Quote:
Originally Posted by MathGeek
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. |
MathGeek, you must admit though that this type of data did not exist before the 15- trout and associated length restrictions were put in place. In fact, we did not have any scientific results on the bass data from quality and trophy lakes that were published that I know of back then as well.
As for trout, the "gamefish" status was purely a political designation as I hope you are aware of. Biologists' data shows the population pie...and politics decides who gets the percentage of cut - commercial or recreational sectors.
I understand your exasperation with CCA as written, but other psychological data such as "Approach/Avoidance" would seem to give evidence for more political action on the part of a stronger push within CCA ranks to take a deeper look at these issues before action is called. Pushing a boycott of STAR would definitely usher an Avoidance response from both Administrative- and most of the membership ranks- of CCA.