its time to change Wisconsin’s Bass Size limit…

Largemouth bass overpopulating many lakes By Associated Press

Jun. 13, 2009 | .

Spooner – Wisconsin wildlife officials say bass catch-and-release might be working too well.

The Department of Natural Resources says a mail survey of bass anglers found they kept only 550,000, or 6%, of the 10 million bass they caught in 2006. In contrast, state anglers kept about 2.2 million of 7 million walleye caught, or about 30%.

DNR fisheries biologist Larry Damman in Spooner says high minimum size limits coupled with catch-and-release has resulted in many lakes with overabundant, stunted bass populations in which few largemouths ever reach legal size.

Fisheries managers want anglers to harvest more bass in northern Wisconsin, especially in Polk and Washburn counties, to keep population numbers in balance and improve growth rates.

this article ran this weekend on the JSONLINE PAGE.
it was buried, but it still ran.

Now is the time for Wisconsin to LOWER ITS SIZE LIMITS ON BASS.

Why? what was the size limit when you were a kid? if you are 25 or more, it was 6 inches. Now that’s too little.

but 14 inches has proven to be too big.

Put a 12 inch size limit on bass and bring more people into fishing. Let the kids and the bank fishermen catch a keeper bass, because that’s exactly who was eliminated when the size limit went up. As a bait shop owner, I knew my clientèle, and they were bank fishermen. and as soon as the size limit went up they stopped catching keeper fish.

Plus removal of 12 inch bass isn’t going to hurt ANYTHING. Its going to improve recruitment and overall bass size.

this was a major wrong move. and its time that its corrected.

You catch ’em…I’ll fry ’em!!!

That is happening all over the Midwest…time to promote eating some Bass and releasing more Walleye…

well at least the first two posters weren’t ripping me. On another forum, had I posted this years ago, I would have been stripped naked and burned at the stake.

this is something that I have known for close to 25 years, because that’s the year that it happened. It was wrong to begin with and now that Wisconsin has lost a ton of license holders they are desperate to turn things around.

Selective harvest, regardless of species, makes sense.

But how do you eat those grass carp?? I tried pickling them and that didn’t even work

I know there are a lot of bodies of water, but to do this correctly, the DNR needs to evaluate each body of water and apply regulations to each fishery. I can say this, in the River the regulations are right on par. My opinion. I agree many small lakes/ponds become stunted. The slot limit has definately helped the walleye fishing on the River where I live. Lots of eaters out there, and a good number of bigguns.

Smaller smallmouth (12″ – 14″) are actually pretty good. I’ve eaten them in the BWCA and they taste a little like bluegill. They’re not my favorite by any means but I’ve tried them… and they weren’t the worst thing I’ve ever eaten./

I sent an 19″ smallie home with a client one time (regretfully, it happens no matter how careful we are) after it got a crank treble in the gills and bled out. This guy was a self professed “fish eatin’ mutta’ and the word back was that big bass was the last one he ever wanted to eat.

I know that the river is healthy with bass. IT WAS IN 1975 Jim Holtzer the DNR official moved from Milwaukee to LaCrosse. in fact that year, I had the opportunity to hear him address one club in Milwaukee and another in LaCrosse within a matter of months.

It was put to him at the time, that in the past some times bass get “caught” in a situation where the water drops and they are stuck in a back water pond..

RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE CLUB, THE WISCONSIN DNR SAID,” Good, because it will help recruitment. and that the river had too many bass already. “

the size limit at the time was NO SIZE LIMIT ON BASS ON THE RIVER.. NONE. ZERO.

so trust me, the WISCONSIN DNR NEVER NEEDED TO IMPOSE A 14 inch size limit on the river. EVER.

and the Lake is full of 13 inch fish. piles of them.

less fish are being kept now then ever. the upper Mississippi is NOT A BIG FISH body of water. ITS A NUMBERS BODY OF WATER. and always has been.

I cannot remember a big fish being 5 lbs in almost ANY TOURNY. EVER since 1975. This is a numbers body of water.

catch 100, 200, 300 bass a day.. and they will be all about a pound and a half. but its completely silly to have such a restrictive size limit.

SILLY.

I posted this before…For years Bass were favored table fare in the midwest.
1)soak skinless fillets in fridge overnight in water with 1/2 cup of Lemon juice
2) season with garlic salt, pepper, Old Bay
3) coat with your favorite batter mix
4) deep fry at 375 till crispy golden brown

You will not be disappointed!

Quote:

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I cannot remember a big fish being 5 lbs in almost ANY TOURNY. EVER since 1975. This is a numbers body of water.

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There were two over 5lbs in yesterday’s tourney and big fish weighing in @ 5lbs has been the norm for a while.

but anyway – if they lower the size limit to 12″ (which I have no problem with) – then I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t allow culling too

They are great smoked!

every tourny you have ever fished, YOU CULLED. so did everyone else in the tourny..

when you released your fish at the end of the day , you decided that your fish were “unacceptable” and you released them. in a SENSE, that is CULLING. returning a previously caught fish and put back into the water having kept it in a livewell of some sort.

its not “culling” in every sense of the word, but, all in all, its still culling, and it SHOULD BE ALLOWED IN THIS STATE.

the main reason for the “culling law,” was to prevent, a guy , from putting a fish on a stringer, dragging him around ALL DAY, and then dumping the dead body, because you caught a bigger fish. Most likely walleyes in the spring.

that was the original intent of the law..

But if you have fished a tourny, you have culled. and so has anyone who brought a fish to the scales that was released.

Can not remember the exact time, but not long ago this issue of bass in Polk county lakes was reported-many fish were dying of old age before reaching the legal harvest size of 14 inches due to over population. As James said, selective harvest makes the most sense-
Culling would cure many of the current tourney problems of the rules saying no, but guys doing it anyways.

Jeremy