Am I the only one still scratching my head when I see people who say they are helping preserve the fish resource by releasing far more than they take home, or does honestly fall right along side how crappy many people treat each other today? Stringers and coolers full of walleyes today will lead to empty waters tomorrow. Guess everyone has to live with their honesty or dishonesty.
Wisconsin Fishing Discussion
Honesty
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"Stringers and coolers full of walleyes today will lead to empty waters tomorrow."
But will it? Look back in time...the 60's, 70's, 80's and half the 90's it was pretty normal for everyone to keep just about every legal fish they could....did it have an adverse effect, sure it did....did it lead to empty waters, it absolutely did not.
Since the mid 90's, when catch and release became popular and selective harvest became a thing (and that includes right now), fishing has improved. I would venture to say there are more fish, and certainly more big fish right now than there ever was in the 80's.
Now I don't really keep fish...maybe a few pike, a couple burbot and one or two random walleye a year....haven't kept a single fish yet this year....but it's not because of a lack of fish as I have been catching lots and lots of fish and when I look back, I catch hundreds of fish every year that in the 70's and 80's when I was growing up would have been considered "once in a lifetime" trophies.
I went to school for fisheries, and there are some things that I think the average guy just doesn't understand....one of those is the utter fact that its actually beneficial to take out smaller fish, even in pretty large numbers, as these small fish take up a big portion of the food source, leaving less for the fish that have the genetics to grow into trophies.
Another is with regards to panfish....I hear all the time, "I only took males so the females can reproduce"....which is precisely what you would want to do to crush the panfish population as things are just different with them....in the bluegilll world, females are a dime a dozen, its the males that are critical as they do 100% of the bed and fry protection and the bigger the male, the more he can protect and the more effective he is at protection.
So often people react on emotions and not on real understanding of fisheries or fish, and I get that, very few of us actually went to school to study fish, but still, we all want to play armchair fisheries biologist.
Lakes ebb and flow, a great lake now, may not be in 10 years, conversely, a bad lake today, may become a great lake down the road....and that great lake that took a slide, will eventually rebound in time.
When people build their own lakes, often after about 5 years, they end up having fish kills, and you get a big freak out, but the fact is that almost without exception the reason in that the property owners are not taking enough fish out.
IMO the best thing for fisheries are slot limits, and I don't get why they aren't implemented more often...slots are pretty much what keeps all those popular Ontario lakes productive year after year as those slots protect larger fish and allow for the keeping of those abundant smaller fish, which is actually so important for the long-term health of the fishery.
Catch and release works...and keeping of fish is not necessarily a bad thing fwiw.
There's lots of new people in the sport of fishing and they are picking up some really bad habits, ignorant or don't care what the laws are and fish mishandling my goodness it's the norm. FB fishing pages are loaded with it. Say anything constructive and you'll look like Bonnie and Clyde's Ford.
In my younger years, a limit was the cool thing. As I got older I realized it wasn't, so I have gotten selective. I'd rather clean 10 fish than 50. I also change it up a lot more now. One day might be panfish, next day inland trout, then walleye, then musky, etc. I find that more fun than doing the same thing over and over.
Bigger fish are fun to catch, but I prefer mid-size fish to eat. By that I mean 8-10" perch instead of 12-14" perch. Or 9-10" crappies vs 12-14" crappies. Those big ones look great, but if you watch people grabbing fish to eat, they take the smaller ones first. Same thing with walleyes on Green Bay, I rather eat them less than 20" and let the rest go. Plenty of fish out there these days to accomplish that. If I don't catch enough smaller ones to keep a limit, that's okay too.
I do catch my limit alot but rarely keep my limit. I just search for hopefully a trophy or pb and then keep the eater size fish to what me and the wife feel we would eat the next day. We usually go on 2 week long fishing trips we fish every day and catching a bunch of fish but out of the 14 days we only keep fish 2 or 3 of the days to eat the next day. I did get the wife to go ice fishing on the Mississippi backwaters late February we had blast caught fish everyday close to 100 gills and 40-50 perch the whole week but only kept 9 total perch 10" -12" the last day. Honestly
I fish alot and release 95% to 100% of the fish I catch. That leaves about enough for a family fish fry every week. Seems fairly fish friendly to me. Sometimes I have a big fish fry for friends, around 5 or 6 times a year, or give a few to old people who can't get out themselves anymore. Let the largest fish go, and I don't even bother spawning fish, much less keep them. I only keep post spawn fish. I believe that doesn't harm the resource at all
Most people who care about the resource aren't posting on lake link or engaged with groups. They go and fill up coolers and freezers. I kept 1 walleye this weekend for tonight's dinner. Could have kept 4, along with my limit of crappies and some big bluegills. All are still swimming except the one walleye because one walleye is enough for me and my wife and I don't freeze fish. I kept in total around 35 panfish this winter, good for around 5 meals. I fished every weekend, so I kept a small percentage of my catch. So I guess I released more than I kept, which is supposedly a bad thing, or am I just a rare honest person?
Honestly speaking? What is happening to the lakes up north towards Vilas County is disturbing to me. Not because I go up there anymore, but because I grew up there.
Honestly speaking? When I was going back, I went back for opening week for walleye. And I was there seeking my limit so that me and my family could eat walleye. Guessing we would keep about 15-20 walleyes between 3 fishermen over the course of a week. Mostly because the limits were/are low. Guessing we would catch 75-100 walleyes to find those 15-20 legals. Also, I have a fond spot in my heart for Vilas County because I did catch a 30 incher up there. Truly a rare fish and it was nice to see her released.
Now? I don't fish up there. But I do keep about 25-35 walleyes a year out of Green Bay. (Multiple anglers) Guessing we catch around 200-250 a year. And we release a few 30 inchers every year and more 27 inchers than I can count.
I try to keep only males and so far this year, my boat has kept 13 fish. All males. Probably boated 60 fish in 3 outings.
I do try to "conserve".
We keep no bass. No perch (though we should). No musky. But whitefish? Yah, we keep about 40 whitefish a year. The limit is 10 per person, and we tend to take only 6-10 fish an outing, because that is what we can eat before we need to freeze them.
I hope this "honestly" answers your question.
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