I hope this happens soon

[zimmy]

Originally Posted by tlapinski

Why a C&R only time frame? My quesiton being what do you do if you catch a bass in the C&R window that is obviously not going to survive. I seldom go out into the surf with the goal being to keep my limit of bass. However, if things happen and I have a deep hooked fish, spent fish from the fight, etc., then I have kept two fish in a night. When #2 goes on the stringer I call it a night and had to do so last season after landing back to back large fish, so the likelyhood of there being a real cow in front of me was pretty good. If that occurred in a C&R season I would be doing nothing but feeding crabs. A "better idea" is to have an all-out closed season if you are looking for a no-kill timeframe, but I am more against that than I am at modifying current regs.

I am not sure what I think about a closed season, but from an ecological/fisheries viewpoint, the injured fish is no worse when fed to the crabs than in your freezer. A small percentage of fish would be returned wounded or dead, but it would still result in substantially fewer fish harvested, which is the goal of the closed season. I have the same emotional instinct that a fish is wasted when tossed back dead, but if thousands of other fish are returned alive because of the closed season, it is far and away a net positive for the population.