I am the president of the Arkansas commercial fisherman’s association. This proposal was to limit both commercial and recreational fishermen to one fish over 34” (15-17 pound range). I was able to speak at the commissioners meeting today and they listened to our concerns. They have tabled the regulation proposal for now and they are going to survey licensed anglers and revisit this after the survey is complete. For you guys against commercial anglers , this reg is being proposed for recreational as well as commercial. Many of you are quick to condemn commercial fishermen but most of them are only trying to make a living off a resource that is in no way in danger. I am not going to get into any long discussions or arguments here but the commercial industry is regulated to insure the resource remains plentiful for all. I hope we can all agree this is a bad regulation change for a river that has a huge catfish population and don’t want to see it go through because it affects all of us. We are all fishermen and love the outdoors, we just have different passions that drive us.
COMMERCIAL FISHERMAN ABOUT TO GET SHANKED BY AGFC
Tomorrow the AGFC will enact a catfish size limit on the Mississippi River along with Tennessee and Mississippi .It seems this was spurred by Bill Dance and BASSPRO to preserve so called TROPHY CATFISH on the river.It will reduce all harvests to only 1 fish over 34 inches for all anglers including the commercial fisherman.JB WELD you may wanna step in and make some waves on this.It’s headed to the same place our duck hunting went for a FEW DOLLARS MORE.Our commercial fisherman have been harvesting big catfish outta the river for decades and I certainly don’t feel like they have hurt the TROPHY fish there at all.There’s many guides making lotsa money taking folks to the Mississippi to catch trophy catfish and it’s not really that hard to do.These guys making a living on fish outta that river are gonna suffer from this beat down.
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No studies, they said they have zero data. This is solely being pushed by bill dance and tournament fishermen, purely political.Have they done any studies on commercial harvest or is this being pushed solely by people sport fishing ?
Varies from fisherman to fisherman and the type of tackle. I would estimate 25-50%, just a guess. Larger fish are great to eat, have to trim the fat and dark meat and cut into sizable fillets. I even know people that smoke large whole catfish and it is awesome.What kinda percentage of their sellable catch is made up of fish over 34 inches? Seems like it will take a lot more hours to make up 20 pounds fish with smaller ones. I prefer eating flatheads in the 15-20 pound range.
Yes their plan was to make the ruling yesterday.So was the commission planning to make a ruling today on this presentation with zero data?
Sounds like our jackwagon F/W commission.
That is correctIIRC Director Booth spoke directly to this issue. Maybe someone else who listened to the tape can chime in. I believe the proposed reg was on the agenda to merely be discussed and moved to the next step of becoming formalized. However after the speakers presented their case and answered some questions, the commissioners decided to wait a month to allow more public opinion to be heard and to examine the issue in a little more detail.
Tennessee does have this, but Mississippi does not on the borders of Arkansas , misssippi does have this reg where they border Alabama, I talked to the Mississippi chief of fisheries and they are only doing this if Arkansas does to keep reciprocal rules the same on border waters, they have no desire to push this, only following Arkansas lead.Just to be the devil's advocate here, both MS and TN have existing regs of only 1 catfish over 34 inches. That means all the commercial (and recreational) fisherman from those two states have a much different impact on the fishery. Do you think that possibly that regulation is why AR fisherman can still successfully and regularly catch "unlimited TROPHY sized catfish"?
Correct, that are implementing border state regs so both sides have the same regs.I just read the ms regs. The 34" length limit for catfish is on the ALABAMA/MISSISSIPPI LINE. There's no length limit on the Mississippi River in Mississippi.
Not at the commissioners meeting Best I remember but in other meetings yesDidn't the agfc make it sound like they were following arkansas lead?
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