Selective Harvest

Basically, there are three schools of thought.  Strictly catch and release, catch and keep, and somewhere in the middle of those, you have selective harvest.

Now, before I start, I am aware that some fish for sport, and some fish to put food on the table.  Both are fine with me, as long as they are done responsibly and within the confines of the law.

Over Harvesting:  I feel, that this is the most detrimental to our precious fisheries.  We have all witnessed it; the family that shows up to your fishing hole with buckets in hand, and live bait, and proceeds to keep everything they catch, whether it be a 12" 1lb bass, or a 21" 5lb bass.   May I remind you, in CT the daily creel limit for largemouth and smallmouth bass, is 6 fish.  Say there is 4 adults fishing, and they all limit out, that's 24 fish not going back in the water.  Now, just for arguments sake, they do this 5 days a week.  Now that 24 fish, just turned into 120 in just 5 days.  This could be catastrophic to any pond, lake, or river, and it is just downright selfish and irresponsible in my opinion.

Catch and Release: I know what you're thinking, "How could catch and release possibly be harmful to the quality of fishing?" By releasing EVERYTHING you catch, you create an overabundance of predatory fish.  This sounds pretty good right?  A seemingly unlimited source of bass!  But, more realistically, you will end up with a large quantity of stunted fish.  You know the ones,  a bass that measures 20", but it still only weighs 1.5lbs. I'm not saying catch and release is a bad thing, don't get me wrong. I would much rather see everyone release all their fish, rather than keep them.  But if everybody practiced catch and release, we would have some seriously skinny bass on our hands.

Selective Harvest:  In a nutshell, you take a small quantity of smaller fish (of legal size), and release the big fish for someone else to catch.  By doing this, you will lower the amount of less desirable fish, and leave the bigger fish for someone else to catch someday.  It's really that simple.  What you just did, was put food on your table, while at the same time, helped improve a fishery, and possibly one day down the road, allowed a record bass to be caught by someone else.


 What it boils down to, is that we need balance, just like anything else in this world.  Now one could argue that we have balance, with the hardcore catch and release guys, and the people that keep everything, and you may be right.  But it could be better, with selective harvesting, the quality of fishing could skyrocket, and everybody benefits. 


And on a side note, this doesn't just apply to bass either, it could be an effective means for growing other populations of fish as well.  Taking some smaller crappie or perch could also have a positive outcome on a bass population, as you are removing some competition.