Bluegills

X2 Philtickelson

I think your spot on. Gun Deer hunting license is 24.00 for 9 days. Fishing license is good for 365 days and is only 22.00 seems to be something wrong with that picture IMO. Also the limits need to be lowered I hear a fair amount of fishermen talking that they would like to see lower limits especially on panfish. If fishing license would cost what deer hunting license cost they would be 973.00 a year that might cut back on the fishing pressure HaHa!
Also make the fines for violators alot higher. The only ones I would think that should bother is the ones that it will effect? or plan on violating.

rkd-jim wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Tom Sawvell wrote:</div>
I’d really like to see two sets of winter rules. Maybe have a primitive license endorsement that can be attached to the regular license at the time of purchase and more liberal limits for those who choose to fish without shelters, heaters, flashers, snowmobiles, atvs, power augers or those who utilize sleeper rentals from resorts. People possessing any of the goodies be required to pay a winter fee, and have limits reduced by 50%.

When this regulation is enacted hopefully it will include our native american friends spearing and gill-netting out of birch-bark canoes with pine pitch torches for light.

I’d sure like to see your ideas enacted RKD. And the DNR/government doesn’t have to want until what I suggested is dealt with.

Selective harvest!!
Keep a few to eat, don’t be a gluttonous pig and let the big ones go! If more people agreed with what we are all saying fishing could be as good as we all could ever hope it would be! A successful day can still be had with fish being RELEASED

Andy Fiolka wrote:

In South Dakota, you can keep 15 each: Crappies, Bluegills, and Perch. That’s 45 freaking fish a day, per guy. (90 combined for a weekend) Many times the bite is good enough on all three species for anglers to pull it off.

What I would like to see is a 15 fish daily limit for COMBINED Panfish and perch. People don’t come out to SD for the meat, they come because of the quality of fishing overall that we have. With the current pressure over the past few years, the quality is very apparent to be on a decline. Let’s do something about it before we become MN/IA 2.0

Just my $.02
Andy

Nebraska changed the limits on panfish to this system several years ago. 15 conbined: Crappie, perch, all sunfish hybrids, rock bass, etc..

Has the quality of fish improved? Not sure.

Kansas has extremely liberal bag limits, with the statewide crappie limit at 50, and some lakes limited to 20.

I know one lake in particular that is 50, and people take home BUCKETS of quality fish. And I go back there year after year and still have no issue finding 14-15″ crappie.

There is no perfect way to set up limits and slots for a state wide regulation, and making regulations that are lake specific would be an option, but hard to enforce, and more difficult for some people to understand.

I have to chime it, this is a “soap-box” I am always ready to climb onto, .

In Nebraska, we have a statewide bag limit of 15 panfish, panfish in the aggregate, for almost all Nebraska waters. That is relatively restrictive and it does help protect some of our quality and trophy-size panfish.

But, it ain’t enough. When word gets out about a hot ice-bite, the hordes descend. That is not so bad if it were not for those that harvest every panfish they catch, especially the big ones, and keep going back day after day. They keep going back until the bite slows or stops. Wonder why the fish “quit biting”?????

On the regulatory side, I have listened to the wailing and gnashing of teeth whenever we suggest more restrictive harvest regulations for panfish. There is still this false, mistaken, WRONG philosophy that you HAVE to harvest panfish lest they become “stunted”. No, nowadays we have way more panfish populations that suffer from over-harvest than those that are suffering from over-population and stunting.

We have a sandhill lake in north-central Nebraska that was recently renovated to knock back common carp. We are implementing a 12-inch minimum length limit for the yellow perch there to see if we can maintain a quality perch fishery. We will see how that works, but I suspect we may need other special regulations to protect other fisheries capable of producing trophy bluegills, trophy crappies and trophy yellow perch. We may be able to implement a few of those regulations on an individual waterbody basis, but I know we will hear howling about it from the catch-all-you-can and can-all-you-catch crowd.

Angler attitudes have changed dramatically in the past 20-40 years. We need to keep talking about those new attitudes and keep spreading the word! And when fisheries management agencies try to do more to protect big panfish, we need to make sure they know we are in favor of those management efforts. We need to be louder than the fish hogs.

Daryl Bauer
Fisheries Outreach Program Manager
Nebraska Game & Parks Commission
[email protected]

This happens a ton here in the Bloomer area, soon as word gets out of a big crappie/bluegill bite, there is a city of shacks out there wiping them out. Alot of the locals feel the need to keep every fish they catch too. I could name about 3-4 area lakes that are now in rebuild mode because of it. I have found some good spots the last couple years with alot of exploring but keep pretty tight lipped about it so those fisheries aren’t ruined either. I agree, many areas could use reduced limits to let these lakes rebound.

I asked the Iowa DNR if they would ever consider reducing the limit from 25 to 15. This was their response.

Dan,

Good question. Many Iowa anglers share your sentiment: fishing is good and I want to keep it that way – is a regulation necessary? Below is an article that the Management Biologist for your district, Mike Hawkins (Spirit Lake), prepared for a web forum on this topic around the time that the 25-fish bag limit was imposed a few years ago. He does a nice job of explaining the reasoning behind the current bag limit.

“Bag limits in general don’t do much to control harvest. I know that doesn’t make sense at first. I’ll try to explain why that is. When you look at harvest distribution, how many fish anglers keep during their trip, it isn’t too surprising. Most folks don’t catch that many fish. In fact, even during the best walleye fishing years, 70 – 80% of walleye anglers don’t take home a fish. A very small percentage take home a limit.

Another example. During the best bluegill fishing we have ever seen on Spirit Lake, 87% of the fish taken home were by anglers keeping less than 15 fish. Starting to make sense? During the best harvest year ever recorded on West Okoboji Lake less than 2% of the anglers took home more than 25 fish. It should start become obvious a limit of 25 isn’t going to do much. In fact, the angler that did catch over 25 – he’s simply going to be forced to stop at 25. The reduction in harvest is just the difference between what he would have taken and 25.

If harvest was a problem and was adversely affecting your fishing (I’ll get into that in a second) a bag limit is one of the last tools I would resort to for control. Don’t get me wrong, a bag limit could control harvest, but I don’t think you would like how far it would need to be cranked down to get the job done. During the best fishing years, we’d need a bag limit of 5-8 bluegills to get a significant reduction in harvest. Probably not angler acceptable.

Now, this all begs the question why the limit? What’s wrong with how things are going? Is there a problem? The proverb among the old fisheries biologists is “the only thing worse than bad fishing is good fishing.” When the fishing is great anglers get really nervous. They don’t want to lose a good thing. Neither do I. The reality though is panfish fishing depends on strong recruitment (successful growth of small fish into big ones). Every shred of evidence we have collected in Iowa tells us that recruitment and quality of a panfish populations is a product of water quality and habitat. These two things work together to enhance recruitment. Great water quality and habitat can get trumped by environmental conditions however. Say you’re a bluegill fry and just as you use up the last of your yolk sac a big cold front hits and the zooplankton numbers plummet. You have about half a day to find something to eat! Late springs, water temps, water levels, timing of plankton blooms they all can have a huge impact on recruitment. As long as the lake is healthy though, panfish will most likely do well most of the time.

One of our research biologists did some ground breaking work a while back. He looked at bluegill populations in several lakes across the state. This research found several things, but the one most relevant to this discussion is that the lakes with the best bluegill populations (growth, body condition, density) sustained the highest harvest. How can this be? Does fishing strengthen the population? Could be. Harvest of this species does reduce competition in the lake and improve growth rates and reproduction rates. My guess though is that one has nothing to do with the other. A great bluegill lake is just that – great. The fish have what they need to be in great shape. Anglers simply know which lakes to go to catch bluegills resulting in higher harvest at those lakes.

Bottom line. This regulation will not improve fishing, it simply can’t. Continuing to improve habitat and water quality will.

Still haven’t answered the question have I? There are other reasons for a regulation. Even though there aren’t many folks harvesting over 25 in day, there are those that can and do. A small handful even take a lot more than 25. The pressure our bureau received on this one was from folks who thought this type of behavior was not acceptable. They said 25 is enough. There are a number of our regulations in place because of ethical or social reasons. Spotlighting deer, for example, certainly won’t drive the population of deer into jeopardy, but folks have deemed it unethical. It is against the law.“

So basically, the 25-fish bag limit was imposed for social reasons – from a biological standpoint it was not necessary to improve fishing. The same can be said about a further reduction in the bag limit – it would not improve fishing for your kids or their kids. Even with improvements in technology, angler harvest still plays a minor role in driving fishery quality. Your fishing success or lack thereof is dictated more by the weather and water quality in the lake you fish. The Iowa DNR is focused on improving water quality as good water quality almost always translates into better fishing in Iowa lakes.

Thanks for taking time to email the DNR. If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me directly.