Michigan Bass Season POLL

[Mojo]

C&IR means : Catch, photo, measure, release immediately after within 100 ft of where fish was caught.

C&DR means: allows for tournaments to occur, but fish are returned to their waters.

This is the place to sound your opinion. To document it. So for example, Seth stated clearly his position and why.  Recommend to not agree, disagree or argue anyones point - just put your opinion on this topic.

Dan may be able to use these threads as a body of evidence.  

Also - drop a note if you have another option to add to the vote.

[SethV]

More C&R season doesn't really change anything.  I guess its better than what we have now - but we really need to do away with the season for good. 

Those that think we need a C&R season should go join PETA or something.  Why in the world would we need "C&R" in March so we can't have tournaments, but its ok to keep them and have tournaments in the summer?  You aren't protecting anything - all you are doing is making silly laws.

[ROI Outdoors]

Year round CDR permit (catch & delayed release) is the most sensible in my opinion.  Keep the harvest season the same and we are all set.........I'm confident that this will become reality in the very near future - common sense will reign supreme!

[Skulley]

ROI, Sometimes common sense isn't so common.  But I do agree with you on a CDR permit.  It is the most sensible.  This has been a long time coming.  It's too bad that we had to get there taking baby steps instead of using good conclusive data from other states, specifically Texas.  Those guys down there got it going on when it comes to the science of the species.  They have spent the money and spent the time in their studies. 


BD                      

[Jmcfarland]

I would like to be able to fish all year round. I would like to see the catch delayed release option put into effect during the open water period. Catch & immediate release through the ice would be legal. I don't see a lot of sense for catch delayed release ice fishing for bass. This would make it legal to have tournaments earlier in the open water season and would make scheduling and fishing more tournaments a lot easier. It would also make ice fishing and keeping bass for any length of time illegal. The more gas, hotels, lures, entry fees, etc,etc we're buying and spending money on the more that has to help the economy and state in one way or another. The harvest season would stay the same. I know up here if there are fish on beds during the open harvest season there being targeted by most everyone. Not just tournament anglers or recreational anglers. The difference is that the tournament anglers catch a limit of 6lber's off beds those fish go back in the lake within 8hrs. More recreational anglers have a tendency to keep them. Not all of them but a fair number. Why extend the time for that to go on? I'm not sure this was an option to vote on but it is my opinion.

[Waterfoul]

Im seeing polls like this on a couple other sites and I'm kind of amazed at the number of people voting for no change.  Not a lot of people, but some nonetheless.  I really don't understand that at all unless they are die hard traditionalists who fear change.  Just my opinion of course.

[bob o]

ok lets go forward with this

[Mojo]

Now the choices look like that from SALBRC. I'm embarrassed the mdnr represents our sport to law makers.  They depended on a flawed report from phD paneled people who rifled through documents written 40 years ago or worse. They claimed to review other states, but nothing is cited out of state. And the mdnr used this paper to support introducing changes into law.  Seems SALBRC was written to support their 3 biggest issues:

* keep people off the waters for 6 weeks "when musky, pike, and walleye concentrate to spawn". Afraid ppl will claim to be bass fishing. Those folks that fish for those species have the same addiction as we do, so I see them claiming to be bass fishing just like some of us claim to be pike fishing  .

* C&DR will expose nests and deplete the population.

* seeming to think nesting stops around April 1st, memorial day, or the 3rd week in June and bass nests needs to be protected

Based on these 3 issues, whether you agree or not, are the reasons we are limited in our
fishing. Each one needs a counter with data.

I think C&DR will not be Allowed during the spring, nor do I think they will move back the possession date. They're just too engrained.  ... This not my opinion.

So to get us off center, and something changed in the next 20 years, I propose either:

C&IR Jan 1 - the Saturday preceding memorial day - bass only, and you need a $15 permit.  Possession memorial day - Dec31st  

Or a slick tactic to tie some marketing for outdoorsman to increases in both bass and hunting that the retarded mdnr would love:

C&IR Mar 15 - the Saturday preceding memorial day - bass only, and you need a $15 permit.  Possession memorial day - Nov 14th. C&DR Nov 15th - Mar 14th

This last stupid silly law would:
* provide nest protection
* ensure you are fishing for bass during spawn not other species and you paid and have a sticker so you can't be caught and have to lie
*reduces possession season but promotes the outdoorsman to go get their hunting licenses after fishing season ( blows away the Dec 31 date Why is it needed)
* allows dnr to market a proactive new tournament ice fishing opportunity to bring out of state monies to a new state winter sport (lol- wrapped snowmobiles, carrying sleds, blast off at daybreak, race n cut holes, crazy as it sounds, a new sport could be born in Michigan)

Not bad eh ? If we want something, we need to make them look like heroes in the process

This is my opinion

[thedude]

i am for C&DR year round. Catch and keep from Aug 1st to Jan 1st.

Our catch and keep season starts at peak spawn. So the whole bed fishing thing is a moot point. We do it now for almost the entire state - only tournament anglers are not the only ones. The meat hunters have easy pickins when its perfectly legal to keep the fish and they are at their most vulnerable.


if the season were to be ever "closed" the logical time frame would be somewhere between may 15- june 15

[djkimmel]

i am for C&DR year round. Catch and keep from Aug 1st to Jan 1st.

Our catch and keep season starts at peak spawn. So the whole bed fishing thing is a moot point. We do it now for almost the entire state - only tournament anglers are not the only ones. The meat hunters have easy pickins when its perfectly legal to keep the fish and they are at their most vulnerable.


if the season were to be ever "closed" the logical time frame would be somewhere between may 15- june 15

This is directed at everyone. That is what Ohio did on Lake Erie despite the study they 'based' it on not being near completion - it was a knee jerk reaction because anglers were afraid and pressuring the ODNR to DO SOMETHING! So they did. They gave up tournaments during the approximate spawning part of the season with no scientific data showing that they had to. The study actually then became anti-climactic and basically forgotten. Many anglers claimed to support the move. That happens too often.

New York also moved their regular opening back farther because some anglers and some managers were afraid of what the meat hunters - who have been around forever - might do or be doing, or that fishing for spawning bass might ruin their great bass fishing - again, with no studies to support this move. Even the actual ongoing behavior of anglers demonstrated that it wouldn't actually protect anything.

Minnesota changed their statewide smallmouth bass season to catch and release only after Labor Day because a study done on one river smallmouth bass population showed those bass holed up in large numbers in one spot in the river were more vulnerable to being caught more easily at that time of the year. This change affected all kinds of water with no regard as to 1) whether the fishing in that one river actually could have negative impact on the overall population long term, and 2) did the wintering behavior and angler behavior in this one river situation apply to every other type of water including large lakes with large populations of bass that have multiple wintering grounds not so easily targeted! There are no studies to support that this was even necessary but enough anglers went along with it, so they did it. I talked to the biologist involved and he said anglers weren't against it because there aren't many tournaments that time of year and it is too cold for many anglers. Okay. So you can catch and release. But... what if they use this move to justify the next one that does impact tournaments more directly? You've already allowed the precedence that your willing to accept a broad change that doesn't actually have any scientific backing showing it will accomplish anything...

Why any angler is willing to give up fishing opportunity when repeated scientific data exists that shows they don't need to is beyond me, but I choose not to follow suit. I've read the studies and talked to many of the researchers, and it always comes down to water quality, habitat and weather patterns in the end, not seasons as to whether or not you have good bass fishing. It is possible though usually short term, to harm a small lake or river, or maybe even a very poor shield lake with a marginal population if enough people target it, but we are talking about regulations that cover an entire state with thousands of waters or a giant lake the size of Lake Erie.

You can enact special regulations for waters that show they need it, but why would you ever manage your entire range of bass waters to the lowest common denominator?!? That is what I asked that biologist from Minnesota and he did not have an answer. You are definitely taking away fishing opportunity when you do that and we can't afford to do that in this economy or with the declining overall participation, especially considering that tournament angling may be the only consistent growth area in fishing right now.

Our bass season has opened during much of the spawn being completed in Southern Michigan and before much of the spawn in Northern Michigan for decades, and large numbers of anglers (meat or otherwise) have been targeting bass out of season heavily for between 20 and 30 years, yet, on a whole, who can seriously argue that our overall bass fishing isn't better than it has ever been?

I'm talking statewide, not this one lake or that one river. We can do a ton more for body water specific problems by looking at water quality or habitat than we can ever do with a closed season, particularly considering many people don't and haven't honored the closed season for decades.

We can't control Mother Nature and that would be the number one impact year in and year out. Weather is one thing that scientists can say does impact the year to year success of our bass recruitment. And we can't do anything about that. We have been working on water quality for decades. It takes time, and vigilance to keep improving and not backslide since there are always efforts to 'relax' clean water regs. Habitat is whole other issue that could use a lot of work on some waters. It is also a more complex, localized matter.

So that leads some fisheries people and some anglers to feel, well, we can try to help with a closed bass season since that's the only option in our control (I believe the 14" bass limit in Michigan should have shown most people that was truly never true). 'Maybe that will make up for these other things that we can't control or have less control over?' The problem is, that study after study after study has shown that at a population level, a closed bass season accomplishes nothing at the population level, and occasionally next to nothing at a local level.

In the history of bass studies since the 1950's until today, there are only two studies that showed only on two specific bodies of water - a small lake in Wisconsin, and the Illinois River - any possible correlation at all to bass populations that might be related to allowing catch and keep fishing during the spawn, and that was that on the small lake in Wisconsin, the overall average size of smallmouth bass might have been reduced - that was without the 14" size limit that we have in Michigan that allows more bass to spawn before they can be legally kept - and on the Illinois River, they thought the bass average size also might have been lowered by heavy fishing during the spawn but other factors (weather, water quality, habitat) might mean this conclusion was not a safe conclusion to make so more study would be necessary before deciding upon that conclusion.

Other studies have shown that for smallmouth bass, if you have only 3 successful recruitment years out of every 10, you usually have what most anglers think is good bass fishing. Similar studies have shown that taking the weather into consideration, most of the time you get 3 or more successful spawn recruitment classes in 10 years and that the weather patterns were the overwhelming deciding factor in whether or not you got good recruitment years - not fishing. The effect on populations from fishing was so small that it was always statistically insignificant. Good recruitment year classes were almost always found to correlate to favorable weather, particularly during the spawn, and then again sometimes late in the season if it got too cold to early and stayed that way. Favorable weather during the spawn and you usually have good recruitment of new bass into the population regardless of fishing pressure levels. Unfavorable weather during the spawn and you often had poor recruitment of new bass into the population, again regardless of fishing pressure levels. That's what studies show. Repeatedly.

So, the anglers and fisheries people who think they can feel better because they are doing 'something' actually just end up taking away fishing opportunity that they don't have to take or give away. That is what bass studies from South to North have shown for decades. Add that to the misplaced belief that Northern bass need more protection than Southern bass because we have a shorter growing season and you end up with closed seasons in about 5 states out of 49 that have bass - all in the North. I have reported in the past that there is a fisheries researcher in Ontario who has been trying to prove for years that bass population affects can be tied to allowing fishing during the spawn mostly for smallmouth bass and he has repeatedly failed to do so even on less fertile waters in Canada.

I have talked to him directly. He really wants to prove this for some reason - probably the misguided over-zealotry that captures some young biologists who get so caught in the resource protection end that they forget their main stakeholders, their 'customers,' are anglers who want to catch fish - but he just keeps finding out the only bad outcome to fishing for bass during the spawn is to that individual bass being caught. No population level effects. None.

All you have to do is ask a biologist how many bass beds on the average lake have to be successful to have a good recruitment year? You have to remember, bass are just big panfish. They are - and have been for a long time - extremely successful at what they do. They spread their spawn out. They lay lots of eggs in multiple beds. They hatch tons of fry. Even the exotics that some feared would tip the balance have instead appeared to make bass on many lakes bigger on average than they ever have been! So who is winning that 'battle?' Now think about Ohio giving away two months of prime tournament fishing season on Lake Erie because of a fear of gobies even though the study looking at that was at least 3 years away from completion at the time they pulled the trigger. Why give away opportunity when there is no evidence available that doing so will make fishing any better? When studies actually support that the more likely problem is water quality or weather pattern related? Now, if they have some better recruitment classes, they may believe that closing the approximate spawn season to bass tournaments and catch-and-keep made things better even though existing studies would tend to say it is most likely weather-related first and water quality second with no study or data to support the closing had any impact. Bass populations are cyclic, especially on a body of water where wind has been shown to impact the bass spawn success.

How many of us believe it is also no coincidence that smallmouth bass have exploded in places where, first zebra mussels and now quagga mussels, cleared up the water so much?!? Smallmouth bass are site feeders. They are bigger and more numerous than ever on Lake St. Clair and Saginaw Bay. How have those bodies of water changed during this time? They have gotten much more clear and stayed generally much more clear. And the bass also have an abundant new food source - gobies - that is everywhere! Fishing pressure hasn't dramatically changed. It is about the same to somewhat more all year on St. Clair and about the same on Saginaw Bay for bass.

I'm not saying exotics are good. They aren't for many other reasons but I am saying the bass have adapted pretty darn good. That is why bass are so successful just about everywhere people put them. They are prolific and they adapt.

I also understand why people want to protect something they love so much. I do. Because I love bass fishing too. But I also believe we should always try to manage our fisheries so we can fish as much as possible so we can keep that love growing and have more opportunity to remind ourselves why it is important to do the real important things. Like fight for clean water and work to preserve and promote good habitat, and getting more new people into fishing for our future.

And I also believe we should get rid of problems that are artificially and unnecessarily created like the every spring fight over bass fishing out of season that divide us at a time when we can't afford to be divided more and more each day because of the things in the previous paragraph. All my life, I've seen way too much energy wasted between anglers and hunters fighting amongst themselves verses energy spent against the true foes of the future of our sport. It has to stop. So I support anything that can shift that balance.

And I feel that if we remove the season excuse/crutch, then maybe, finally, more anglers and fisheries people can put more effort into things like habitat and reasonable aquatic plant control that studies actually do support can improve bass fishing where improvement is possible. I know with many of you the fear of change comes from loving our bass fishing very much and not wanting to risk losing or harming it, but while you are being afraid of allowing more bass fishing - that frankly many of us realize is, and already has been happening for a long time, you are not putting your time and energy towards the things the might actually truly improve and protect your bass fishing - like wetlands protection and moderating aquatic plant control, legislation and efforts to erode clean air and clean water protection, and countering groups that want to stop hunting and fishing. Those are things you should fear and put your energies towards. Those are actually the things that will protect the bass fishing that we all love not a closed bass season. That's what the science says anyway. I'm going with the science. The benefits are so great.

[djkimmel]

If my above post is too long to read, then just ponder this - Indiana has about 400 lakes and very minimal Great Lakes but allows catch and keep bass fishing ALL YEAR! Indiana has the biggest bass federation in the country and tournament fishing from before the spawn through late in the year including the very Northern lakes. It has been this way in Indiana for decades. Their bass are the same Northern strain of bass we have in Michigan. We even share some waters.

Look at LGMOUTH's recent Indiana fishing report. Look at the winning tournament weights from Northern Indiana lakes over the years. Talk to anglers who fish Indiana in the spring before Michigan opens their season. Ask about the numbers and size of the bass they catch.

Then ask yourself, if Indiana allows that much pressure year-round on 400 lakes including catch and keep all year, why haven't their bass been wiped out by now?

Then think again about Michigan right across the border, with 11,000 lakes and vast areas of Great Lakes, with a catch-and-keep season opener that was designed decades ago to take advantage of a holiday weekend boost in fishing pressure when our bass are most vulnerable to the average angler, why really do we not allow anglers to legally fish bass for almost 4 months?

I can tell you one thing I'm pretty confident about... Indiana wishes we'd stop being selfish with our water. They have plenty of fishing pressure and riparian pressure about all the tournaments already.

[djkimmel]

SALBRC is unfortunate spilled milk. It happened at the time for a number of reasons - mostly bad - and (hopefully) is gone forever. If it tries to come back, I will do everything I can with every resource I have or can think of to put a stake through its gray heart. Some of the people behind are gone or have changed positions. The MDNR is way more open to considering things that will put more boat trailers in the public access sites, more campers in the state parks and sell more fishing licenses. Overall, I think the need to stop their losses will counter most of what is left of the old way of thinking.

The newer MDNR director Rodney Stokes use to be the Parks and Recreation chief. He was always reasonable in the past. The previous fisheries chief is now higher up and I found him to be a reasonable person. He was out of the picture for a lot of the SALBRC incident which, if it had not been the case, I believe things would have gone much differently through the whole process. He was there at the end when we got the catch and release season.

This page here is fairly new and a great example of why I think we can accomplish more. It says what it has needed to say all along and I think many MDNR employees are buying in to it. It matches what the people I am working with want to hear and need the state DNR, government and people to all buy in to - DNR - Four Priorities of the DNR.

This is a summary:
• Mission Statement
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources is committed to the conservation, protection, management, use and enjoyment of the state's natural and cultural resources for current and future generations.

• Four Priorities of the DNR

    Renewing Our Emphasis on Customer Service
    Building Strong Support for the Recreation Passport
    Increasing Resident/Visitor Participation in Outdoor Recreation and Stopping the Decline in Hunting and Fishing
    Fostering the Growth of Michigan's Natural Resource-Based Economy

• Key Department Initiatives
Hunter and Angler Retention and Recruitment; Outreach and Education; Fish and Wildlife Health; Ecosystem Management and Forest Certification...

If most of us get on this same page, I think we can accomplish quite a bit.

[SethV]

C&IR Jan 1 - the Saturday preceding memorial day - bass only, and you need a $15 permit.  Possession memorial day - Dec31st  

Or a slick tactic to tie some marketing for outdoorsman to increases in both bass and hunting that the retarded mdnr would love:

C&IR Mar 15 - the Saturday preceding memorial day - bass only, and you need a $15 permit.  Possession memorial day - Nov 14th. C&DR Nov 15th - Mar 14th

No way - what does this really change, other than adding a fee?

I wouldn't spend the $15 or waste my time here - I will keep leaving the state in the spring if I want to fish.

Over zelous "fishermen" in NY wanted to protect the resource without data.  They decided to ask the DNR for a 20" minimum on smallmouth in the spring.  I used to travel to NY every spring for several tournaments - not any more.  Took all the fun out of it when you are throwing back 5 lb fish since they won't bump and hope to find a "tall skinny one" just to take to weigh in.  The Make A Wish out of Buffalo used to be huge with over 100 boats.  Now, they are less than 30 and falling thanks to silly rules.

What I really want is less "help" from the DNR.  Open it up year round.  Don't add fees, don't stock fish (they don't anyway), don't mess with Bass - don't do anything for us but leave us alone.  Spend the effort on the meat hunting walleye, salmon, perch guys.

[Mojo]

Agreed, agreed, agreed..... All points.  But RIGHT NOW, status quo WILL NOT let ANY fishing occur in the spring, due to difficulties with meat hunters posing as bass fishermen, we lose 3 months to fish.

You want to tournament fish.  Most of us just want to fish. Those proposals open our ability to fish to all 12 months. Take away the permit and $15 bucks, it's chump change but people get goofy about pay to play concepts.  $15 is like a buck tag. And It would give me something to show the officer.

So right now, I think thse are compromises both sides are willing to take. Again just my opinion.

[djkimmel]

I like the way you are thinking. There's way too many unnecessary regulations in the North. Letting anglers who have never read studies or talked to bass researchers make major protective changes to bass regulations has always been a bad move in my mind. I was so impressed a few years back when they tried something like that in Maryland and the biologists said NO. What the anglers wanted would not scientifically accomplish what the anglers said they wanted to accomplish. The biologists told them that and did not let the 'change' go anywhere.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to protect the resource but there's many things wrong with giving away opportunity that doesn't do what you think are you doing it for.

And as I told one member privately, you're not going to find me pushing for new fees, permits, patches, bass taxes or whatever. We have enough of those and it would just be another unnecessary hurdle. I have no doubt it will come up multiple times but I will try to kill it every time it does come up. All I want is what we should already have. The science is 100% behind that.

[djkimmel]

Agreed, agreed, agreed..... All points.  But RIGHT NOW, status quo WILL NOT let ANY fishing occur in the spring. They clearly state that due to difficulties with meat hunters posing as bass fishermen, we lose 3 months to fish.

You want to tournament fish, most of us just want to fish. Those proposals open our ability to fish to all 12 months. $15 is like a buck tag. It would give me something to show the officer. It would let us have paper tourneys as early as march and get us on the water earlier.

Status quo. RIGHT NOW won't let a bass be plucked off their bed for sport and hauled 5 miles away. They won't let 30 guys pull 150 fish off their bed, 3 times a week during spawn.

So right now, I think these are compromises both sides are willing to take. Again just my opinion.

You apparently have never attended a meeting where the MDNR is bringing up new fees or an increase in licenses. If that is true, you will be surprised at how brutal the backlash can be, especially when you get to the more average anglers and groups that represent them. I've been at a number of these meetings. It has always been ugly. Right now, people definitely don't want more fees or taxes.

My opinion is that your proposal will not only muddy the waters with the average angler, you will also turn off more of the dedicated bass anglers who otherwise might support additional changes. This is based on the reaction we got at every public meeting that last go round when someone inevitably brought up 'the bass stamp.' Instead of talking about the bass season, people ended up arguing about the need of a new fee. Can you say, 'counterproductive?'

You are also wrong about our season being to protect against the meat hunters. You need to quit reading that SALBRC thing as far as trying to relate it to the present situation before we fully know what the present situation is. SALBRC was full of text that was more about bad tactics including scare tactics and divide-and-conquer tactics than science along with some unfortunate personal stuff. Just putting out that many options in the first place was a good way to muddy the waters up so much that some people hoped to use that to control the decision they had already made up front. I sent the 'paper' to a number of well-known, respected bass biologists at the time, and they were all disappointed to see something like that put out by other fisheries people. We felt forced to do our best to show as many people as possible how much misleading text it contained. It was a bad time where we felt we had to apply equal and opposite force.

It is over and done now. We got the best we could then despite that paper, and put that paper away only to be a reminder about how bad relations can lead to much bigger problems than necessary. I have thought about deleting it many times but decided until I am 100% sure that we will no longer be hit with something like that again, I will keep it available. You definitely can't take everything you read in that paper as real and true. I do not want to foster a fight that might not even be there. I want to get along. But I know that some peoples' fear of change may not allow these types of changes to ever be easy, but maybe if we try to be friendly up front, they will do the same. I hope nothing personal left over from that time makes things harder. It is always possible but I hope not. I haven't heard or seen any indication of things heading in that direction again.

There is an element of anglers out there who will probably voice the concern about anglers saying they are bass fishing while targeting walleye. I think that is a ridiculous argument but I can't discard that easily. It came up last time from the organized walleye groups and some other anglers, and it may come up again this time. Of course, we already have laws for that and if someone keeps a walleye out of season, well, it would be pretty easy to write that ticket, wouldn't it? And how many anglers will really do this? Actually, the real question is, how many will do this that aren't already poaching out of season anyway because those kind of people just don't care. They will always figure out a way to break the law when they want to. I don't think a longer bass season is going to dramatically increase the number of people who do this but I do imagine the fear of change that it will happen will make that one issue definite issue that will have to be addressed.

I have always said, I will never favor or support regulations that take away a lot of opportunity from the good anglers and hunters because of a few bad persons. That is the wrong way to manage our natural resources long term. In Michigan, we still limit good outdoors persons way too much because of a few bad persons. There's lots of room for improvement.

The meat hunter claim was just a complicating matter to the season issue. Having a common opening day that didn't complicate regulations was a bigger influence than that claim. People consistently complain about the complexity of fishing and hunting regulations. Some even say the more complex the regulations, the more people who quit fishing and hunting. That may be true. But then again, there are still tons of people in Michigan who think either A) you can legally fish for bass whenever you want, or B) you can't fish for bass at all until Memorial weekend. Believe you me, I talk to people who say one or the other of these all year long. I talked to a bunch of them at the outdoor shows. So, I wonder how many people actually ever read the regs? Several members on this website and other websites this year did not believe me when I told them walleye and pike were close on inland waters after March 15.

There are many other issues, real or perceived, involved in why our bass season is the way it is and how it ended up in its latest form. There were even people who said the season shouldn't be changed because then the MDNR was rewarding lawbreakers by making their lawbreaking legitimate. You had to be at all the meetings, read all the editorials and listen to the various radio broadcasts to have most of it down.

Luckily, what is important is the overwhelming science says closed bass seasons don't work, and all we have to do is convince a reasonable number of the right people that the positive aspects of allowing more bass fishing for the certain percent of 400,000 Michigan bass anglers and the additional visitors to Michigan that want to fish far outweigh any perceived or claimed negatives. The simpler we keep it, the better the odds we get somewhere. The more progress we make in the right direction, the more progress we (and other states and provinces) are likely to make in the nearer future. The last big survey the MDNR did showed that most people just wanted more bass fishing opportunity and didn't see why we couldn't have it. That survey made a big difference and I agree with them.

So tell your friends, your neighbors, people you run into at the boat ramp, the studies for the South and North show that closed bass seasons don't work and that we can have the choice to fish for bass whenever we want to and have the time. You get enough people to listen and think about it, who knows what we can accomplish.

[Team houston]

No new taxes or user fees. Mostly because th DNR does not spend any money on Bass. If you let them get the foot in the door you will see that fee steadily increase. With the exception of Trout, no other species has to pay extra. WHY SHOULD WE?

[Mojo]

Just a reminder - This thread is requesting that you document how you want the bass season. We stated earlier - do not copy someones idea and then trounce it.

The thread is to display where people stand. I guarantee dozens of fisherman will not even respond now for fear of conflict - based on some of these responses. And when people throw up their hands to avoid being unpopular, or avoid conflict, they leave those decisions that affect them ... to non fishermen, pH Ds, and non fishing lawmakers .........  or fishermen who want a very specific thing.

Dan has brought alot of history and knowledge that many of us did not know existed, so we all learned. Education is infact key. The owner of GLB does infact get privledges we do not ... but I was hoping for everyone to place their opinion and what their ideal Bass Season should be.

[Redbone]

Lets just say... I'd rather be fishing!

[bigmojet]

I am not a tournament fisherman(yet) but i know i would pay an additional fee to fish sooner. But as what happened to me and snowmobiling i paid the inceasing fees every year until i had enough and got out of the sport a couple years back.

I would like the catch and keep season to start after the spawn but up north here that could be the end of june.