Shawn wrote:
in some areas of North
America, the "catch-and-release" philosophy was almost having the opposite
effect as people were thinking, in that decreased harvest was resulting in
more bass, but smaller in overall size, bordering on "stunting" in some
populations because of limited food resource availability.


I understand what you're saying, but in the spirit of friendly debate, I
would suggest that it comes from the perspective of fisheries managers who
by their nature tend to view fisheries as something that requires human
intervention in the form of 'management'. Think of a virgin fishery. No
catch, no release, no harvest, no interference from man (IE, no management).
Ever see one that was overpopulated with stunted fish? If you did, you would
probably suspect the forage base as the problem.

Adding 100% C&R into that mix shouldn't change the equation. From a
standpoint of its effect on the population dynamics of the lake, Catch/No
Harvest is no different than No Catch. Yet time and again, we've seen the
professional fisheries management answer to that situation is attempts to
adjust the harvest. Perhaps the root of the problem is insufficient
nutrition, whether from not enough forage or prey that requires more energy
to hunt/capture than it produces in calories.

Harvest as a means to manage a lake's population balance can only be
effective if there are enough successful anglers who are also inclined and
willing to harvest the small ones. And even if it does work, it still fails
to address the possibility that the root of the problem is related more to
forage than to harvest patterns.

I can't think of a lake in the northeast that had this problem over the past
35 years that was cured by anything other than the introduction of a high
protien forage species -- in most cases, alewife, although I know that's a
dirty word in VT.

RichZ©
www.richz.com/fishing