Corpusfishing.com

[Southeast Of Disorder]

I had a great day on the water with the wife Saturday. Easy to limit out, but kept just what we need to have a few meals.

Saw at Doc's as well as Bluff Landing lots of dead 24 " - 25 1/ 2 " trout as well as 30 " plus broader stock and upper slot reds, at tournaments. ALL FOR BRAGGING AND JACKPOT CASH ? If this keeps up it will have a heavy impact on our fisheries.

Tom Nix had the RIGHT IDEA TO BRING THEM BACK ALIVE. But it seams that tourneys with live weigh ends are few and far between from the majority of dead fish, alot i saw i would not eat because i guess they did not bring enough ice for their coolers >

[bulldog1935]

wouldn't surprise me to see redfish swim away after their tournament weigh-and-measure, but wouldn't expect many trout handled that way to survive.
The thing is, every trout over 24" is a female and full of eggs (males don't grow that fast or large) - I agree, it's twisted to kill them by over-handling for bragging rights.
Maybe tournament rules should be changed to camera results to promote safe release of big female trout.

this girl was badly gulleted, and likely wouldn't have survived if released.
Though I did catch one in the surf one day that had been filleted down one side by a shark (gut membrane intact, but the gill on that side missing), and scarred over with red scar tissue.

[rumrunner]

Not every trout over 24 inches is a female. First big trout my wife ever caught was a 28 inch trout and it was a male. We had the ear bones extracted from the fish and were asked to donate them for research, but since it was the first big trout she ever caught (and the only one she's ever kept) I had the ear bones made into ear rings and we enjoyed the trout for dinner.

[bulldog1935]

fair enough - largest male trout I've ever filleted was 23"

But your wife's 28" male probably compares in age and scarcity to a 36" female.

[BayFly]

Please educate an old salt how to tell the difference between a male and female trout?

[bulldog1935]

hi friend, look at the fillet above - females have sacks of roe, males have bright white male organs.
All those schoolies we catch dock fishing at Arroyo City are males - think I've only caught three or four 16" female nursery trout in 3 winters there.
The grown females spread out and stake a turf - the males school together and travel 20+ mi/day to find enough food.

If you're catching white bass, can tell the difference while you're handling the fish - the males milt and the female eggs are busting out.

[reallifetexan]

Although we try to release all large trout we catch, occasionally one gets gut hooked or we keep some smaller legal ones and for whatever reason lately they often have ended up being female with egg sacs. I've started to extract those egg sacs while filleting them and then fry them up. My first couple of tries, the texture kind of turned me off, but then I fried them a little longer, and they're starting to taste pretty good! Don't mean to hijack the thread, this was all in an attempt to waste as little as possible of what we keep. If we're not going to eat it, we let it go. Unless it's going to win the STAR, but that hasn't ever happened yet...

[Central Scrutinizer]

[Southeast Of Disorder]

I am just thinking out loud, but if you do the math on participants times how many tournaments happen every weekend the loss of fish that i see that are not being taken care of, but on a stringer in the hot sun laying on the concrete or on the ground is crazy.

You have all these folks bringing for largest of each species, heaviest stringer, and most spots is hundreds every weekend. I am not saying that we need more laws but education of the guys putting on the tourneys or better yet places like Docs and Marker 37 could impose some rules like no more than one fish to be weighed in for largest, heavy stringer, 3 - fish and do away with most spots might be the key to have tourney participants bring in less fish out of the bay and have fun. The idea of bonus points for live fish is a winner and release or have the hatchery folks there with tanks to take back for breeding.

[Central Scrutinizer]

Just to ease your mind Southeast of Disorder, those numbers and biomass of fish that are harvested for Tournaments are, and have been, factored into Stock Assessments of various species. Visually, it might look bad, but as a fraction of the total, it's not as big of a piece as you might think.
Both trouts and reds are still in pretty good shape, despite the 'plethora' of Tournaments. Flounders, not so much, but not too many Tournaments have that category, thankfully.

[Edited] - But as someone who has done Weighmaster duties at loads of Tournaments for 25+ years, I can tell you that the Live Weigh-In ones are typically more difficult, with all the 'live release' stipulations.

[deputydawg]

[IrishSharker]

[Mike_D]

As someone who has fished tournaments for 20 years (both inshore and offshore), I can say the majority are light years from where they once were. Only do a couple a year now, but almost all have limited stringers and an alternative to largest fish. For instance, the Wildfire tournament I fished this past weekend was 3 trout, 2 reds as a stringer and for the Calcutta and no trout over 25 inches. Sadly, I remember weighing in 10 trout between 23-29 inches at a tourney years ago. Not all are perfect, but as a whole are a whole lot better. I would guess anyone that has fish drying out before a weigh in probably has never fished one and probably never will again.

[Southeast Of Disorder]

I did a tourney i guess 7 or 8 years ago that REMAX on the island did. Major Larry Young was the weigh master who was a a game warden. The wind blew so no boats went offshore. I won the bay Redfish big fish but also weighed in a mangrove snapper that i kept in my shirt pocket. It was an offshore species so i entered it in the offshore division and won !!

[bd0202]