Misc Vulgarities

[smead]

Tournament fishing...period. Izzak Walton, Aldo Leopold and NASCAR just don't mix...do you need to be missing a chromosome to appreciate such nonsense?

Litter...I suppose that it's best I never realized that ambition of becoming a wildlife officer...making a miscreant eat his streamside trash at gunpoint wouldn't make good press.

I suppose that I'm becoming an elitest in my old age...at least you have to take a course to get a hunting license. A co-worker was bragging about his recent fishing, he caught an 18" smallmouth on the Scioto. Well, he drug it around all day and gee, it died. I asked him what he was planning on doing with it, that he wouldn't release it..."Cook it". Asked him if he ate it..."Well no, it died." I'm just staring at him, wondering if was worth my job to just punch him in the mouth.

I'm tired of being surrounded by chimpanzees.

[smead]

Well, not punch him...sigh...maybe an Army style chewing out.

The problem is you could spend an hour calmly explaining why it was best to release such a specimen; he would smile and nod, then next week I would hear about another big one dying after he took it surfing for 8 hours on a gill stringer.

[Eugene]

I disapprove of the waste, but admit that I take no offense at the legal harvest of fish. A gross simplification, but the regulations should work to ensure sustainable populations. If they don't serve that end, they should be changed. Ideally, fish legally harvested will be put to good use and make those citizens who use the resource feel a little more personally invested in seeing it well managed into the future.

Frankly, I wouldn't want to eat a smallmouth that old and would release it in the hope that some angler to come along after me could enjoy it again. However, the most efficient spawners--the most valuable to a non-stunted smallmouth population--are those around 12-15 inches. Frankly, this fish was past its prime, reproductively speaking.

In cases like that you describe, smead, I have no problem offering something like "Why would you want to keep that fish? At that age, the meat isn't likely to be of particularly good quality any longer." I might even go on to share a recipe...and suggest it be applied to saugeye.

[smead]

I don't think the guy bothers with fishing regulations...nor considers conservation practice.

Aside from that, I would expect that the larger sized fish produces more eggs in the female and large males protect the nests better...is there an age curve where egg production falls off??

[Eugene]

Yes, in a way. Those bigger fish will largely be female. Females continue to produce more and more eggs as they grow larger, but a growing proportion of those eggs will not be viable as the female grows older. You can plot the number of eggs produced vs. their viability. For smallmouth, the point where fertility is at its peak (before the loss of viability catches up with egg production) is often cited as approx. 15".

Frankly, this guy should bother with fishing regs. Everybody who fishes should. I would remind him of that whenever the topic of fishing comes up.