Frank,
Blaukat has his opinion I suppose ... but I am willing to bet he didn't bother to read any of the DOW's justifications for the change. His mind is immovable which is just another way of saying we can't change his mind in light of any evidence. Here is DOW's reasons/justification
https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/outdoorok/ooj/new-black-bass-rules-proposed-2022With more than 76% of the LMB coming in under 14" it's no wonder less than 1% grow bigger than 21". Blaukat evidently likes to catch lots of small bass ... and to be honest ... I enjoy that too ... but these regulations are NOT intended to increase catch rates but to give more bass the opportunity to grow large. In most impoundments it takes many man-days of fishing just to catch 1 LMB >4.5 lbs. Consider this excerpt from a paper I will later link:
In Georgia, it required a tournament angler an average of 305 h
to catch a bass 2.27 kg or larger (Quertermus 2013). Anglers were
most successful at catching fish of this size in Lake Seminole, need-
ing only 78 h to accomplish
So even the best, most competitive anglers have work at it even in a great lake like Seminole.
This is what they are trying to overcome:
Fisheries managers have struggled with effective ways to reduce
high densities of slow growing largemouth bass in small impound-
ments. In the past, the principle management strategy to address
this issue was to encourage harvest, but high voluntary release
rates of anglers and lack of harvest by anglers have largely elimi-
nated this option (Myers et al. 2008, Willis and Neal 2012). Also,
high release rates by anglers increases the likelihood of density-
dependent reductions in largemouth bass growth (Aday and Graeb
2012, Wright and Kraft 2012).
So these wise men, Dr. Willis among them, see catch and release of small overabundant bass as the major contributor to the problem of slow growing LMB.
The excerpts are from
this paper.
