No Easy Fix for Large Fish

I Found This Article On Another Site And Thought I Would Share It With You All.
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There's no easy fix to problem of shrinking panfish
by Chris Niskanen, ST. Paul Pioneer Press

I was having coffee with some fishing guides in Walker, Minn., a few weeks ago when one began crowing about the great bluegill fishing on a certain lake.

Quickly, another guide chimed in, "We don't want you to write about that. You print something like that and those big bluegills will get fished out in no time."

The worried guide was right — big bluegills easily can be overfished. Department of Natural Resources biologists say the No. 1 cause for Minnesota's declining population of large bluegills is overfishing.

Though anglers blame stunted growth when lakes become populated with little panfish, more often the culprits are anglers taking bucketfuls of large bluegills and pumpkinseeds.

Last weekend, my daughters were anything but quiet about the bluegills we were catching in a northern Washington County lake. Every time my 4-year-old hoisted one over the gunwale, she screamed, "It's a keeper!"

Some were. Our rule: anything 8 inches or longer went into the livewell. The limit is 20 per person, so technically our family could keep 80 whopper bluegills.

But I knew 12 or 15 would be enough for dinner. We ended up keeping only six.

Smaller panfish bag limits might be in Minnesota's future.

Don Pereira, DNR fisheries research manager, said there is growing interest among anglers to further protect trophy sunfish populations. The DNR now has a "panfish advisory" committee of anglers who are advising the agency on panfish management.

"We have a number of lakes around the state that has panfish bag limits of five or 10 fish, and the advisory committee is requesting more of them," Pereira said.

Panfish — the family name for bluegill, pumpkinseeds and green sunfish — are the most popular fish in Minnesota. Yet schemes for managing them for trophy sizes — say, 8 inches and larger — have proven elusive.

Some years ago, Minnesota researcher Pete Jacobson studied eight Minnesota lakes with a history of good bluegill fishing. He tried an experiment using daily limits to try to increase the size of bluegills. Four lakes had the bag limit reduced from 30 to 10 fish; four other lakes retained a 30-fish limit.

After five years, three lakes with a 10-fish limit were producing bigger bluegills. But slow growth is a problem. In one lake, the average bluegill size jumped an inch, from 7.3 to 8.2, in five years. That was considered a success because in northern Minnesota bluegills grow exceedingly slowly.

A few years ago, with a mixture of grumbling and acceptance from anglers, the DNR lowered the statewide sunfish limit to 20. It is not known what effect that has had on overall size of sunfish in the state.

"Our advice to anglers is when you find a hot bite on large panfish, don't kill lots of the big fish," said Pereira. "To maintain these populations, it's really a matter of curtailing our kill."

Other experiments that protect predator fish such as northern pike and largemouth bass so they weed out small, stunted sunfish haven't been successful, mainly because in Minnesota the peak warm season for predators to eat lots of sunfish — midsummer — does not last long enough to sufficiently trim big schools of sunfish.

The problem of panfish stunting and overfishing is more connected than we thought.

Recent research shows that when large male bluegills are removed from a lake, the "pecking" order of spawning males is upset. With the larger "bull" males gone, the younger, smaller males assume spawning duties. They also begin maturing earlier. Thus begins a vicious cycle of small males successfully taking over spawning duties and never reaching large sizes.

We aren't sure if we disrupted the bluegill spawning habits in the lake we fished last weekend, but everyone knew we were catching fish when my daughter enthusiastically yelled, "They're keepers!"

Even though most of them weren't.

This is really true I believe. I have seen this happen many times and in many places. What bothers me more than anything is that these newspapers, magazines, webistes, T.V. etc., put out the word about a certain pond, lake or stream and right away you have to take your own rock to stand on when you go to fish there.

I have stumbled across a few places in my lifetime that I worked hard to find. When I did well at a particular place, I kind of had the feeling that it was mine and I kept it secret. I also had a lot of respect for the place and picked up trash and things like that because I wanted to keep it the way I found it. After all it was mine right? Well the next thing you know someone publishes the whereabouts of this particular place and every lazy bum in the country is there and ruins it. I'm talking about the kind of people who are too lazy to go out and spend days and days hiking into places to find a good spot. They will sit on their butts and let somebody else do that for them, and then when they hear about one of these places they are the first ones there to trash it and fish it out.

Jim
As for limits on fish, I think that's a good idea. Used to be that it was no problem at all to go over to Brownlee Reservoir and catch a bunch of nice sized (10-12 inches) Crappies. I'm talking enough for a meal at home and maybe a few to put in the freezer. Not anymore. When the word got out in the media several years ago by publications such as "Fishing and Hunting News", and T.V. shows like Larry Shcoenborns' "Fishing the West", the oriental people started flocking over here by the droves. There will be entire clans of them. I'm talking 20 to 30 people, camped on any little flat spot they can find and they fish 24 hours a day. The reservoir is lined with them on both the Oregon and Idaho sides. There is no size or number limit on Crappies in Oregon, so anything that's alive goes into the bucket. I have seen them throw Crappies into a bucket that I swear were not any bigger than 4 inches long. It actually borders on a commercial fishery over there now.

It Is Truly Sad That Is For Sure, About 20 Years Ago There Was A Lake South Of Me That Was Loaded With 10lb Walleye And Yes You Would Get One That Was A Wall Hanger (12lbs Or Bigger.) Well I Can Remember One Day When I Was Fishing There, And These Kids Came Out There Fishing, And I Kid You Not, Them Kids Left That Lake With There Limits (6 Apiece,) And It Made My Stomach Turn. I Knew Right There That It Was The End Of That Lake Do To Them Kids Keeping Them Fish They Had No Idea That Them Fish Were There Till That Day. Now Another Thing About This Lake Is That It Was Very Hard To Catch A Crappie Under A Pound There And The Lake Was Loaded With Them, Yep It Had A Very Large Island On It Were You Could Set A Tent Up And Spend The Weekend In Peace And Quit. Well It Took About A Week After Them Kids Caught Them Fish And Took Them Home, (I Should Add That You Maybe Seen 2 Boats On That Lake In A Week And That Was Someone That Had A Cabin There) That There Was About 20 Boats On The Lake Some Days Even More, So Within That Year Including Winter Time The Lake Was Trash And Fished Out. They Done So Much Harm To That Lake That People Have Sold There Cabins There That Have Lived There All There Lives, It Is Truly Sad What Selfish People Can Do To Such A Pris-teen Place.

Its sad but thats just the way it is..They do the same thing here at Cordel Hull Dam..These folks from Viet Nam will catch anything big enough to bite a hook and boys, they don't throw NOTHING back.

They do the same on the coast...Keep anything and everything.