By Capt. James McManus
Well I don’t know what to say. I have promised in the past to not complain about our wildlife folks not doing enough to take care of our fisheries here in the mountains. Now that the 20-21 regulations have come out I just can’t keep quiet. They have listened a little and plenty of folks, who spend way more time on the water than the folks in charge, have been giving their opinions on the state of our lake fisheries. The latest meetings I have attended only provided information that confirmed what we have been saying for years based not on surveys and guesses but on actual water observations. Spots are up, smallies are down, largemouth and walleye are MIA…This is not news to most anglers. I realize you need to research before you take action, but to research, research, and research some more and then do the wrong thing or nothing at all, is just not cutting it.
Let’s start with our bass, first the spots, we all know there are tons of them out there, to totally take away the creel limit, I think, went too far. I agree with the removal of the size limit, letting folks keep more smaller fish would have allowed more sizeable fish to be returned with a five fish limit. Instead, now you are going to see all sizes go down and, while some reduction in the numbers is good, I am afraid there will be too many removed. At Fontana especially, there are very few largemouth left but they removed the caveat of “in combination” so you can keep 5 largemouth…Hold onto that thought. Poor Santeelah, they totally removed the creel limit on anything less than 14 inches…Again, hold that thought. For smallies, a species that we have been asking special protective regulations for, they have again gutted them. You can keep five fish, with two under 14 inches, all smallies…Again, hold that thought. So if you fish Fontana and you ran into a school of mixed fish really working a big school of bait, which we used to see all the time, you could conceivably keep 5 largemouth, 5 smallies, and let’s say conservatively 20 spots of all sizes per person, and with 2 to 3 people per boat that gives you 60 to 90 fish for just that one boat. Santeelah could be even worse, with no restrictions on numbers of small fish of any kind. You tell me how that is preserving and enhancing our resource.
And now we get to the walleye. There has been talk for at least 6 to 7 years about the decline of this species. You can blame it on the spots or you can blame it on the herring, both are causes and in combination have truly gutted this once wonderful sustaining fishery. Every meeting I have attended there has been discussion about what to do, with stocking I think, being the only answer because you will never again be without the spots or herring and there can’t be natural reproduction with either of these present. One meeting in Bryson City dealt with the difficulties of rearing stockable walleye, and some elements I was not aware of. Kudos to the folks in charge as they seem to be putting resources and energy into trying to remedy the hatchery issues. With the difficulties encountered and the apparent willingness of most at the meetings to reduce creel limits to give what is stocked a fighting chance, why in the world are we still at an eight fish limit? Also, there are no river closures seasonally to encourage an increase in natural reproduction; it just boggles the mind. Like most things governmental, we need to use our heads to augment our thoughts with their regulations to get the most out of our resources. Regulate yourselves. You don’t need hundreds of fish in the freezer just because it’s legal. You don’t need any smallmouth, in my opinion. Spots eat better anyway. Same goes for walleye, while I love to eat them I have simply quit fishing for them. If this pandemic goes on much longer our lakes will be cleaned out. I have never seen so many people on the lake and if you open it up, which they have for mass slaughter, then there ain’t much hope for the future to return to what we used to have. Maybe I won’t complain again but I am not making that promise until someone at the state level wakes up to what is going on. Here’s to clearer heads in the future. Later, Capt. James
Capt. James McManus is the Owner of 153 Charters. Give him a call for a great day of boat fishing!