Actually that totally makes sense. I could probably learn a thing or two.

Nice Fish!!!

Hmmm. I guess you do learn new things all the time.

There are massive carp visible daily behind the house.
I actually think it might be illegal to not release carp for some reason down here. That's what someone told me, anyway. Not sure if true.

I once caught crabs but I was nowhere near water.

So Tennessee game and wildlife came to our lake in TN and saned(sp?) it to see what all was in it, and they told me that the Bass would never get much bigger because there were so many that they didn't have enough to eat between all of them to grow large.

Does that make any sense to anyone here at all?

Seined. Yup makes lots of sense. You have to remove the bass as you catch them and eat them. Thinning the herd allows the ones left less competition for food, and thus they will eat more and grow larger. It's a nice problem to have if you like to eat bass

With a mind like yours, you'll probably want the land-crab
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...psexxseflz.jpg

I'm all about that bass, no treble.... hooks though.

That's what they said, dude.
Even said if you're not going to eat em' just throw em' in the woods.

I beg you and everyone else to please be kind to others in here, I want this to be everyones thread... I enjoyed Inmems pics, looked like a perfect eating size cat his uncle caught.

BTW, what is that small fish with the blue vertical stripes in your pic?

A LOT of people around here like carp, and they ALL claim that properly scoring it is the secret to a perfect fillet... what I've found is that NO ONE is that good at scoring and I always get multiple sharp stabs to the mouth when trying it.

But I've also had it where everything is ground up, bones and all, and made into a sorta crabcake... and those are killer diller.

I love to catch them, they're always a great test of my skills on lighter gear, better and much more powerful fighters than some think... but once landed and inspected, they go straight back whence they came.

Very true. I made the mistake of putting crappie in my pond about 10 years ago. About three years in, all we caught were shit tons of 6 inch crappie. I started harvesting the crap out of them, and even throwing some into the woods and creek behind the house. I also started harvesting smaller bass. Low and behold, the big bass got bigger, started chowing down on small crappie, and now the problem is solved. It's important to harvest mid range sized fish. The big ones are the best genetics in the pond, and they also lay the most eggs. I've got a pond management book from the MO dept of conservation that details the approximate amount of fish in lbs to remove from a given body of water per year, based on the size of the body of water. THen, I just try to make sure I'm getting close to that but only with mid sized fish. That way, you catch lots of big fish for fun, the small ones get eaten by the big fish, and the medium ones get eaten by my family. Works pretty well.

OK. I'll play nice. I was just messing with him. It's Inmem, after all.

It's a peacock bass. Fight to the death. Feels like a fish 3 times that size.

Hard to imagine that being the case. Especially with the explosion of silver carp, need to get all of those we can out of the water.

Too many big fish with not enough food or room = stunted growth.