Quote:
Originally Posted by keakar
but that's just it, if you keep the 16" reds they are just as tender and flakey as the catfish, sheepshead, trout, bass, etc, that's why I am so much in favor or reducing the keeper size to 14".
next time you go keep a couple 16" reds and try them the same as you would the other fish. naturally trimming off the red blood meat (and there isn't much of it in smaller fish) but im sure you knew that.
16-17" is best and the meat starts to firm up at 18"+
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We keep most of the legal fish we catch, though one that is barely legal (16") might be thrown back so that ice chest shrinkage does not cause a problem for us. There's just not much meat on most 14-16" reds.
I don't think allowing folks to keep 14-16" reds will hurt the resource, so I wouldn't oppose this. However, there is a lot of bias against keeping the smaller fish, so I tend to think that doubling the limit of the existing length ranges is more likely to find wide support.