Removing Bass to improve a fishery?

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rmcollins3
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Removing Bass to improve a fishery?

Post by rmcollins3 »

I'm relocating to the Atlanta, GA area and ran across this article while looking for a place to live. I'll post the story that's relavent to this topic:

"I will say that I’m pleased to report that the fish do seem to be getting somewhat bigger due to our efforts to remove bass and stock shad. Our fisheries biologist Shan O’Gorman removed 1800 pounds of bass 2 years ago and recommended, for us to achieve
our goal, we need to remove bass at this rate for 3–5 years. I’ve pulled about 100 bass this year and with two additional tournaments and continuing efforts to remove bass, we are moving in the right direction."


They had a tournament where the winning sack was about 2.5 lbs! I'm guessing there was no minimum length.

My question is would this benefit lakes where it is generally very easy to catch 20-50 fish in the 1-2 lb class but difficult to catch anything over 3lbs? Nacimiento comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others as well. Where the general thinking is to throw the fish back hoping it will get bigger, maybe we should actually be keeping a few of these fish instead.

Could this also have been the case in the Trinity Lake debate?

Can it actually benefit a fishery when smaller fish are removed? By benefit, I mean increase the average size of fish in the lake.

It could just be that this particular lake (Berkeley) is only 88 acres. But it seems that it might also apply to larger lakes as well. For the record, I'm all for catch and release and haven't kept a bass in over a decade but just thought I'd see what other's thoughts were on this particular subject.
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Morgan
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Re: Removing Bass to improve a fishery?

Post by Morgan »

I have participated for a couple of years in catching smallmouth at Shaver Lake due to too many in that lake and they have become stunted. (The F&G transport the fish) For a couple of years the fish were sent to Diamond Valley Lake. Those fish grew great.

Then we asked for the benefit of taking them to Pine Flat, which they have done. This year they said that they had tagged 200 last time and only 2 came in with 1,400 caught! That shows how many there are crowding that lake.

We are to do it again in August. Ultra-light tackle and it's a blast. The largest caught was 13" out of all of those. Most people catch 25-80, about 9". I think removing the small ones makes sense.

Morgan
mac (Doyle McEwen)
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Re: Removing Bass to improve a fishery?

Post by mac (Doyle McEwen) »

It is probably avery good idea to remove some smaller fish from most fisheries, especially those that are producing small or runted fish..If there is plenty of forage, then the need to remove smaller fish becomes less important..If every fishery was strictly catch and release they would all eventually become overrun with small stunted fish..Although catch and release is a worthwhile venture for the most part there are some situations it does more harm than good..

mac
Take a kid fishing, and don't forget about us older kids either..
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