Quote:
Originally Posted by Speckmeister
If my memory serves me correctly . . . the purpose of the lower creel limit as well as the two fish over restriction on Big Lake and Sabine (as well as areas nearby) was never a "scientific" endeavor although the many pictures of huge stringers strapped over wade-anglers backs supported some concern over numbers. The restrictions were proposed at the time to support a "trophy trout lake" in Big Lake just like we had trophy and quality bass lakes. Whether or not the average size in trout samples have increased is still questionable . . . or I haven't seen any data on this as yet.
|
The trophy trout aspirations missed the scientific need to feed trout sufficiently to support fast growth rates. Specks are not long lived, and if they are not fed very well and growing very fast, you don't get good numbers of big trout. Tournament results are more anecdotal than scientific, but since 2005, most tournaments have been won with smaller trout than previously. Our data also shows that the longer trout in recent years have been thinner which suggest slower growth rates and lower egg production.
This dynamic is well known in the bass world where one needs to control the bass population relative to the food supply to produce good numbers of trophy bass. Recent efforts in the basin failed to produce a trophy bass fishery because the bass were not growing fast enough or living long enough. Producing trophy fish in good numbers requires much more than tighter harvest restrictions, and in these two cases, tighter harvest restrictions actually had a negative impact.
See the LDWF report on Basin Bass here:
http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/sites/d...1o-01-2012.pdf
It would be nice to see that kind of science BEFORE more restrictive limits are implemented to determine the likelihood of delivering on the promise.