D4u2s0t

In my opinion keeping one, two, even ten decent sized bass is way less detrimental to the fishery than sight fishing for bedding bass AND then releasing them after a weigh in. I had a heated discussion about this with my fishing partner years ago down in Florida. He would catch the protecting male, put it in the live well (legal size or not) then wait around for the female to come and guard the nest. As soon as the male was gone and before the female showed up the bluegill would attack the nest, eating eggs to the point of stirring up the water. When the female finally showed up and he caught her he would flip the male back into the water. But during the time that no fish was protecting the nest the smaller fish gorged themselves on bass eggs. Hundreds and hundreds of potential big bass were eliminated during the catch and release of one decent sized female. I realize that the survival rate of eggs/fry to maturity is very low, but, in my opinion, sight fishing for bedding fish is way worse for the fishery (and for "those who love the sport") than keeping a few mature bass. But during the spawn I see and hear about people doing this all the time. As you can tell, I am against it.... that's a little bit of a different scenario... that's someone who doesn't have any respect for fishing.

yea, anything east of sussex county I would never consider eating. I'm still waiting to go jigging for walleye, better believe i'm eating them!

lol. my lake is the backup resevoir, and is tested monthly. extremely clean. I live in a private community, my neck of the woods is not like east jersey. Once you get out west a little bit it's a lot different. I feel the same way about many parts of jersey though. that's one of the reasons we bought a house where we did.

speak for your own areas of jersey. My lake is on top of a mountain, can drink right out of the lake. Would I eat a fish near jersey city, newark, paterson, passaic, trenton, etc? Hellllllll no lol. But once you get away from the big cities jersey is actually very clean.

you have to make a certain amount of posts before you can put pictures.

that's what they do... they don't like to get hooked in the mouth, dragged around, and then get held up by their lip. wouldn't you try to get away too? just hold on a lil tighter. you're doing more damage by dropping the fish than by holding it more securely.

first off, you hold it better so it doesn't fall. just wait for it to settle down and take the picture.

majority of the people would probably have a replica done.

I agree totally. While I would never consider taking home a bass from the lake, it doesn't mean I would look down upon someone who does. Last year in Canada I kept near every walleye I caught, and cooked it over the fire. I love eating fish. Just don't have much desire to eat bass. If I pulled a decent sized walleye from my lake (they stock it, someone recently pulled out a 13+ pounder and put it back) I would most likely keep it. Anything else goes back in the drink asap.

at a quick glance i'd say it's approx the same, It's tough to pinpoint exactly without knowing the size of your hands, but i think they're pretty close. The way a picture is taken can be deceiving, because a picture does not capture and image the same way your eye sees/analyzes it. If i told you the fish in my avatar was bigger than both of these, you would probably call me a liar. It's only because there's nothing to reference how big the fish is.

haha, i did say almost though! but yea, i'm pretty confident in that.

this thread is proof that no one should estimate the size of their fish lol. 7 pounds???? come on. not even close. Maybe I see things differently because I do video and video editing for a living. But take a look at this video (not done by me) and notice how much different the fish looks while taking it out of the water, and then holding it up. start at about 2:18 and watch. Notice anything? Still think it's a 7 pound fish?

i would almost bet a that it's not over 7lbs lol.

the perch in my lake are not that big, I get annoyed when I get one lol. Usually it's just little kids fishing for perch here, pulling in a "big" one in my lake is about as fun as pulling in a clump of weeds. In some of the pics above, maybe it's different though!

I never catch any more or less fish based on the color. other people i'm fishing with say the same things, light here, dark here, sparkly ones on this day, and I always end up catching just as many or sometimes more fish. Until I personally see otherwise, I won't put much emphasis on color.

that's my exact thought... between 4-5.

I've had good experiences with tw. Ordered twice, and both times my order was shipped within a few hours.

I would guess from the pic for that fish to be somewhere between 15-19 inches. unless i'm way off on my math, good chance it's in that range. I really don't think this is as big as other people think. when will we find out?

great fish!

More telling than the unknown distance between fish and angler, is the angler's hands. The fish and the angler's hands are always on the same plane, and to me his hands look large. 4 lbs tops. Roger that's what I used to determine a rough length estimate. Unless this guy is like 7 feet tall and has huge monster hands, that fish is not as big as it "seems".

try casting more with your wrists, less with your back.

i'm gonna go a different route and say it's a lil over 4 pounds... I think too many people overestimate their fish.

what kind of fish? I notice the weekend fisherman lots of times will catch a fish, hold it up out of the water to show everyone, leave it out of the water for way too long, and then yank the hook out. I see lots of dead sunny and perch especially because without needle nose pliers it's hard to get a hook out of their little mouth. I always try to get the fish out and back in the water as soon as possible, but not everyone does that.

yep, got that right off the dock with a wacky senko. I've got a few going for largemouth, but i never go specifically for smallies so I only catch them here and there.

we went out for chub once, for that reason. it was about as fun as fishing for sunny lol. and these were "big" chub up in canada.