Our Outdoors: Unlocking The Limit Theory

A friend of mine in college, who was a part-time locksmith and adept at his trade was the first person to tell me the adage, "locks keep honest people honest." 

It almost seems hard for me to believe that in the 1980s there were no limits, no controls, no locks on panfish. I can recall two instances where a group that I was with took a five-gallon bucket full of perch from Lake Ashtabula. It happened once in the summer and once in the winter. The older members of the group cleaned for a couple hours or so, and we had a nice batch of meat to eat that night. One five gallon bucket wasn't bad; in fact it was enough for two families to have that night and the fish was eaten immediately. What was bad at the time, were the multiple-bucket anglers taking more than they could eat, or even clean, and fish ending up spoiled or tossed in the garbage.

In an effort to curb such behavior, with the input of concerned anglers, the Game and Fish Department implemented a daily limit. For panfish, this limit was the first of its kind. Throughout the past ten years, regulation of the outdoors has increased, and as a result, limits on fish have decreased. As of this column, the current limit on perch is 35. More and more locks are being placed on fisheries, to keep honest people honest, or at least give them the sense that the dishonest people are being regulated.
Again in recent months, a collective cry has been sent up by the anglers of North Dakota to the state Game and Fish Department proclaiming that the current daily perch limit is still too high. The statement of "no one needs 35 perch," has become the mantra of those concerned that the once popular perch sloughs of this state will be fished out. Numbers such as 10 or 20 are now thrown about in response to seeing numbers of 35-perch-limits being taken out of pocket sloughs on a daily basis.

Though limits do help curb the number of fish taken from a given water, in a given day, by a given angler, there was a time when there were no limits. How ever did our fisheries survive then?

Less fishing pressure helped. Rods and reels that are primitive compared to today's models must have added to the challenge of taking a fish, or a limit. Sonar was just a blip on the radar, if you'll excuse the pun.

But yet people caught so many fish with none of today's technology that at some point other anglers began to speak out, resulting in limits being placed on all popular game fish. The evolution of these regulations, which almost seem more for the psychological well being of the honest angler, continues today.

I'm all in favor of conserving fish populations, but the answer to this perceived over-harvest doesn't lie in new regulations, lake-specific slot limits or even lowered daily limits. Where the answer lies, as with most things, is in education.

I've written about catch and release and selective harvest. Big fish go back, small fish go back, mid-size fish go to the dinner table; that pretty much sums it up. Add in a quick "you don't have to keep everything you catch," and that it is a simple lesson that should be taken personally. Those who complain about there being too much government are often the ones clamoring for more of it, rather than setting their own standards straight.
Policing ourselves as anglers, and setting personal and ethical standards above and beyond the law - which has always been designed as society’s bare minimum - is important. Even more pressing than that is staying honest to those standards and passing them on to others, as that will be the only way to bring about true change, and will do so in a more positive manner than putting locks on...our outdoors.

Editor's Note: As many of you probably know, Nick is an avid fisherman and author. Although he'd like us to think he's a better fisherman than author I must say after talking with his friends the truth would be he's a better author! Nah, I'm just messing around. But in seriousness, Nick is a great author on outdoor issues that is of concern to each of us putting his concerns into words for his local newspaper in a weekly column titled "Our Outdoors". For his efforts, I'd like to say thanks! And before I end my little note I gotta call attention to the news release that is running simultaneously with this article. Doug Leier (nearly a mirror image to Nick when it comes to concern and well thought out opinions about the outdoors) also gave his insight on fishing limits. I thought running them together would be beneficial to all of us, after all, spring fishing isn't that far off!!

Photo: Nick asked me to supply photos for this article so I went back into my archive and found a friend of mine (Brent) holding a beauty of a perch caught last year in North Dakota.