Fish-Hawk.Net

In 2008 the Ministry of Natural Resources imposed a 50 fish limit on Sunfish in Zone 18. Due to some voiced concerns by the general population, the Minister lifted the limit to no limit on how many Sun fish could be caught.

How do you feel about this, and please feel free to comment on your opinion?

I just saw this topic by accident when I was looking for "how to post pictures."

We should be encouraging people to target, and KEEP, pumpkinseeds, bluegills, and rock bass. All of these species are extremely abundant, and also extremely prolific, and if not kept in check can rapidly amount to a MAJORITY of the biomass in a given body of water. Since every lake has a finite amount of fish it can sustain, this is no small matter.

If you like to catch bass, keep as many of the above-mentioned panfish as possible, to reduce predation on bass eggs and fry, not to mention competition for food once the bass are adults. And they are called panfish for a reason, they are DELICIOUS!!!!!!!

I have caught and kept many thousands (yes, thousands) of panfish over the past thirty years, and consider it my part in trying to help bass populations where I catch the panfish.

Here is a concrete example from a large lake in my area. Loughborough Lake is a multi-speices fishery and has some very good bass fishing, both for smallies and bucketmouths. In 1996, the south shore of the west half of Loughborough Lake held hundreds of bass and very few bluegills, rock bass, and pumpkinseeds. It was an extraordinary bass fishery. In 1997 I started to see a LOT more panfish, and less bass. By 2000, the shore held very few bass, but many thousands of panfish. Now, there may be a whole host of reasons why the bass population does not appear to be there in the numbers we saw in the mid-90s. But I think the main culprit is sunfish and rock bass population explosions.

I do not advocate limitless fishing for panfish where populations are endangered, but frankly I do not know of any lake where that is the case. Once they are established, it is virtually impossible to eradicate them, and aside from commercial netting the only control measure is angling. As an aside, a commercial licence was granted to a Battersea individual to net for sunfish about six or maybe seven years ago. He had a contract to sell any fish longer than so many inches (maybe six inches, I forget) to a commercial fish processor, and the fish smaller than that were to be sold to a local mink farmer. The fellow caught tonnes of fish, almost all of them dinks, but as it turned out, the enterprise was not financially successful and he only did it for one year.

So it is up to us, the anglers, to try our level best to knock the panfish populations down a bit to help out our other game species.

Anybody that needs panfish recipes, just send me a note, or I can post them in the recipes section.

Doug

I have not been to a warm water lake yet that has a shortage of bass in it but just tell me where I can find sunnies without those little black cists and perch without grubs and I will do my part to help out the bass

Like everything, the rules have a place, especially where fishermen target these fish but in most lakes around this area people are not looking to keep them and dig out the worms

Cheers,
Prairieboy

Heck, those little parasites won't hurt you, and you can't even see them after the fillets are cooked!

It takes mere seconds to take the worms out of panfish fillets, just stick the point of the fillet knife in where you see the worm, and voila, it comes out on the tip, nothing to it.

Doug

I am very surprised at the developing results of the Panfish Survey. I fish panfish a lot, and have no objection to a 50 fish limit. In fact I can't imagine one person keeping more fish than that. I believe one of the main reasons behind this limit is to prevent a very small number of anglers from keeping literally 1000's of fish and potentially reduing the ability for others to share in the resource.
Cheers,
LK

I think we should impose a limit.

1) It'll ensure reasonable #'s are taken

and

2) More food is left for the Muskies!!

Lonnie,

Could you post a like to the survey results?

I've heard too many horror stories about what goes on with Panfish stocks.....it's shameless.....and people are absolutely narrow minded to think it doesnt effect the rest of fish stocks as well.....

I know more about this situation but I'll keep it to myself and hope the MNR deals with it appropriately...

Ahhhh...ok, found it.

I think the reason people don't see it is that the Home page is not significantly longer than one visible page on everyone's screen. As such, people don't notice or scroll down to see the rest of the page, rather just give it a quick glance before heading to the forums. I for one am guilty of that.

well, I already posted this on the "poll" site and I am not sure if I am allowed to cross-post or not, but here is what I wrote, and I stand by it.

I own flame-proof underwear and if need be I can put it on.

But I think it is just plain WRONG to put limits on sunfish (pumpkinseeds and bluegills) and rock bas. I DO agree with limits on crappies, and could POSSIBLY agree, on a lake-by-lake basis, with limits on perch. I think they are pretty much the only panfish that are targeted by anglers....

Doug

Here is my post:

I just saw this topic by accident when I was looking for "how to post pictures."

We should be encouraging people to target, and KEEP, pumpkinseeds, bluegills, and rock bass. All of these species are extremely abundant, and also extremely prolific, and if not kept in check can rapidly amount to a MAJORITY of the biomass in a given body of water. Since every lake has a finite amount of fish it can sustain, this is no small matter.

If you like to catch bass, keep as many of the above-mentioned panfish as possible, to reduce predation on bass eggs and fry, not to mention competition for food once the bass are adults. And they are called panfish for a reason, they are DELICIOUS!!!!!!!

I have caught and kept many thousands (yes, thousands) of panfish over the past thirty years, and consider it my part in trying to help bass populations where I catch the panfish.

Here is a concrete example from a large lake in my area. Loughborough Lake is a multi-speices fishery and has some very good bass fishing, both for smallies and bucketmouths. In 1996, the south shore of the west half of Loughborough Lake held hundreds of bass and very few bluegills, rock bass, and pumpkinseeds. It was an extraordinary bass fishery. In 1997 I started to see a LOT more panfish, and less bass. By 2000, the shore held very few bass, but many thousands of panfish. Now, there may be a whole host of reasons why the bass population does not appear to be there in the numbers we saw in the mid-90s. But I think the main culprit is sunfish and rock bass population explosions.

I do not advocate limitless fishing for panfish where populations are endangered, but frankly I do not know of any lake where that is the case. Once they are established, it is virtually impossible to eradicate them, and aside from commercial netting the only control measure is angling. As an aside, a commercial licence was granted to a Battersea individual to net for sunfish about six or maybe seven years ago. He had a contract to sell any fish longer than so many inches (maybe six inches, I forget) to a commercial fish processor, and the fish smaller than that were to be sold to a local mink farmer. The fellow caught tonnes of fish, almost all of them dinks, but as it turned out, the enterprise was not financially successful and he only did it for one year.

So it is up to us, the anglers, to try our level best to knock the panfish populations down a bit to help out our other game species.

Anybody that needs panfish recipes, just send me a note, or I can post them in the recipes section.

Doug

Just to clarify things, the list of fish categorized as "Sunfish" in the current regulations does not and never did include Rockbass.

RJ - I think we are of like mind, but that's what surprises me so much about a survey on this board actually being split on the issue. I'm interested to hear from someone who opposes, what appears to me to be, a very liberal limit. Heck 50 crappies would be flowing over the top of a 5 gallon bucket!!
cheers,
LK

Ahaa - now I see at least one possible reason to oppose a limit, but as you point out, there is so little interest in some panfish, that fishing pressure (limits or not) will have essentially no affect on populations. We both agree limits are needed for those that are considered important gamefish.
cheers,
LK

For better or worse, rock bass are not considered to be "Sunfish" by the MNR.

And with respect to the Crappie limit, there is no limit in Zone 17 (i.e. Simcoe's ice fishing mecca).

Rock bass are NOT sunfish, but they are panfish that need to be kept in check, same as bluegills and pumpkinseeds.

I should have mentioned in my note, that the Southern USA has lots of ponds where "bream" population control is extremely important. Just google that phrase (bream population control) and read all about it, for example this scholarly article:

http://warnell.forestry.uga.edu/service ... ry%5B%5D=1

The fact remains that until and unless a larger number of anglers start to target these three species of whcih I speak, there is zero reason for any limits and indeed a case could be made for COMMERCIAL fishing to target those species. (And PLEASE understand I am not pro-commercial fishing.....)

Doug