Taking home "fished" fish

[midnight]

it will be fine.
dont use to small of a hook or they might swallow it,then you have problems.
dont add salt to the bucket,to much stress from the get go.
catch,add to air and bucket like said.
use the water the fish came from.
aclimate it to the tank water.
think thats it.

oh and to the killer,thats sad advice to kill it if you hurt it.
put it back and give it a chance.

 

[hmt321]

I manage a very small bluegill pond in jackson county MS, a guy from Auburn U told me to keep every bluegill we catch and currently we are letting the LMB go. we have seen an overall increase in the size of the bluegill, and we are seeing more lmb (number wise)

if I am fishing in a river, i usually will keep smaller bg in a live well, I can keep 50 per day in the Great State of AL, and 100 in MS, i usually end up freezing the smaller BG to use in my crap traps on the bay.

 

[teleost]

if I am fishing in a river, i usually will keep smaller bg in a live well, I can keep 50 per day in the Great State of AL, and 100 in MS, i usually end up freezing the smaller BG to use in my crap traps on the bay.

Taking very small fish from the wild also reduces the impact (generally speaking) on the fish we love.

For a little bit I was trying to figure out what a crap trap was....toilet? code word for something? The I realized you live near salt water HMT and you're actually setting crab traps. I'll bet you catch all kinds of cool things in the bay.

 

[JEAE21]

o.k.
how old do you think is a 7" bluegill?

 

[midnight]

jea you can take small ones.
there talking taking big numbers.

 

[Druu]

No problem with sunfish caught on even barbed hooks in my experience. Just be careful for jumpers. Doesn't make much sense to kill fish and leave them on the bank...

 

[teleost]

Well I'm not just talking numbers. Taking large has no benefit to the species or your home tanks. It's pretty hard to convert adults to tank life. You can train young sunfish to dry food really easily. Try that with an adult.

The message is SIMPLE here.....take young fish since it's better for you and has a side benefit by impacting the wild fish less.

 

[fishlvr]

I brought home a LMB I caught on a spinner bait monday. No problems with him at all. I guess it just depends on where you hook the fish.

Please tell me you did not take it without doing a little research on the full size and the tank needed for a fish of that size. Your going to need a tank that's ATLEAST 7-8'. I'm just saying this because most people don't know what they're getting into when they bring home a bass that may be small enough to keep in a 50g tank for a while. After it's taken home, it can't be released, and then your stuck with a fish that can get up to 3' long, and then people get the rumor in their head that fish only grow to the size of their tank, which is 100% false. If you have the room for it, fine. It's just that most people DON'T have the room.

 

[mudkeeper]

Bluegills grow fast too. My bluegill has grown from 3 inches to 7 inches within a year based on feeding it a diet of turtle and cichlid pellets.

 

[guppy]

It is also best if you "horse" the fish in, don't play it. You want it to go from hooked to aerated bucket as quickly as possible.