow the same height as Kareem Abdul Jabbar, or run as fast as Usain Bolt. The difference between more and less desirable traits among a given species is a cornerstone of modern agriculture, not to mention aquaculture, so it's just laughable to argue that all fish have the same genetic potential to grow large. Some people really will say anything to defend their greediness on the water, because they know deep down they are wrong.

So it's legal, as of the moment, for a person to keep fifty bluegill in a day's fishing. Not too long ago in this country it was legal to smoke in any public place in the country - did that make it any less carcinogenic to the non-smokers? Did the law make it any less wildly inconsiderate, and completely disregarding of another human being, to smoke in a non-smoker's face, just because you legally could? Fifty years ago it was legal in many parts of the country for restaurants to refuse service to someone based on the color of his skin - I suppose that made it right? I have a strong suspicion one of the participants in this thread probably smokes in non-smokers' faces on a regular basis and thinks nothing of it. Because of course that's what the Constitution was referring to in the Bill of Rights - it even has a sub-clause guaranteeing the right to give others cancer if it makes you get a buzz.

I'm not a tree hugger - as I already said (but it was ignored because some people will say anything, including distorting the truth, to try to defend their indefensible stance), I am as far from liberal as a person can get. I try to live by Mark 12: 30, one of the two commandments Jesus gave us: "Love your neighbor as yourself." He didn't say, "Unless you don't feel like it, or it cramps your style, or you want to load up your freezer even if it destroys your neighbor's fishing."

Lake Perris is nearly two thousand acres. An even better example is Lake Okeechobee, an example I've given several times but which was conveniently ignored because it proves I'm right. I'd love to hear an explanation of how the bluegill averaging seven to eight inches now in Lake Okeechobee, even though the largemouth are by the accounts of many guides doing fantastic and as big as ever, has nothing to do with overharvest. The limit on largemouth is five, with a protected slot - but of course that has nothing at all to do with why they're doing so much better in the lake than the bluegill are. The hurricane and the weeds that diminished but are now prominent again just happened not to hurt the largemouth but have decimated the bluegill size, even though they both use the same habitat.

Even if one needed the number of fish some people in this thread keep annually to survive, there's still no excuse whatsoever to keep the largest fish. A half-pound bluegill eats just as well as an eleven incher, with the major difference that keeping a half-pounder from a system where there are bigger fish, does not hurt the genetics like keeping the bigger fish does. I realize the meathog in this thread didn't bother to read the article I linked to that relates how Illinois biologists have discovered that removing the largest males from a bluegill population permanently weakens the genetic potential of that population; or maybe he conveniently just chose to deny the truth of what is now accepted as fact by scientists who study bluegill. He's a big believer in biologists when it comes to the ones who allow him to pillage the resource, but any biologist who disagrees with him doesn't know what he's talking about, or his research only applies to other waters.

To all the sane, considerate anglers reading this thread: if enough of us contact our various state DNRs and demand that they bring their regulations on bluegill into the current century, it will happen. Most DNRs now have regulations on largemouth that take into account the body of knowledge we have now on that species, because largemouth are the most popular fish in the country and the biologists couldn't get away with disregarding them. But biologists in many states at present pretend that bluegill are not important enough to anglers to bother with careful management of. I actually had a TWRA guy say to me, when I proposed stricter limits for a local lake that was just beginning to have a trophy bluegill fishery, that they would have to do an angler survey over the course of a year to determine if anyone was fishing for bluegill. And two months later it was irrelevant because all of the anglers who weren't fishing for bluegill had wiped out all the big ones in that lake.

And this is really the bigger issue. It's not just that one trophy bluegill fishery is at stake, the one that we're assured can never be fished out; it's the fact that every time a photo of fifty big male bluegill is posted on a forum like this, another meathog is encouraged to go out and do likewise on his own local hotspot in Virginia or Tennessee or Arkansas or wherever. It's exactly this mindset that has led to most of the best public bluegill fisheries in the country being overharvested to the point that their fishing is a shadow of what it once was.

But I suppose some people won't believe it until every last public waterway is depleted. Then they'll give the rest of us a carefree grin, tell us that's just life, and go fish for bass. Because after all, it was perfectly legal.