Center Hill Gills

[TNBronzeback]

Originally Posted by Heiny57

Blue gills are for people who can't catch Crappie. LOL 😎

Thats what bass are for! LMAO

[Alphahawk]

Originally Posted by Heiny57

Blue gills are for people who can't catch Crappie. LOL 😎

Somebody forgot to tell me that.....LOL.


Regards

[jad2t]

Originally Posted by Heiny57

Blue gills are for people who can't catch Crappie. LOL 😎

Crappie are for people who can't catch bass haha

I do like the taste of Crappie but I hate that they're so mushy. I like more dense flakes of fish. Crappie consistency is like baby food.

You Crappie guys need to grow past the baby food and become men...fishers of men - another Bible reference. Eat bass, grow a beard, and wash it down with a sip of bourbon.

[TNBronzeback]

Originally Posted by tnpondmanager

I think bluegill are more popular than some anglers realize. If they weren't popular they wouldn't get yanked out by the thousands every spring as Alpha notes. .

I have no doubts they are a very popular targeted fish by many anglers. But in reality, every fish is popular in the spring. look at JPP dam on the lake side every spring and the dozens and dozens of bank anglers casting for hybrids. those guys couldnt care less about chasing those fish once the spring run is over with im sure a few exceptions. same thing with Crappies during the spawn, bedding bass, white bass runs in the rivers in the spring, saugers below the dams in the winter. People target the easy to catch fish cause they dont have to put forth as much effort or knowledge to aquire them. i dont target bluegills, but, if im cruising through the shallows and visibly spot thier beds with my eyes or on my sonar, you better believe im gonna stop and catch a few, cause its easy. when the hybrids are running by the hundreds along JPP dam and will destroy and bait that looks like food, yeah, im gonna target them, cause they are easy. once the weather heats up, i turn my focus to another species, much like alot of other fisherman do. its easy pickings. like bluegills, maybe not the giants, but youve got to be pretty hard pressed to fish 4-10ft in priest in the spring/summer/fall and not run into a ton of bluegills of all sizes and they will hit a WIDE array of baits and lures, which again makes them easy. Then you have your more hardcore anglers like yourself and Alpha who dedicate thier time to locating the big ones, and you all do a wonderful job at that cause that is your nitch. your basic fun fisherman just wants to catch something he/she can eat and sadly for the bluegills, through thier internal wiring, they make themselves very easy to catch.
thats just my 2 cents. again, not trying to pick a fight, just elaborating on the comment of people taking them out in big numbers.....its cause its easy in the spring, which begins your concern of the overharvest of smaller fish that dont have the chance to get big. vicious circle, no easy solution other than a slot size and quantity limit.

I am not aware of steroids that are available for fish. The bluegill I posted photos of are fed a high-protein, fishmeal-based food that I get from Utah and sell to a lot of my customers in addition to feeding it to the bluegill in ponds I guide on. The food by itself doesn't get them that big; it takes a lot of careful, precise management. Overlook any one of several key details and you can throw all the premium food you want at them and they won't get past nine inches.

As to the issue of overharvest, I really don't have a desire to debate this ad nauseum with people who have a different worldview than I do. I do my best to live by the golden rule; doing so means that I don't simply do things because I feel like it, without considering the impact my actions have on others. It's still legal to smoke in a lot of bars in this state; from time to time I have had the bad fortune to be with a group of people who wanted to go to such a place, and so I was rewarded for simply wanting to spend time with my friends by the wonderful gift of highly carcinogenic second-hand smoke. It is astounding to me that with what is known now about what smoking does not only to the smoker but those in his vicinity, how many millions of people in this country don't hesitate to smoke around non-smokers in public establishments. I don't think I could bring myself to give someone else the risk of cancer simply for the sake of my own pleasure. But I do realize that that kind of thinking is prevalent in the world we live in today. I just don't think it's a great way to treat people.

As I already stated, I don't have issue with keeping a handful of bluegill for a meal. And, if it didn't directly affect a lot of other people, I wouldn't have issue with keeping more than a handful: if, for instance, you own a ten-acre lake and want to keep a thousand bluegill out of it a year, you're affecting no one but yourself, so have at it. If on the other hand you're fishing a public water that is fished by hundreds or thousands of other anglers a year, and you choose to ignore the proven science of what your actions will do to the fishery, i.e. how those actions will affect the future enjoyment or lack thereof of those thousands of other anglers, and keep a coolerful because it's legal and you can, to my mind you're just a narcissist.

[jad2t]

Are you seriously comparing people who chose to catch and eat instead of catch and release to people who, as you put it, will gladly increase other's risk for cancer just to satisfy themselves?

Golden Rule? What about the treatment of the fish? Do you think that in the wild when a fish or game animal dies it just falls asleep peacefully and never wakes up? Nope. They get disease. They get sluggish and slow moving and are devoured by a bigger animal or fish. It's not pretty. I'm sure a 10 inch bluegill would much rather be caught by me, bopped on the head real quick, and eaten, than die slowly of infection or being grabbed by a bird and torn apart alive.

That's why I find it laughable, at best, when people who will gladly fish with a crankbait or other multi-treble hooked lure will poke several holes in a fish's face, eyes, gills, back, stomack (foul hook), etc. but release the fish and pound their chest about how ethical they are. Give me a break. If I catch a keeper Smallie on a single hook, I'll consider releasing it and I have in the past. If I catch it on a crankbait, it hits hot butter.

Some fish for meat, some fish for trophies. Public lakes are fished by both types of fishermen. You can't claim that you're the "right" angler and the guys who harvest fish are "wrong" so things have to be done your way. Do that on your private pond. Public water is open to the public, and paid for by the public, to use as they please.

[Heiny57]

Originally Posted by jad2t

Crappie are for people who can't catch bass haha

I do like the taste of Crappie but I hate that they're so mushy. I like more dense flakes of fish. Crappie consistency is like baby food.

You Crappie guys need to grow past the baby food and become men...fishers of men - another Bible reference. Eat bass, grow a beard, and wash it down with a sip of bourbon.

They are crispy when dipped in egg, then cornmeal, and deep fried.

[Heiny57]

I will quote a fishing guide in Arkansas that said while cleaning a cooler full of fish we caught,,,,,," the state puts them in, we take em out".

Just sayin.

You have my word that this is my last post: the narcissists can rationalize all they want and I promise to let them have the last word.

All I will say is this: I have used a treble-hook lure for bluegill, or had any of my clients do so, exactly once in the four years I have been running the guide business, and for all of about ten minutes. This is how careless I am of the big bluegill I catch: I don't even allow clients who paid me hundreds of dollars for one day's fishing to take more than one photo of any given fish. I used to allow more, but inevitably one photo turns into five turns into ten because they're excited and want to make sure they get the perfect shot, and in the meantime the fish is out of the water.

Fish that are quickly released with a minimum of handling have a pretty high survival rate with no adverse effects - there have been numerous studies on this topic. Don't take my word for it - research it online.

The fact that someone in this thread had to make an incorrect assumption about my fish handling techniques to validate his argument, speaks volumes about said argument, I think.

I can promise you, 100% beyond a doubt, that a goodly number of the two-pound bluegill that will be caught by clients of mine this spring, were caught as half-pounders or one-pounders or one-and-a-half-pounders in seasons past, i.e. they never would have made it to two pounds if I had killed them the first time they were caught. And, they'll be released again this spring, and will have the chance to grow to three pounds. If it hasn't died of old age, there's already one that size in my best pond - I got a very good look at it in September 2014. I didn't see it last year so it may have died last winter.

As to the public using the water as they please: what you really mean is, you want to use it as you please, and to hell with everybody else. You by yourself do not constitute the whole of the public: this may be a shock and a revelation to you, but I am every bit as much a part of the public as you are, and your rights to the water don't trump mine. When I release a 9" bluegill I catch in Shellcracker Lake, it doesn't in any way negatively impact your future ability to enjoy that lake; but when you keep twenty or fifty or 100 from 7-9", you directly impact my future ability to enjoy that resource. And not just me, but Alpha, and thousands of other anglers who are more polite than I am and secretly wish you would stop raping their waters but would never tell you so.

If two anglers fish for a day and keep ten 8-9" bluegill, which is where the slot should be set, those ten fish will make a nice meal for them, and the fishery for the larger fish that avid bluegill anglers pursue will not be harmed; in other words, both camps can use the resource and enjoy it. The meat-fisherman paradigm, conversely, only benefits one camp, while completely bulldozing the other.

I wonder how many people on this thread arguing for the right to be able to keep two hundred bluegill in a day, have ever fished for trophy largemouth on a lake specifically managed for such, and been thankful when you caught a large bass that would not have been possible without regulation? If it's valid and even important for there to be regulations on bass, then it's valid and important for regulations to be on bluegill. I'm sure there are plenty of meat fishermen who would keep thirty or fifty big bass in a day if the law allowed; so why don't we just do away with all fishing regulations and let everybody keep whatever they want and fill their freezers?

Because, believe it or not meat fishermen, the world does not revolve around you, and your right to do "whatever you want" to the water ends where mine begins. Legally, at the moment, you can keep as many as you want; perhaps one of these days enough conscientious, conservation-minded bluegill anglers will get tired of your b.s. to rise up and demand that TWRA and agencies in other southern states (it has already happened in many northern states as previously noted) take the decision out of your hands.

[jad2t]

What is it with you and calling everyone who disagrees with you a narcissist?

I don't recall anyone saying there was a need to keep 200 bluegill in a day so I'm not sure why you keep mentioning that...

Also, I never accused you of using treble hooks on fish. I very clearly did NOT use your name in that statement. I said anglers who use them, I didn't mention anyone specific.

"As to the public using the water as they please: what you really mean is, you want to use it as you please, and to hell with everybody else."

No, that is not correct. What I said is exactly what I meant. It's public water. Some guys like me, because we're all narcissists, choose to harvest some of the fish we catch. Some guys want to release those fish. Some guys don't fish at all and only want to get hammered and ride jet skis. Do they not have a right to do that because you want to catch and release your bluegill? It's public water. We're free to do whatever is legal whether it be fishing, swimming, wakeboarding, etc. Sure, I hate the wakeboarders in the Summer but they have every right to do so.

You may want to release a 9" bluegill in a public lake in hopes that next season you catch it and it will be 10 inches. That's fine and I wish you the best of luck at catching it again but don't be pissed at someone for catching it before you and eating it because they don't give a crap about bragging on FishingTN about a trophy fish, they just want to eat. It's like passing on a 1.5 year old 6 point buck and hoping next season it will have a wide 8 point rack and 20 pounds more of meat. Great idea, but you do risk it wandering on someone else's property during the rut and getting shot. Are you going to call that hunter a narcissist too? Maybe you would, but most people wouldn't.

[Headhunter]

Tnpondmanage, So you know more than the TWRA fisheries biologist?

I know I said I wouldn't reply again, and who knows but the last post was made out of an effort purely to get me to do otherwise, in which case it succeeded.

TWRA biologists are generalists, meaning they have to know a little about a lot of things. The listed education requirement for their biologist positions is a degree in wildlife or fisheries management, meaning one can be hired for the position without having many, or even any, classes in fisheries science. The experience requirement for their entry-level biologist position is none; for their level 2 biologist one has to have one year of experience, in either wildlife or fisheries; for their highest-level biologist position one has to have two years of experience, again in either wildlife or fisheries. So one can be hired to be a biologist for TWRA with no experience whatsoever, and no education whatsoever, in fisheries management.

I have seventeen years of fisheries management experience and have worked on hundreds of private ponds and lakes up to 120 acres in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Indiana. Just last year I worked on ponds and lakes in all of the above states with the exception of Alabama.

Even if I had no experience and knew nothing, I would think an intelligent person who took the time to read the articles I linked to, all of which either were written by fisheries biologists or quote studies by such, might note the fact that there is a consistent pattern of bluegill fishing improving in states that have implemented regulations based on the recent research on this topic, and might be able to conclude that perhaps TWRA is not doing the world's greatest job of managing bluegill in this state.

And with that I am done, finito, au revoir, hasta la vista, over and out. Feel free to plunder public resources at your pleasure because it is, after all, allowed by the law.

[Heiny57]

Speaking of fish

[XxthejuicexX]

I plan on working up one hell of a number 6 on the crappie this spring. I will leave the bluegill alone, they are good eating but unless they are on the larger size I don't like cleaning them. Here's to public water!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM-lxsxeXBI

[XxthejuicexX]

Originally Posted by Heiny57

Speaking of fish

Looks good, I need to thaw some out and have a fish fry.