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Do You Keep or Let Go?

  • Release ALL

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Release MOST

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Release FEW

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Release NONE

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Release SPAWNERS only

    Votes: 0 0.0%
21 - 37 of 37 Posts
Years ago when I fished I would have to have said keep most. Now, I release all. That will change one time as my daughter insists she wants to eat one. She wasn't with me the last time out and I released all. She was upset with me, but I told her if she wanted to eat it she had to catch it. I'm certain after that happens, she will be just as happy as I am to release all.

This answer for the poll is specific to bass as that is what the poll asked for. Trout is a different story.
 
I release all mine when fishin. Then I release them after weigh in during a club tournament.

I do this to perservs our sport of bass fishing for generations to come. I just hope the enjoy it as much as I have.
 
Discussion starter · #23 ·
From about 1959 until I had to stop eating fried fish fillets you would have found me easing along with up to two stringers of bass, one on each side of the boat, my objective to always harvest my limit. I often had to keep using a stringer even after owning a livewell that couldn't hold ten big bass. I never met another fisherman on Lake Ouachita that released eatin' sized bass or any other species worth eatin' until big name tournaments began there.

Slowly some anglers began leaving some or most of their bass, hauling chests of crappie or gills home instead, and lately trying a striper. My circle has tried replacing some bass with stripers for eating, but that red meat is foul to most everyone, and even when all of it is removed it has a very strong kerosene odor while cooking and just isn't eaten up off any fish fry tables around here. Hosts have learned to warn guests with a sign labeling a platter as "striper". We've tried soaking it overnight in tomato juice, in milk, buttermilk, the works. But us Arkies tend not to like eating fishy tasting fish. Even local walleye is too strong for lots of folks. It's bass, crappie, bluegills, or steak.

Today there are still a large number of the old gang not influenced by C&R thinking, having no respect for Ray Scott's decisions, mostly just aware we have a lot of new retirees from all over the nation bringing that idea here. None of the above has proved out to be helping or hurting the fishery.

For now I keep whatever bass or other mild tasting species that my wife and I can consume in a week at a time, choosing smaller fish that when baked or broiled are not strongly "fishy" in taste. I'll keep larger fish if they get badly damaged from catching. The largemouths here, under about 4#, have a very clean and sweet flavor similar to crappie, both a little less tasty than walleyes here.

There are 7 Corps-maintained fish cleaning stations around the lake, each with numerous 50 gallon carcass cans, plus an electric grinder with water and septic systems for small fish parts and blood. Dedicated trash trucks make the rounds daily removing fish debris too big to be ground up. That's evidence of a huge harvest rate that just doesn't stop. What the C&R anglers release are simply reserved for more folks that harvest, so at least around here it seems pointless to assume releasing a bass will ensure someone else will C&R it.

None of the above is meant to disparage C&R, which might be the only solution for a lake with poor nutrition or other factors working against a good support of large bass.

Jim
 
Scott17b said:
I personally release all bass I catch. Just a personal preferrence. I figure that someone else will probably take the fish I am releasing eventually!
I feel the same way but cross my fingers that the guy behind me catching that bass will do the same!

Jay Fat City
 
I release all Bass, Large or Smallmouth.
I release Smallmouth because I feel it is a species much more easily decimated and needs to be managed much more carefully than Largemouths.
I release Largemouth because I like the feeling of knowing (or at least thinking) I am protecting the fishery for my son, and I have never cared for the taste of Largemouth caught up here in these weedy lakes.
 
its basicly where im fishing and how big the bass is.If i go on vaction or what not and i go fishing and i catch a bass thats big to me i normally keep it.I dont keep all because i catch not only big bass but also small and i always put them back to grow bigger and stronger.
 
Here in NY, At least on Long Island, the freshwater bass don't taste too nice. Sort of like MUD actually.

I have smelled and nibbled a bit that a friend breaded and pan fried... Wont do that again.

We have millions of striped bass that are easy to catch here on the Island in the salt so I dont go hungry...

JC
 
All my bass,perch,sunfish,and salmon get released.I keep a pickerel now and then,and I like a feed of brook trout too.
 
If I'm fishing for me then I release every single fish I catch. If I want to eat fish it will come from Long John Silver's or Captain D's. Maybe Mr's Pauls from the local grocer's freezer.

If I'm with my brother, or fishing the lake near my uncle's house then I may keep some fish on occasion so he can have them. Both my uncle and my brother do eat them, but not all, and usually just cats or trout, crappie and bluegills, an occasional bass mixed in. I'm sure they'd keep a limit of bass if they could but catching keepers on our lake is harder to do than you'd think. All bass have to be minimum 15" long on both local lakes we have that are any good.

My uncle and my dad both grew up fishing and eating what they caught. My brother was introduced to the sport through dad (as I had no real interest growing up), and now he likes to eat them as well. But me personally I was introduced to the sport some years later through a friend (he begged me to go and swore I'd love it, HE WAS RIGHT!!!) and he was catch and release all the way so that's how I became as well. When I fish with my brother and we do keep any I found out that I do not enjoy cleaning them and do not care for the taste, so to me doing this is pointless. I respect those who do wish to keep them as long as they abide by what is legal. However I will never keep one for myself, even if it was a trophy, I would just photograph it and release it again.
 
I release 99% of the fish I catch. I enjoy fishing for the fun of fishing and like to help preserve that for years to come. Once or twice a year I will go out and hit a school of smaller spotted bass here on Lake Martin and keep 20 or 30 of them to eat throught the year, along with some Crappie when they get to biting good in the spring and fall. I wont keep a bass that is in spawin, or prespawning stages, just personal preferance, as well as I wont filet a fish over 2 pounds. The only fish that I absolutely will not release back into the water are Mudfish and stripe. The stripe are over run down here on Martin and actually hinder the bass because there is a great competition for baitfish between the 2 species.
 
I release all, unless I think one will not survive, I usually hold one like that in the livewell to see if he will make it or not. Even at the public lake we fish here, where they want you to keep them, I dont, I enjoy catching them too much. C&R is not required anywhere I fish.
 
C&R for me!
BUT... (that's right)BUT.... I would keep a fish if it was record or close to it, as most of us know or assume ,that no one would believe it anyway, and no pictures or weight would do you any good, I'd keep it and call are local F&G.
the section of river i fish most we can't keep trout or salmon anyway ,so if i ever hit that record I might get locked up for stringing it up and tyring to keep it alive while i wait for dept. of fish and game.



I can dream .... :tongue2:
 
Due to my increased luck walleye fishing, I need to amend my previous response.

The only fish I keep now are walleye, perch, gills/redears. Now, I don't do this because I think bass are more holy than other fish. And I don't do it because some call it a sport. I do it simply because my freezer is full of better eating fish and bass would get passed by for other fish. Same with catfish. I used to really enjoy my fried catfish, but next to a plate of perch or walleye, I am not eating catfish.

Now if my walleye fishing deteriorates, I will once again keep all the keeper bass I need to so my family can eat fish every week. I enjoy both large and small mouth bass, but next to those other fish, they don't stand a chance.

I never kill a fish that I don't intend to eat.
 
21 - 37 of 37 Posts
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