Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire PETA is PO'ed at Me

Not hardly. I don't apologize for it either. We were more than legal, cleaned and ate/will eat every single one of them, brought a bunch back to the desert with me, and will enjoy them over the next 3-4 months. Some of you folks need to lighten up a bit.

Like politics, it's all local... there ARE places -- especially smaller lakes that get heavy tournament pressure -- where the catch-and-release ethic rules, and they'd happily hang people for killing largemouths. Obviously not the case there, but I know some people who would have a coronary merely by looking at that photo!

Do you know anything at all about Toledo Bend?

when famdamly comes up here fishin...I have to turn the fish lose myself .....they want to keep any and everything...rite to the limit. I always ask why?....cause their is so many and there big!!! I always say "THEY GOT THAT WAY, CAUSE I PUT THEM BACK"...18 to 20+inch graying and 44-48"+ pike all day long...u will stop fishing cause u are tired. btw I was guilty as a youg man-back in the states lol....not givin u a hard time just thinking out loud

Most bass anglers are hardcore "catch and release" fanatics.

Not me though, my dad used to own a 10 acre pond that was bass heavy and we always had a hard time getting people to actual harvest largemouth when they were out fishing. It got to the point where I had to start donating LMB to our local raptor recovery center to get better growth rates for the LMB in his pond. The last four years that he owned it I had our local Game and Parks biologists come out and electroshock and remove 150 LMB a year to stock in public lakes. Harvest helps when done right and the most common size of fish are thinned down. I do like to see BIG fish thrown back just simply because they are so rare.

Don't get your hackles up. I was commenting on the effect the photo would have in those places where catch-and-release bass fishing is a religion. Some of those people would stroke out.

Both Texas Parks and Wildlife and Lousiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries have tried to get people to actually take bass home iwth them in the past to have the harvest spread out over a wider age range. I would say probably 95% or more bass caught on T-Bend are catch and release.

In areas where it's a problem or they want to manage entirely for trophy fish they can institute a slot. The drawback to a slot is you cut off the top tier of tournaments that don't fish slot lakes and those are a huge money maker.

good catch anyway...better hope some native tribe that "use to" fish with dine-o-mite ...don't come along and toss u boys off the lake and get "there own season"........

We didn't keep any of the bigger females. No offense to you NE, but I'm not too terribly worried about any bass tournament fisherman, don't care.

Hey Kentucky, no problem, and no hackle problem here. I just find it entertaining when people comment and whine about something they are totally clueless about. Toledo Bend ain't some freakin' farm pond. It's like 80 miles long and 180,000 acres of bass fishing paradise. You can't even get to 75% of the fish on that lake......too much cover, salvinia (sp?) etc. Like I said, been catching them like that there for 40 years. I think my local buddies understand the program pretty well by now.

I figured guys around here would enjoy a pretty cool picture of some spring time fun. I'm quite surprised at the bawlin' and squawlin' going on here.

Whoa, that is a mess of fish!

I do Sunday morning sunrise service at lakes all the time and the photo does not bother me, I do know people that it would bother. In Texas those fish have realtively fast growth rates and can withstand harvest pressures better than they do up north where the growth rates are much slower. Your average 16" LMB in Nebraska is four years old, I am guessing at Toledo Bend it is closer to half that due to the longer growing season.

Largemouth do taste a lot like crappie.

Yeah, but it would be entertaining to walk around the crowd with a hidden camera at, say, the U.S. Open, and show that photo off. That would be You Tube worthy...

Back before bass tournaments when there use to be a lot of big bass. 10 & 12 lber's was no big deal.

Nice!

But....you guys eat those?

Y'all have to come north for a bluegill/crappie or a walleye fish fry. You'll never keep another bass.

All joking aside, hell of a couple days fishin there.

NIce catch. Seems to me that fish are there for eatin' not winning contests! Enjoy them.

I don't care for the taste of bass, but I would keep those too. T-Bend is not a typical bass lake. Any legal fish caught, spawn or not, less that 5-6lbs needs to be fileted.

I used to do that too, decades ago. Then I saw picts of a post tournament at Toledo Bend with dumpsters full of dead fish boling in the sun supposedly on their way to the poor.

I haven't deliberately killed a bass in ten years or so and I now return them to the beds. I never swung them onto the boat floor and then over the side while culling the "livewell" either.

BASS competitive fishing mentality has changed bass fishing to what lawyering is to justice. Add $ to the 'sport' and watch it go sour.

1B

Tournaments (on T-Bend and Rayburn) require that fish be released alive. Dead fish are penalized heavily.

Don't worry, Johnny. I am here to help!