There will be lakes were little improvement can be expected - but there are others with a much greater upside.

To start, I don't want to see anyone get booted. What I do see that is a little distubing is Rebel got bashed pretty well for taking a legal limit of legal fish. Criticized enough that Mitch found it necessary to delete posts and close the thread that started this thread.

I recall a thread earlier this summer when a member took a trout outside the slot limits out of a lake under the premis that it was deep hooked and going to die anyway and, although correctly chastised, did not get a quarter of the grief Rebel got.

One thing is clear to me. We are all on the same side here. We all want quality fisheries in this state. I, being uneducated in fishery management, will have to trust the DEP to decide how to do that. Any good debate between people that know what they are talking about is a good thing. If the DEP changes creel limits based on research or information they have I will trust that it is the correct thing.

If we continue to criticize or get personal with someone because they made a legal decision we don't agree with, that causes dissension and divides us. There are people and organizations like PETA that would love to see us fighting among ourselves so that could take advantage of that. If they had thier way there would be not catch and release, fish on the table or CTF.

I think the ultimate goal on this site is to share ideas, knowledge, and brag a little about what we've done. I think we should save the fighting and bashing for when someone wants to take this great hobby/sport away from us.

To those that do know what you are talking about. You have educated more in two nights about fishery management than I learned during the rest of my life. Keep up the good work.

I've learned alot for this thread and even though there were ones out there that bashed me, some of the more technical aspects and facts here have helped me see some things that I never knew. I abide by all the laws and regs when out there fishing, I try and preserve the fisheries, I'm a smoker and I put my butts out and pocket them while fishing, I had a comment made to me when someone saw me emptying my pockets of butts at a launch that "Now there's a real sportsman". Again I think it's like someone else said in an earlier post, everyone has their own fish that they feel strongly about, some are trout, others bass, still others yet panfish. I'm sure if I posted some of the pics of the catfish I used to bring in down south I would have caught flack about them from someone, no hard feelings taken. I hope the people I know that didn't like the pics don't harbour any resentment to me and will still treat me the same. I agree we need to protect our fisheries, and we need to preserve our wildlife and outdoors as well. But it's from all diffent angles not just one. I agree DEP is doing a good job with the limited resources they have I.E. funding, like BDF said we should turn our energy into a partition or something to go to the governer to provide more funding for our natural resources, not attacking each other over bass, trout, etc, etc. Lets take the money out of the politicians pockets and put it to use for the good of the people and the natural resources.

Great let me know when you get back Mycept and have a good holiday!!

I think there are too many tourneys in this state Period IMHO. I only get out to fish during the weekends due to high work load during the week, and just about every time I went fishing there was a tourney on the lake I was on, either one I was in myself or someone else having one. I think I stated myself that one of the problems with fishing is recreational boats, not just on C-wood but all lakes in CT, for such a small state we do have a lot of people that do enjoy getting out on the water, either fishing or recreational. I'm sure from what I've seen recreational boating affects the spawn as well, I've seen people skiing/Jet skiing so close to shore they might as well be on the land, which #1 is ILLEGAL, #2 I'm sure upsets the nests during spawn. Like I've said before there are many aspects to look at when managing a lake, DEP has a tough job to say the least.