Do tournament bass fishermen eat their quarry

[Mojo]

Though it may seem intuitive, I don't think the public truly understands how pro-conservation tournament fishermen are today. Leave a note of your thoughts on this topic.

[dartag]

You can eat them things. 

I like my fish with french fries and coleslaw.  Hopefully served by one of the young ladies you are pictured with.

[djkimmel]

One thing I hear often is 'non-tournament' anglers think we are against anyone keeping a bass legally caught. I have seen many times where someone posts something on the Internet about keeping a bass and they get attacked - best way to describe it.

I think it needs to be made clear that I'm not against someone keeping a fresh, legally caught bass for dinner when they want to. We are allowed 3 total day's possession in Michigan - that includes your freezer and your boat so the most someone can legally have at one time altogether is 15 bass. You can't legally 'fill' your freezer with one type of fish in most cases because of the 3-day possession limit allowed.

I personally don't eat a lot of fish I catch. I often stay out late and don't feel like cleaning and cooking fish when I get home. Bass are about my least favorite, though better than carp. When I do keep fresh fish the time or two a year, it is usually panfish (gills, crappie, perch) or walleye. Maybe a catfish depending upon where and what time of year it is caught.

Just my preference. I have eaten just about every kind of fish you can catch in Michigan (which is quite a few kinds). I sometimes do like fresh fish someone else cooks at a good fish restaurant. I like less fishy fish.

In my mind, conservation would mean not keeping an overabundance of bass, not not keeping any bass at all. Some lakes may need some bass kept. Some lakes need few or no bass kept.

I ran into a nice bass angler on a lake up north. We were talking and as soon as I told him I release all my bass he got anxious telling me he does like to keep a limit sometimes, quit talking and drove off. He didn't give me time to explain I rarely keep ANY fish I catch because I rarely want to clean and eat them. When I do, I just don't like the taste of most bass, especially in warmer water months. I guess he assumed I was going to give him a lecture or maybe tell him I didn't like him keeping bass. I had NO intention of doing that or giving any kind of speech at all. I was just enjoying talking to another bass angler about bass fishing.

[BIGSHOW]

I'm with you DJ. I try to fit so much into my day that cleaning fish is the last thing i want to do. When I go for salmon or the occasional walleye I will make time. But i've been known to stop at the fish market on the way home from the lake..

[Manxfishing]

if were just talking about bass
I'm C&R these days.

And I'd say I have no problem with others that do catch bass to eat. It's there choice
Growning up we ate bass. But these day I would rather not see them stingered up

[motocross269]

Bass I release...Walleye go in my freezer.....

The only problem is I can't keep Walleye during tournaments...Unless i want to cull a Smallmouth... .....We ran into this on Walloon...

[Mojo]

Agree with all Dan says, except while down on 9 mile at the Monster Quest ( very very well put together tournament I must add), some bystanders couldn't believe we were letting the fish go - stating - oh that's just a PR show .... We know all these tournament guys take their fish home..... And ..... Why would you spend all that money on those rigs if your weren't cleaning out our lakes........

(Which kinda got me thinking, we are a strange bunch to go through all this trouble and go broke, and Not Even Keep Our Fish !!!!!  Lol)

So please keep voting, just so the obvious (to us) is understood......

[rustydog]

Aperson has to be hungry to eat a largemouth in the summer but I don't anything except when I'm ice fishing and then I don't keep bass.

[bob620]

I never eat anything that swims with the poop.If people don't mind that who am I.I would rather stop and have a hot dog and a big gulp.Just saying!


                                                                              bob620

[djkimmel]

Agree with all Dan says, except while down on 9 mile at the Monster Quest ( very very well put together tournament I must add), some bystanders couldn't believe we were letting the fish go - stating - oh that's just a PR show .... We know all these tournament guys take their fish home..... And ..... Why would you spend all that money on those rigs if your weren't cleaning out our lakes........

(Which kinda got me thinking, we are a strange bunch to go through all this trouble and go broke, and Not Even Keep Our Fish !!!!!  Lol)

So please keep voting, just so the obvious (to us) is understood......

I understand what you are trying to do. But as you point out, not everyone will understand. I just wanted to make another related point more clear. People will keep finding out more about us as bass tournaments become more 'mainstream' up here in the North country as they are just to our South. I like education efforts. When people ask questions, go ahead and give them an answer. If you hear comments made that you can help clarify, go ahead and give it a try. Word of mouth has a great impact over time.

[motocross269]

I don't think it makes much fiscal sense to buy a 50k dollar bass boat and another 25k in tackle in order to catch and eat meat that costs at the most 8 dollars a pound...If it was about eating fish we would all have to have our heads examined....


People outside the game are ignorant that is for sure...

[djkimmel]

We know we don't fish or hunt just to get something to eat. Just... not everyone else knows that. I do try to inform more people through various means. Never hurts. I'm actually surprised fairly often at who reads stuff on here.

[Mojo]

Keep voting !! 100 votes seems like a good sample sizing.

[Got Fish??]

I'm not against keeping fish. That's why you buy your permits. I catch and release. I like my fish dinner the same way as dartag.

[Mojo]

39 votes so far ? Cmon.  Drop your opinion on this topic !

[Skulley]

39 votes so far ? Cmon.  Drop your opinion on this topic !

In other words, "Vote early, vote often."      

There have been 295 views on this topic. 39 of the viewers have voted according to Mojo. 256 of the viewers are either viewing as guests or are members that didn't vote. If you're a member, please vote. A query of 100 voters would make this survey a valid survey. It's a very good topic and I've always been kind of curious how many do harvest bass. It is your right to harvest, however selective harvest is always best for any species. In other words, only keep what you're going to eat that day. Filling your freezer, doesn't help mortality rates. Catch and release as well as selective harvest helps conservation efforts for all species of fish. It's good to let the bigger ones live to be caught another day as well as spawn again another year because I think trophy size is in the gene pool.

I release ALL the bass but do keep walleye for table fair when I do catch them but I never take a limit. I only take what I may eat that day.  I have never had a taste for bass, except for maybe sea bass (saltwater).  But I'm more like dartag and Got Fish??  I prefer Mitchell's Seafood over on Haggerty in Livonia/Northville area.  Great food.  I highly recommend it.  


BD                            

[Manxfishing]

Mitchell's is a little to spendy

I'm a casual deep fried guy
bet and jesse's on grand river in redford

[Skulley]

Since I became diabetic, I have to stay away from deep fried foods. Mitchell's is pricy but I've never been disappointed. The bride loves the food. I always prefer Mitchell's over Red Lobster. Plus ever since Hopes closed a few years back and then the owner Barney passed, there just aren't that many good Fish n Chip places. I'll have to try that place on Grand River. I just can't eat there all the time. I can tell you this, being a diabetic can be expensive. You have to watch everything you eat.


BD.                     

[Mojo]

I think many tournament anglers do not eat Bass -  not because they taste poor -  its just that there are many more freshwater fish that taste better (In my opinion I would rank tasty fish as 1) Crappie  2) Walleye 3) Perch  4) Blue Gill and Sunfish 5) Pike  6) Smallmouth Bass 7) trout Salmon 9) Largemouth Bass 10) Carp ).

If the post was for Walleye tournament fishermen, you'd see completely different numbers.

Like I said, the fishing public generally views bass fishermen the way they do because -  There are sooo many bass boats, and if one ASSUMED we kept everything we caught, then of course they would not be willing to open the season even more ! Most folks would think WE are the reason they cannot catch a bass anymore etc.....

So the obvious, sometimes, needs to be stated. Hence please vote and get us to 100 !!

So DK - this IS my end game and I can print it: We need data to disspell each myth - even if it ends up being one line in an Eric Sharp article or an MDNR recommendation, it provides the pieces we need.

[djkimmel]

I understand what you are trying to do. You are seeing things from bass-tournament angler colored glasses though. The MDNR in the past has made an effort to publicly show that our numbers (bass boat tournament angler types) are too low to be significant. So, if 'the public' believed that they shouldn't care what we do...

There are people out there that don't fish or no very little about fishing. I don't think we need to convince them of much of anything unless they are a member of a lake association - they often don't want ANYONE on their lake any more than they are now so it may matter what we say, or if they are anti-fishing, in which case it won't matter what we say.

Bass tournaments and bass boats are an easy target so I think a good effort would be to lead by example in your practices of courteousness and consideration to all other boaters and anglers. No obvious power loading at ramps so people can hold that against us. Being a little quiet on inland lakes at 5 in the morning. Parking straight in the parking lot between the lines. Practicing very good release efforts in tournaments including volunteering to take some fish out into the lake and releasing them away from boat ramps in poor, shallow, warm areas, AND being outspoken whenever you see someone in a bass boat /bass tournament who isn't doing the above.

That being said, I don't think it is ever a bad idea educating people who will listen about our practices such as catch-and-release. BUT, there are not a bunch of people wanting to withhold more bass fishing because they think we keep too many bass.

I've covered many of the reasons we don't have more bass fishing in Michigan already but mainly it is 1) fear of change; 2) a misguided belief that are bass fishing is good because we have a closed season (even though the closed season hasn't changed since the 60's yet the bass fishing HAS gotten a lot better since the early 90's); 3) Puritan-like beliefs in 'protecting' the spawn - some people even want the bluegill closed to fishing during the spawn; 4) anti-bass tournament bias for many reasons - some people are willing to withhold the great number of potential angler-days that could be achieved by the 400,000 Michigan bass anglers (plus 200,000 to maybe 300,000 tourist bass anglers) to keep a 'few hundred' bass tournament anglers from the remote possibility of having more bass tournaments.

There are some other reasons, but those are the main reasons. Even though the real anglers who are also against more bass fishing at various levels are very aware that we release all of our bass, some of them have convinced themselves that we kill crazy numbers like 50% of all our released bass over the season so they use that kind of thinking to justify their feelings. I've actually seen avid bass tournament anglers who should know better in Michigan state these kinds of numbers recently regarding why they claim we can open Lake St. Clair on Memorial weekend like the rest of the state.

I have simply suggested if they (bass tournament anglers) truly believe the tournaments are killing that many bass WHY would they support them by fishing them too?? I suggested it would be a lot more helpful if these anglers talked to the tournament directors about their concerns and offered to help out in improving the way weighed bass are handled and released instead of trying to stop bass fishing opportunity.

For other people who aren't bass tournament anglers and who make these types of claims, they may be unwilling to believe real studies that show real delayed mortality and I don't like 'debating' rock walls anyway. I would suggest the best way to handle them is to be a part of the solution by helping tournament directors handle and release bass better until these people have very little to complain about.

I appreciate what you are trying to do, but lets figure out what the real important issues are to this debate and spend as much energy as possible doing something about those issues. The general public finds out over time as the rest of this stuff works itself out. The general public isn't who we have to work to overcome to make sure we get the best amount of bass fishing opportunity our resource can scientifically handle. It's other anglers, even bass tournament anglers.