Stop the madness in the name of bassin' love....
In some northern-tier states the bass season is closed until after the spawn. Meaning bassin’ is closed right now. Why? To me this might be right up there with a ban on culling.
I’m guessing the reason for a closed season – other than “it’s always been that way” – is that the “evil derby bassers” are going to have easy pickings with the spawners, yank them off nests and thus let predators at the eggs.
Okay, but so what? How many freakin’ northern states have bass pops that are that sensitive to fishing pressure? How many have lakes where bass are so few and far between that they need to be conserved?
Bear in mind that a 1-pounder can produce 5,000 eggs.
Now, there can be more of a “meat” mentality in the north, so I can see making the early June season catch-and-release only, as I think a few states do. But banning fishing during the spawn or banning intentionally fishing for bass during the spawn is I think at this point a bit nuts.
And if anything, at this point, people aren’t keeping enough bass, leading to stunted bass and arcane slot limits that don’t work.
Let people fish!
Here’s one more way of looking at it, WV DNR fish biologist Jim Walker paraphrased in this article:
Walker had a good analogy about catching and keeping bass or of causing the destruction of a nest or two. He equated it to the loss of a deer you see dead along the highway. Consider how many road kills you pass – but it isn’t really having a huge negative impact on deer numbers.
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BryanT
June 9, 2011 at 10:46 am
I live in WI and April is by far my favorite time to fish. When that water is in the 40’s it is the best time of the year to get large numbers of 5+lb smallies. It drives me nuts not being to able fish for bass legally when the spawn is still a month away. Closed seasons are dumb. Most biologists say they have a closed season because the spawn is so condensed up north and allows anglers to quickly decimate the spawn. Really though it is just more social blindness leading the science. I think its like putting the carriage before the horse. If that were true they’d have closed seasons in Nov too on river systems when anybody can fish a wintering hole and stock up on all the bass they need. It’s all social nonsense in the north. Northern fisheries mngmnt is very different from those south of the mason/dixon line. I wish social perception can be rooted out in WI and replaced with science based facts.
Austin L.
June 9, 2011 at 11:53 am
Nice to see a post with a northern angle for a change. I’m in Minnesota. This is my first full season of fishing. I grew up fishing as a food resource, but I hadn’t fished for 20+ years until last summer.
From what I can gather from previous experience and talking to people in the last year, most people do not fish bass for meat, and the few who do don’t keep big bass, as the flesh suffers over about 2 pounds. It also doesn’t have the best weight-to-use ratio. Everyone is goofy for walleye up here anyways. Of any species, it seems like bass has the least harvest to catch ratio behind muskie (almost no one eats these) and northern. Heck, I’ve seen several carp and channel catfish taken home. Oddly, I’m a vegetarian, so I don’t care one way or the other, but I sometimes give fish to people.
The weather is so goofy up here to, using an arbitrary date for the season opener doesn’t seem to actually coincide with spawning.
Off topic, I’ve been out the last two weekends (the first being opener), and caught a personal best two weekends in a row. I can only brag here because no one I know gives a rip.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/austinlindstrom/5800828716/in/photostream
Jeremy Adair
June 9, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Quite true. The water got warm enough to start the bass spawn just about the same time the season opened. I noticed fish pulling up where I was in MN on opener but the next weekend the males were on the beds waiting for Momma- and (whether coming or going) they weren’t too far away.
The meteorologists have been saying that we’ve had a typical spring here this year (of course, this is to be taken with a grain of salt). So, that begs the question, if this is a typical spring then wouldn’t the spawn typically be on or after the opener? Thus negating any purpose a closed season would serve to begin with. There are people who have been bassin’ far longer than I who may remember the last “normal” spring we’ve had that can shed some light on that…
Jay- Hush it with that June stuff! The end of May is long enough to wait!! lol
Chad Keogh
June 9, 2011 at 8:57 pm
I use to live in Ontario, Canada where the bass season is only from the end of June until mid-November. I now live on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada where I can fish year round (without needing an ice auger due to the milder climate).
I think Ontario needs to review their regulations and make their regs like BC’s where it is only CATCH-AND-RELEASE from April 15 to June 15, and no closure. Due to them being colder they may need to extend it until July 15, but anything that STOPS anglers from fishing completely is a bad regulation in my opinion.
I’ve heard Ontario anglers say that the fishery would be destroyed if fishing during the spawn was allowed, but how many would actually target bedding bass? Even in their condensed little spawn window, there will be bass pre-spawn and post-spawn they could target if bed fishing isn’t their thing.