I subscribe to two sporting journals, Northwoods sportsman and Maine sportsman. They talk about outdoors in general. This past month one of them had an article on limit numbers, minimum lengths, slot sizes, and catch and release and how the state of Maine uses these different tactics in different lakes and streams. It always seems like a hot topic. I was wondering what other people think about these measures and how effective they are.

It seems that people on the board only talk about catch and release vs killing. I don't heart much about slot sizes

I have fished in lakes with all different regs and can tell the difference between the regs just based on the numbers and sizes of fish that I catch. Does anyone have an opinion on what they think works best and why.

Personally I like the lakes where all fish over a certain size have to be released and the smaller fish can be kept. The method that I like the least is that all fish between 16 and 22 inches have to be released. It seems like there are no big fish at all in those lakes and the only fish that you catch are in that size range. It is always a pain in the *** because everytime you go fishing you have to pull out the rule book and look up all the special regs on every body of water because God forbid a worden finds you with a fish a micrometer off in any direction.

This weekend I went ice fishing for togue (salvelinus namaycush) and I wanted to keep one fish to eat because this was my first year actually catching them. It was a shame because the minimum length limit on this particular lake was 18". I had to throw a few of the smaller fish back that were 12-16" that were more than enough for a meal and kept the 20" fish that I caught, which I would have rather released and kept one of the smaller guys. A lake that I was on earlier that weekend had a smaller limit but I was skunked that day.

I figured that I would throw this out there to see what other people have to say.

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Who has time for stress when there are fish to catch.
Nick