BassBlaster

The Science Behind Creel Limits?

Keep reading, I'll get here.

All bass anglers are familiar with creel limits. Turns out that every state in the union that has black bass also has some type of harvest limitation in place, many of which have been around since the 1970’s, or earlier. I was recently reading a fisheries management article* that studied creel limits in the U.S., and some of their findings may surprise you?

We’re going to take a little different tack with this post and move through the research part pretty quickly, so we can get to the fun stuff…the “can of worms” promised above.

Back in 1974, the average daily creel limit for bass was about 9 fish per person, but by the year 2000, that average had dropped to 6 fish. Now days, most major tournies run on an even smaller 5 fish limit. Why the drop and what is the science behind it?

According to the piece I was reading, “creel limits are ubiquitous across North America and they have been generally set arbitrarily with little biological justification.”

For example, states with fewer anglers should probably have more liberal harvest regulations, and states with higher angler effort should probably have tighter restrictions. Turns out not to be the case though, as there was no correlation found between creel limits for bass and these two stats.

Perhaps limits are tied to angler equity, restricting some anglers from keeping a lot, so that others may catch their fair share? Problem is, just because you limit the amount of fish I can harvest, that is no guarantee that you will be able to catch your share. There is an ability factor that comes into play. It’s been found that in many cases, only a few anglers account for the majority of the harvest, and that lower creel limits don’t necessarily distibute fish to more anglers.

Then there is the argument for altering or protecting fish populations by limiting angler harvest, but again, it was found that the majority of anglers never even catch their limit. So in order to have a meaningful reduction in current total harvest, you would have to tighten existing creel limits even more, to the point where the majority of sport anglers most likely wouldn’t support such a drastic regulation.

On top of all this is the increasing popularity of catch and release fishing for bass. In my own home state of Indiana, most creel surveys show that in excess of 90% of all the bass claiming to be caught by surveyed anglers are getting released, and on some bodies of water, this number climbs as high as 97-98%. Only on a select few waters do they routinely document high harvest rates of bass, suggesting that maybe only specific waters require creel protections.

It is speculated that anglers use creel limits as a gauge of fishing success. Since most anglers never actually catch their limit on a given trip, it could be argued that the best anglers are the ones who most frequently do limit out. So with Jason’s great stats post in mind, lets follow this line of thinking out to it’s final outcome, the proverbial “can of worms.”

click for larger viewing

The following table compares every division of the BFL circuit through their four 1-day tournies in 2010, showing the percent of the field in each event that weighed in a limit, and the average for the entire season. They have been sorted with the highest/best division at the top, on down to the worst division at the bottom (yes, my home state).

So it looks like Florida anglers are the best at catching limits, followed by Michigan, Okie and Choo Choo division anglers. The overall average of 33% is way above what the angling public in general scores.

Moving on further with this train of thought, you would then expect the pros to be able to do much better than the BFL guys. So lets look at the 2010 Elite Series numbers through the first 2 full field days of competition (below)…and the pattern holds, with the Elite pros crushing the average with limits 83% of the time, more than 2.5X the overall BFL average and a full 20% better than the best BFL division. But there is another pro circuit…which finally gets us to the “can of worms.”

So I also compiled the 2010 stats for the FLW Tour circuit and included those. Guys are always wanting to compare which pro circuit has the best anglers, the toughest fields. Better anglers, or just better waters/schedule?

Hey, don’t shoot the messenger – I just gathered the data, I’ll leave it up to you guys to interpret.

Again, click for easier reading

 

*Radomski, Paul J., G. C. Grant, P. C. Jacobson, and M. F. Cook. 2001.  Visions for Recreational Fishing Regulations. Fisheries, May 2001.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Chad Keogh

    April 4, 2011 at 8:07 am

    Math is the only truth they say…

  2. 5bites

    April 4, 2011 at 9:10 am

    That was an interesting read. I hope you might add to this as the season goes on.

  3. admin (mostly Jay)

    April 4, 2011 at 6:49 pm

    Holy mackerel Brian, this is awesome!

  4. Bass Pundit

    April 5, 2011 at 2:14 am

    I decided to run the numbers for my Central MN bass club in 2010. With a 5 fish limit our total for the year was 73.5% and that is for boaters and non-boaters. Take out the toughest tournament and it jumped almost to 80%.

    Conclusion: Our lakes are good and the guys in my club know how to catch em.

  5. Carl H

    April 8, 2011 at 6:38 pm

    My bass club in Indiana only has a four fish limit, and with about 18 guys fishing 6 in state tournaments we only had five limits for the whole year.

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