Followed the link and found interesting but painfully incomplete information. Especially with respect to distribution.

At any rate, I've never supported wasting anything, OTOH, in the pursuit of fishery management objectives, I have found that there are many and varied ways to accomplish those objectives. Also that in one ecological system the objectives can be in direct opposition to those in another.

For me, if there is truly an overabundance of a species and it really needs to be reduced drastically, the means of doing so and the ultimate disposition of the fish really don't matter much to me.

An example is a fishery I managed in an old gravel quarry not far away back into the woods. We did a survey and found the very best possible fishery for buffalo fish I ever saw. I even shocked up a few big enough to sell live to some live fish collectors. But the species just dominated the ecosystem and try as I might I could not change the owners/user group from wanting to fish for bass to wanting to fish for buffalo fish.

Seeing as how what I thought to be a great plan (fishing for the big fish already there) was not met with much enthusiasm, I ended up having to hire a commercial netter (work I do as well, but this was too BIG a job for me) to get as many out as I could. They took over 50,000 pounds of buffalo fish, so many they oversaturated the local market's ability to absorb them and a lot were just thrown away. OH don't get all worked up...it was private water.

Point is, sometimes some fish needs to be took out, sometimes some fish needs to be put in, sometimes the fish just needs left alone. Each time is different.

I support protecting and enhancing fisheries for everybody, I see no big advantage in having a mediocre bass fishery instead of a great carp fishery where that is appropriate and possible. I also see no advantage in "banning" one fishing method over another, rather embracing and utilizing every opportunity to achieve objectives and goals, whatever they may be.

Look into the cited references in parenthesis and you should find the information to be quite complete.

OK, I'ma pickin' nits but....that link below is to the range map provided on the site on a watershed basis.

http://explorer.natureserve.org/imagerep...tosteus_spatula



Ain't a lotta this here talk above 'bout Falcon Lake havin' a few too many gator gars an' needin' to kill some of 'em off? 'Mongst other things...

Well, last time I checked, Falcon was on the Texas/Mexico border and that there map don't show the gator gar even makin' close to that far West. Neither do any of the printed texts. Lest I done missed somethin' important. Which I could have...

I done seen' 'em myse'f in rivers and lakes inna Hill Country, but I ain't never been to Falcon so perhaps all them folks above is mistakin' 'bout they fish species, but it sho' don't seem like it to me.

Its been a really loooooong time since I got outta school so maybe I jes' need some help finding the thing. But it seems to me the range map provided is either inaccurate or incomplete. Other than that I ran about the site some, it does better with other species.

That is a distribution map, not a range map.

What the heck is the difference? 1 per day is 1 per day.
I can't believe I responded at all to this since [censored] about it.

Murder Is Against the law-
Doesn't seem to slow it down much-

Some folks are gonna be/do what they are gonna do-

Well it seems some are not mature enough to admit bow fishing has it's place. Now that it has warmed up I am prepping my boat to do a little rough fish reduction with my bow. I do however eat the Buffalo and backstraps from gar but the carp go into a wood chipper to be frozen into blocks and used as chum. It is crazy to say that there are no good reasons to try to keep the carp populations at a reasonable level. There will never be a lake with zero carp that already has them. Carp both eat gamefish eggs and wreck their spawning areas by roiling up the water. As for the sainted Alligator gar it seems there are still plenty of them around. This gar is a voracious predator of game fish, if you have ever cleaned one you would know this. Would you rather have one fish that you "sportfishers" won't use other than for fun or the stringer full of gamefish the bigger gar eat every day? Many of you haven't noticed but there are many species of fish ( the Blue catfish for example) that are becoming a huge population of large predators that will have a negative effect on our baitfish populations. As soon as the baitfish reach a point they can't feed the large predator fish population you will see the problem. Not keeping the larger fish does not necessarily have a good effect on the overall fishery.