Let�s say you�re fishing a 3-fish tournament and unfortunately during the course of the day one of your limit dies. If possession limit is 5 just legally speaking, what�s the thoughts on �culling� the dead fish? Before anyone gets excited, no not culling in the sense of throwing it back, obviously you still keep the fish that has died,, but would you consider it ok to catch that 4th fish so you weigh in 3 live ones? What if the �4th� fish was larger and would have culled the dead one had it still been alive?

Not at all trying to start a s**t storm, or launch any tirades about how fish shouldn�t die, fact if the matter is unfortunately it can happen. Just legitimately wondering what the opinions on this are as I�ve personally never really heard it addressed. My take is if I killed the fish then I�d take the hit and count that as part of the bag. But I could also see both sides of the argument. Thoughts from those more experienced or who have maybe seen this addressed before?

That would be called cheating...

This

For the sake of the tournament you'd still be culling a dead fish whether you're throwing it back to your livewell or back to the lake, so I don't think this would be on the up in most tournaments.

Depends on the tournament possession rules. I have fished a 2 man team tournament where the rule was 5 fish weigh in but possession rule was Sate Law i.e. up to 10 fish. Dead fish were not weighed.

Well Honestly if rules do not mention a possession limit of 3. technically there is nothing to stop you. ethically it would be wrong.

I would think the rules in most cases would handle this.

Wouldn't do it bro. Same thing happened to me on Fork once and we took the hit. We had a good chance of winning the event but a fish I hooked in the tongue died in the box. So we took the half pound penalty.

It would depend on the language in the rules of the tournament. What you have described would be perfectly legal as far as the state is concerned in most cases, but it would almost certainly be frowned upon if not considered cheating by the tournament officials even if it's not explicitly described in the rules.

In the tournaments I host, that would be considered possessing more than the allowed bag limit and would result in a 1.0 pound penalty and culling the largest fish of the bag out, based on the language in my rules.

Interesting line of discussion though.

In Fishers of Men team
Tournaments you can have a dead fish that is not part of your limit.

Who cares what the possession limit is. It doesn't matter in this case. The fact that you are culling a dead fish one be cheating. I have never heard of a tournament trail allowing you to cull a dead fish. I just don't see how possession limits have anything to do with this scenario.

I thought it was State Law that you can't cull a dead fish... I get the limit thing but once you put it in your livewell that is possession..

Depends on the tourney rules. Theres a jackpot once and and one team would always bring in huge limits, well they were using live bait, there was no written rule against it.

I think the deal here is you are intentionally gaining an unfair advantage by culling the dead one with the live one. End of story

If it's a 3 fish tournament you shouldn't have more than 3 in the boat

He is not really culling a dead fish, he is keeping it, so he is legal in the state of Texas. Cannot poses more then 5 for 1 person. But the only question is what does the tournament rules allow. Obviously most of us would think 3 fish limit means u can only have 3 in the boat at anytime.