Trowen back those huge preggo gills

A good friend of mine and i were out this weekend slayen crappie and huge gills. We fished saterday and sunday and ended up with a nice haul of around 15 10 to 11 in gills and 21 11 to14 in crappie. We were throwen back everything with eggs. We threw back over 30 10 to 11 inch gills that were splitten at the seams with eggs........We thought we were doen a good thing by letten those huge gills finish there spaun but several people said we were crazy for not keepen those fish... I was just trying to get some feedback on this... What do you think? throw em back or eat em????????????

I throw back everything. If I kept any gills, I would probably keep the 7-8 inchers and throw back everything else: kind of a self-imposed slot limit.

Other than Crappie & Bass .... the "sunfishes" family members will spawn once a month, for several months out of the year. Removal of just males isn't going to help or hurt, anymore than removal of just females. Stay within the limit laws, of whatever body of water you fish, and you'll not be hurting the population.
Obviously, the waters you caught these fish from is capable of growing fish of this size ... and apparently able to sustain them, at that size. There is a debate about whether or not selective removal is better for fish growth vs keeping your legal limit (regardless of size, but especially the bigger fish) .... but, my take on it is this : If you catch a 6" gill & keep it ... it will never grow to be any bigger --- and if you catch a 10" gill & keep it ... it's already spawned way more times than the smaller ones, so it's already replaced itself hundreds of times over. Too many fish of a particular species, and they start to stunt from eating themselves out of whatever foodsource they thrive on. If anglers don't remove them, they'll keep growing in numbers, & even cannibilize their own ... but, usually they'll just stunt ... living to be "old", but never getting to the size they otherwise would have in the same timeframe.

Besides that .... unless EVERYONE is catching & keeping large numbers of these "big" fish, or female fish, then it's only a select few that are smart or lucky enough to do so. That means that there are probably way more anglers that are not catching them, than there are those that are catching them. For any "selective removal" theory to work, everyone would have to be involved in it. Otherwise, those fish you released are subject to being caught by someone that won't release them. Again, I emphasize ... take only what you can use, up to your legal limit. Conservation of the species (size & quality vs numbers) is a two edged sword. Overharvesting can be as bad as underharvesting, on fish that are prolific spawners. Not many people would buy a fishing license, if all they could catch were little fish ... your Wildlife Dept wants you to be successful at catching quality fish, so you'll keep buying a license (which helps them pay the bills) ... they also want new recruits to enter the game ... and they set the rules/boundaries of limits to allow the bodies of water, under their jurisdiction, to produce the quality fishery that will keep people coming back & purchasing the licenses & permits.

... cp :cool:

Actually, there are a number of studies out there that have shown that removal of the largest gills in a system can be very detrimental to the population as a whole. The reason is that because the largest fish are the spawners, and once a gill becomes a spawning fish, it's growth rate drops dramatically over the year. Once the largest fish are removed, the next size increment smaller becomes mature and becomes the spawning majority - and their growth rate drops way down. It's a cycle then, anglers keep taking the largest available class of fish, which keep getting smaller and smaller due to the fact that they simply can't grow much more. Then, the anglers crab and complain about how much better the gill fishing used to be.... Now for the disclaimer though - I think the studies I'm referring to have been conducted in northern waters - our growth season up here is MUCH shorter than you southern guys. It could be that in northern lakes this growth drop off is much more critical since they have so much less time during the year to actually grow, the growth rate is critical. I won't pretend to know much of anything about what happens in your lakes/rivers - but up here in the north, I've seen it so many times I can't count. Once the big gills are taken out of a system, it takes a very long time and virtually no fishing pressure, before gills will obtain a decent size again. This is why release of the biggest fish you catch, and keeping the small to average gills, is critical for our lakes. Now, if only we could get our department of natural resources to care about panfish and not just muskies and walleyes, we'd be in business!!! One more thing - I'm not sure if the same logic applies to crappie, but I would hope that anglers would practice the same tactic for crappies and perch too.

I keep enough for a few meals and pitch the rest back in for another day.

The biologists at American Sport Fish that help manage the private lakes I fish have told the owner to not keep any Bream. He did tell me that every once in a while I could keep a few. It is being managed as a trophy Bass & Bream lake. He doesn't like the crappie that are in it and loves for me to catch them. They shocked the lake a few weeks ago and said it was the best balanced lake they had seen and I can confirm that they shocked up 2 crappie that were big enough to break the Alabama state record. I hope one of those has my name on it!

Any lake I have fished that held large numbers of healthy panfish encouraged anglers to keep the fish. As stated above, bream are big breeders and it's very possible to overpopulate.

This is based on southern waterways.

I don't keep the fish I catch. I throw everything back, especially fish taken from spawning beds.