WI DNR fish rules for April 12 hearings

Interesting article on page seven of the February edition of Wisconsin Outdoor News. In the article Mike Staggs, the Wisconsin DNR fisheries chief is quoted as follows:

“The second thing is that we are at a crossroads with special regulations. There are a lot of regulations on the books now and we’ve come to a point where special regulations are widely accepted and a tool that almost everybody thinks will solve all of the problems, but we have a lot of questions about which of the special regulations work, and which ones don’t”

The DNR and UW-Stevens Point are evaluating things like panfish bag limits, muskie and northern pike size limits, and walleye and trout limits to determine how well rules work.

If you don’t go to the meetings and/or fill out the questionaire, I don’t want to hear you Bit$h and moan the next year !!!

jetdriver I hear ya. Curious anyone’s thoughts on slot limits. Do they work or are they BS? Examples for any species, not just trout.

Here is a link for locations for April 12 7pm meetings:

April 12 WI Spring Hearings

More basic info on spring hearings

I personally think slot limits are great. I enjoy eating fish as much as the next but if you cant catch eaters…(millacs) the grocery store sells walleye. Let the big ones go so others can catch them too. I wish they would put a slot on the river. To me a true trophy is 10lb+ anything less should be let go and anthing over 18 shouldnt get the knife. I think the replicas look 10 times better than any real mount and they last forever. My thoughts.

Another quote from WDNR fisheries chief Mike Staggs:

“The first questions we’re asking are those (rules) that we believe are no longer needed and can be simplified.”

As for trout I see no reason to have 32 pages worth of special regulations, especially the fertile Driftless area.

In western WI majority of streams only allow keeping 12″ or larger trout when in fact in any productive fishery one should be harvesting the most plentiful trout, those UNDER 12″ not over 12.”

If you haven’t read this article dealing specifically with slot limits, then maybe you should take a couple minutes to do so.

I’m a firm believe in slot limits. Having said that, I do not think all slot limits are created equal.

Slot Limits: Do they really work?

As for the spring conservation hearings, please take the time to go and make you vote count.

Thanks for the link Joel. I see you are a numbers guy who puts in a lot of time recording everything you catch. I agree with most in that we should let the big ones go, harvest the most plentiful within a population. I have a letter from Marty Engel, western WI fisheries biologist who said a number of years back special regulation categories were simplified from 50 to 12. That makes sense.

For trout a number of streams have a 10-14″ or 12-16″ protected slot. I am fine with that. Spring creek stream trout 14″ or larger are rare. Therefore the current regulation of harvesting trout only 12″ or larger (versus harvesting trout under 12″) is foolish.

Wow thats some impressive #of bigger fish in a few years. I wish I was as disipilined with my log book.