Northwest Fishing Reports

I read this article at bassmaster.com and thought it was interesting in showing the other side of C&R.

http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/bass ... _200809005

Thats a big thing with pond owners. Eventually over time (the amount of time of course dependant on the body of water) bass will lose their good "genes" and eventually become more stunted and degenerate due to inbreeding. It is true that a lot of people are demonized for keeping their catch now adays but I think that is also dependant on your locality. Where I am from in the south people don't really care, but up here where the bass scene isn't as exciting people will damn near fight over it. If you are in a lake and catch a bunch of fish and majority of them are under 2lbs and its consistantly like that then it may need to be thinned out a little bit so that the forage base can support the growing of bigger bass. that just my 2cents.....

introduce some pike and muskie and be done with it

I would have to agree with most every thing that was said in that. There is a particular lake that all that is in there are LG me and the wife went there last year and over a 3 day period we probley caught and released 200+ fish 99% of them were less then 12". This lake is way out of the way and kinda hard to get to so its not that people are not keeping enough, the lake is just simpley not being fished enough. I catch and release all my fish for the simple reson I don't like to eat fish.

I get a chuckle out of guys like you T-Dot. I know you love your pike and musky, as do I, but they don't do well in all waters, and seldom do they do well in waters where bass overpopulate. Planting Tigers is expensive and planting pike can and often does lead to the loss of the almighty trout that co-exist with the bass.

Lake Coeur d' Alene in Idaho may be the best example. I hear tail that Cutthroat use to be a big species in the grand Ole lake, but that you almost never catch one now. I also understand that that happened concurrently with the illegal introduction of pike.

I have seen the overpopulation problem before. Granted, it is not a normal problem, but it happens. Lake Roosevelt is perhaps on the verge of overpopulation with SMB. If they state does not introduce an open water forage species than the limited forage will start to stunt not only the SMB, but everything else. Still, this is hear say to me. I catch a lot of SMB there, but the quality does not seem to be dropping yet. Buy the way, the lake may not have sufficient plankton to support more forage species, so don't tell anyone that anglinarcher said that...............

In South Eastern Idaho I saw Foster lake with so may LMB you could not get a lure in the water without catching one. The state had a minimum of 12" on the lake and I saw perhaps one fish that size in many years of fishing it. On the other hand, the bluegill, if you could get deep enough into the brush to catch them, were 10" +. The perch, if you ever caught one, was always 14" +. I was told that the state used the lake to stock bass in other waters.

In South Central Idaho I fished a shallow lake that had the same problem in 1981. Way too many LMB, no size, thin as a newspaper, but no one had the courage to keep them - C&R all the way.

I could go on with probably a dozen more lakes or ponds like this, but a dozen or so out of the hundreds of bodies of water I have fished is pretty good.

Here is my position on this. I like the old In-Fishermen position of Selective Harvest. When legal, keep a few for the table, but keep the smaller ones. Now frankly an 11" bass has less meat on it than an 11" perch, so this gets to be pretty problematic for me, but don't get on the guys that do keep a few. Also, teach C&R on the large fish. We are allowed on most of our waters to keep a single LMB over 18", which is fine if that is as large as they can grow in that body of water, but.................... I think that the pictures we all have on this site suggest that Washington can indeed grow fish larger then 18". Teach the new guys that we can indeed grow fish over 5 pounds in this state, if they leave the 18" in the water to grow. Learn from the new guys that a few 11" BASS for the table now and then is not all that bad, especially if the population is high.

I will keep some to eat but not that often. The 12iners are good eats. I also C&R most of the time, If all I'm catching is 1.5 pounders I'll keep 5 to weed out.

Trent Hale wrote: I will keep some to eat but not that often. The 12iners are good eats. I also C&R most of the time, If all I'm catching is 1.5 pounders I'll keep 5 to weed out.

I've just started doing this as well. I used to never keep any bass, but if I fish a place regularly and all I get are dinks, then I'll keep a few just to help spread the food base around more. If I'm unfamiliar with the average catch in a body of water, I won't keep any just to be safe.

with large mouth, the bigger the better . I dont go over 5 pounds for keeping. but bass is better than trout any day. if you havent tried it you need to . you will be hooked. my wife who "doesnt eat fish" now says 'make sure you bring some back to eat.' they usually feature bass recipes in field and stream. caint be that bad if they have legal limits.. if they were in dangered than they would cut down the limits. so keep some bass so we all can get better chances at landing that 10 pounder.!!!

I wouldn't call it "too much of a good thing" but I would say it is a major downside of Catching and Releasing, a very common practice in the bass fishing world.

tagwatson360 wrote:

Im not a mind reader but i think i know what you dont want say .... lol