Moving forward.

Crappie are delicious and I love to eat them. Now that being said there is a point where we need to have some common sense and start to practice conservation. I see people that I know have 100 lbs of frozen fish in their deep freeze and for some reason simply can not release a 12 or 14″ Crappie to swim free for breeding or another fisherman to catch.

As for the tournament trails I do believe we definitely need to practice catch and release. Watching anglers cleaning big Crappie the week or day before a big tournament simply blows my mind. B.A.S.S. has figured out in 1972 that it would be wise to practice catch and release. I would think that locals and the travel and tourism directors of these lakes would be much more welcoming if they knew that all the fish caught prior to and the day of the tournament would be released. Imagine if the tournaments came to town and did absolutely no harm and made no difference in the fish population.

I’m not trying to offend or make anyone mad but as the sport grows massively and anglers become much more able to catch limits as their skill levels and technology improves we need to self regulate and just let a few fish swim free. You can only eat so many fish. I just would like to see these lake keep producing and pumping out huge fish. My home lake (Rend Lake) is in a definite slump and has been for years. We can keep 25 fish and all of those can be 7-9″ if you want. No minimum length limit. That means you are dipping into your savings account. I don’t get why people would take those small fish.

So, now my rant is over I would like to thank my ACC Crappie Stix pro staff because they definitely practice catch and release before  a tournament. I have a very conservation minded group of anglers that I am very glad to call friends and have on board. Thanks for reading and tune in for the next blog. It will be a Q and A with Jack and Holly Linton and Jonathan and Alicia Phillips.