River and panfish

This board is a great add on to fish the river. I don`t think there is a fisherman out there that does not enjoy fishing for panfish at some time or the other.

I have fished the Missiissippi in the LaCrosse area for years. Used to be you could catch bluegills just about any where you could get a line in the water. Now it seems you have to fish hard to even catch any gills of size, and then somedays you can`t catch a decent gill to save your soul.

I am so pleased to see the DNR has lowered limits on panfish, and I hope this helps. I know it would really upset some people but I would really like to see a closed season on the river. A good majority of ice fisherman are meat fisherman, they seem to keep everything they catch dosen`t matter how big it is. I just cringe when I see these large fish taken home just to eat. be it bluegill. crappie, bass walleyes, or northerns. Fish are so concentrated at this time of year. And the worst part is some of these people are down there day in and day out just keeping as many fish as they can catch.
I know there will be some one upset with me, with my above statement. But I have freinds that do this exact thing all winter long, they don`t fish summer because they say it is too hard to cath fish then.DDDDUUUHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. GET A CLUE.
Sorry about the rant. Just wanted to get it off my chest.

Thanks
Tom

I don’t think we’ll ever see a closed season on panfish. Really not feasable. Many reasons for that and not enough time to get into it. I suppose though, if they were to have a closed season, the best time for one would be during the spawn. If the corps. and dnr from each state would come together and do some more dredging of the backwaters to make more wintering areas, keep and enforce existing limits, there would be no need of a closed season on panfish. “Dreaming of the perfect world”

Say Tom, The Lacroose area is blessed with wintering areas compared to the rest of the river. Last summer during a stressfull heat spill there were literally thousands of bluegills in this one Lacroose area. I think they are starting to make a comeback mainly because of the cleaner water due to the weeds & zebra mussels. After getting some feedback from some of you on our dwindling wintering areas, my next step is to get ahold of the DNR in my Cedar Rapids area about a limit on Panfish numbers & sizes. {John}