Fishing Guides - Walynut

Steve;

Your not going to like my answer but here it is....Depends.

The guide that got me started out there has a hard set rule with no exceptions. His rule is 14-19, period the end have a nice day. If you dont like it get off the boat. He has never had anyone get off the boat because of it and his clients are informed of this before they set foot in the boat so he has no issues.

I belive as a whole, most guides do have some type of "limit", why would we want to destroy a year class or two of fish when we are doing this as our lively hood.

Some guides, dont know who they are, may allow you to keep everything, I dont know for fact but there may be some.

As for my boat when I am taking clients outs, the client is going to tell you what they are looking for out of you in a given day. Most, in the 90% range want eaters. I have had one trip last year that strictly wanted to catch big fish and had no intention on keeping them, they wanted C&R and pictures. Also you see alot of "pro's" higher guides before tournaments to get a lay of the lake and to help them finder bigger fish.

IF this ever presented a problem or I thought that it could become a problem, I would simply put them on eater size fish and stay away from the spots that are known to produce larger fish. Option two would be to limit out on smaller eaters then move into some bigger fish spots once their limit was filled.

I have never had any issue or argument with clients over my personell rules,  I usually get kudo's for having that in place for doing my part to protect the lake.

As for the whopper program, I am not up on it one bit, can a picture be taken with length and measurement and sent in to still recieve the recognition?

Hope this explains why we do what we do and i'm sure I will get slammed for something I said and thats fine.

Steve,

I should not have said in the other post that 10 lbs is set in stone because it is not; now here is where I am going to get blasted...... If presented with the situation you suggested, if the individual was going to mount the fish, it would go in the livewell.

Now before I get too blasted; I trust people till I dont have a reason to anymore.

Go to Lake Tobin and put your boat in at the Nippewan boat ramp. You will see a big sign that shows the average number of eggs for large fish.  The bigger the fish the more eggs obviously.  Tobin is the number 1 trophy walleye fishery IMO in the world and they have very strict slot limits to protect that.  Saying that a 20 incher produces more than a 28 inch walleye would be very difficult to prove and very hard for me to believe. 

As far as the guide slot limit goes, that is something I have not seen before.  It is a good idea though.  I know for a fact that the perch patrol didn't have a slot limit for there clients on Lake Irvin a couple years ago.