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Cast nets and city park ponds? #11522211 04/05/16 02:23 AM
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Bluecatkayak Offline OP
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I've heard rumour that some people in Lubbock have been being ticketed by local game wardens for using their cast nets to catch shad out of a park pond because it's apparently illegal to use a cast net on a city park pond, but I can't seem to find this on TPW's website, or within the book they hand out with the lisence every year. Anyone care to shed some light on this?

The only thing I can think of is people are keeping fish they shouldn't (like bass and crappie) and are being ticketed for keeping illegally caught fish, but that's just my opinion because I haven't spoke to a game warden out there.

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Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11522242 04/05/16 02:30 AM
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Nope it is illegal unless the city lake is pretty large. It has to be around 75+ acres to make it legal.

Last edited by ssfireman; 04/05/16 12:07 PM.

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Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11522246 04/05/16 02:31 AM
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Only rod and reel can be used to catch fish in "community ponds". Look for that term in the outdoor annual.


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Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11522525 04/05/16 06:40 AM
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Texasian Offline
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http://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/fishing/general-rules-regulations/definitions

Community Fishing Lake:
All public impoundments 75 acres or smaller located totally within an incorporated city limits or a public park, and all impoundments of any size lying totally within the boundaries of a state park.

Special fishing regulations apply to these small lakes.

Fishing Regulations for Community Fishing Lakes

Gear restrictions
Fishing is by pole and line only. Anglers may use no more than two poles while fishing.


Black bass
For largemouth and smallmouth bass, minimum length limit = 14 inches. No minimum length for Guadalupe or spotted bass. Daily bag limit is 5 fish for all four species in any combination.

White, striped and yellow bass
For striped and hybrid striped bass, minimum length limit = 18 inches and daily bag limit = 5 in any combination. For white bass, minimum length = 10 inches and daily bag is 25. There are no bag or size limits for yellow bass.

Carp
There is no minimum length limit or daily bag limit for common carp.

Catfish
For channel and blue catfish, there is no minimum length and combined daily bag limit = 5. For flathead catfish, minimum length = 18 inches and daily bag = 5.

Crappie
For white and black crappie, their hybrids and subspecies, minimum length limit = 10 inches. Daily bag limit = 25 in any combination.

Gar
For alligator gar, daily bag limit is 1 fish of any size. No bag limits on other species of gar. Certain areas may be temporarily closed to alligator gar fishing when optimum spawning conditions occur. Get details.

Sunfish
There is no minimum length or daily bag limit on bluegill, redear, warmouth or other species of sunfish.

Trout
For rainbow and brown trout, their hybrids and subspecies, there is no minimum length and daily bag limit = 5 trout in any combination.


Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day...Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11522923 04/05/16 03:08 PM
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Bluecatkayak Offline OP
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Thank yall very much! Now I know where to show everyone I've talked to saying the same thing as me

Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11523233 04/05/16 05:25 PM
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May also have something to do with the fact that it is illegal to take bait out of one body of water and use it on another...I assume many people who want to cast net in public ponds do so for bait to use elsewhere. Thought about doing the same thing myself once early in my fishing days until I was informed of its illegality.


"You can�t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first."
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Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: twstephens77] #11524122 04/06/16 12:46 AM
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Bluecatkayak Offline OP
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Originally Posted By: twstephens77
May also have something to do with the fact that it is illegal to take bait out of one body of water and use it on another...I assume many people who want to cast net in public ponds do so for bait to use elsewhere. Thought about doing the same thing myself once early in my fishing days until I was informed of its illegality.


I thought it was illegal to transfer the bait in the water from the water body they were in?

Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: twstephens77] #11531202 04/09/16 05:00 PM
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Caribou Offline
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Originally Posted By: twstephens77
May also have something to do with the fact that it is illegal to take bait out of one body of water and use it on another...I assume many people who want to cast net in public ponds do so for bait to use elsewhere. Thought about doing the same thing myself once early in my fishing days until I was informed of its illegality.


It's perfectly legal to catch bait at one lake and use it at another. No different than buying shad or pwrch from a bait shop.

And some of those ponds have MASSIVE shad in them. Don't ask me how I know.



Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11533811 04/11/16 05:50 AM
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@Caribou

Here's the Link to the TPWD page with the rule

Live fish, including personally caught live bait, cannot be transported from the water body where the fish were caught in or aboard a vessel in water from the water body where the fish were caught. Personally caught live bait can be used in the water body where it was caught.

Transport and use of commercially purchased live bait in water while fishing from a vessel is allowed, provided persons in possession of the bait have a receipt that identifies the source of the bait. Any live bait purchased from a location on or adjacent to a public water body that is transported in water from that water body can only be used as bait on that same water body.


Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day...Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11533812 04/11/16 05:50 AM
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Cheese and crackers! When did they start this rule? I've been catching bait out of these ponds for twenty years. Most of these ponds are over run with carp, gizzard shad, small sunperch, and bullheads. Tpwd doesn't even stock most of them with bass. The pond by my house is listed as a "community fishing pond." It's a very trashy shallow 30 acre lake with loads of small sunfish, mudcats, carp, and tons of big gizzard shad. Bass fishing is poor. The gizzard shad are bigger than most of the bass caught.

Don't they know you can't catch small minnows and large gizzard shad on a fishing pole? I mean what does it hurt to take a few baitfish out of the water to fish with??? Catching bait is apart of the fishing experience, it's fun for kids as well. This is ridiculous and ignorant in my view? It doesn't make any sense?

They need to inform the public as to why they decided it would hurt the fishing for a few people to collect some bait with a small cast net or minnow trap to fish with. They're not clear on that at all. I've never even been checked fishing out of a city pond.



Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11533815 04/11/16 06:16 AM
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Besides preventing people from taking game fish improperly and preventing the spread of invasive species (of fish and plants), the one reason that I can see, right off the bat, is that without this rule the "few people" could possibly turn into lots of people and then there wouldn't be any fish in your community pond. From personal experience, fishing pressure has completely depleted the stocks in the two community ponds near my house...and that's only from rod & reel fishing...and this is for game AND non-game fish. I used to be able to walk over and do some quickie catch & release bluegill fishing...but not anymore. I can't imagine how much more quickly those stocks would have been depleted if traps and cast nets were allowed.

Last edited by Texasian; 04/11/16 06:18 AM.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day...Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11533820 04/11/16 07:31 AM
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What??? By catching a few minnows and shad your not taking gamefish improperly or spreading invasive fish and plants. I've never seen many people catching minnows with a bait trap or cast net at ponds anyway. It should be legal to catch some minnows and shad with a small cast net or minnow trap for bait as long as your not dredging some or all the desirable fish out of the pond.

The kind of people your talking about don't give a rats behind about laws anyway and would do it regardless. What your talking about is not what I'm talking about.CAPEESH??? I've been fishing city ponds for thirty years and most of them are overpopulated with stunted undesirable fish. Many of them have huge populations of giant gizzard shad which comprise a large portion of the pond biomass and are too big for most pond fish to feed on. Gizzard shad and minnows don't bite baited fish hooks. They're bait!



Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11533826 04/11/16 08:57 AM
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1. The rules are in place to prevent the spread of invasive species of plant and animal life from one body of water to another. (Example: microscopic zebra mussel eggs can be carried along with bait fish from one body of water, where you caught them, to another body of water, where you're using the bait)
Now, your community pond probably doesn't have zebra mussels but in order to effectively limit the spread of invasive species, this rule has to be applied for transporting species between ANY and ALL bodies of water.

2. I'm not talking about poachers and rule-breakers. I'm talking about law-abiding fishermen. If you make it legal to cast-net and trap in community ponds, then I'm guessing that more law-abiding fishermen will cast-net and trap in convenient community ponds for their bait. I know that if it were legal I would totally catch bait at any number of community ponds closer to home to ensure that I have bait before I reach the lake (where bait might be harder to find). The reason you've "never seen many people catching minnows with a bait trap or cast net at ponds anyway" is probably because it's illegal and they follow the rules!

3. Never being checked by a game warden while fishing from a community pond doesn't mean that what you're doing "IS" or "SHOULD BE" legal. That merely means that TPWD is seriously understaffed with wardens and no one's been around to catch you. (People speed and run red lights all the time without getting caught, yet somehow it's still illegal.)

4. Rules are in place to benefit the WHOLE system, not to address individual situations that may or may not be exceptions. Just because your community pond is overpopulated with bait fish does not mean that ALL community ponds are also (e.g. the two community ponds in my neighborhood have sorely depleted stocks of both game AND non-game fish due to extremely high fishing pressure and not all anglers practicing catch & release) If you are unhappy about the biodiversity in your community pond, you can appeal to TPWD or to your city's parks and recreation department to consider maintenance by depleting non-game stocks or stocking game fish.

5. If you've been fishing these ponds for 30 years and they have maintained their populations of bait fish (over-populated or not) then it must be a balanced system. Enclosed and isolated bio-systems, like community ponds, will reach whatever equilibrium they can between food sources and animal populations.

6. "I mean what does it hurt to take a few baitfish out of the water to fish with???" - This is a slippery slope argument that is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to over-fishing and/or poaching. Of course it doesn't hurt for one or two people to take a few bait fish here or there, but if the rules weren't in place then what's to prevent 100 people from taking the bait fish out of your community pond and leaving you with nothing. As law-abiding fishermen, we've all seen people bending or breaking the rules (catch a couple of crappie in the cast-net and just throw them in the cooler too, keeping a fish that was just a hair under the size limit, etc.) but we have to remember that while each individual infraction may not hurt, they add up to have a serious impact for all of us.

7. Just because shad and minnows don't bite baited hooks doesn't make it okay or reasonable to use illegal methods to take them...it just means that you can't catch them in your community pond.

8. "you're" not "your" ("By catching a few minnows and shad your not taking gamefish improperly or spreading invasive fish and plants." and "as long as your not dredging some or all the desirable fish out of the pond")

9. It's spelled "capisce" from the Italian, meaning "to understand"

Last edited by Texasian; 04/11/16 09:01 AM.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day...Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11533925 04/11/16 12:38 PM
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Next will be worms and chicken breast.
Can't even go out to your own flower bed and dig you some fishing worms or Walmart for some chicken.
Gotta buy them from some specialty bait store somewhere that is 20 miles out of the way.


From Genesis: "And God promised men that good and obedient wives would be found in all corners of the earth."

Then He made the earth round...and He laughed and laughed and laughed!

Re: Cast nets and city park ponds? [Re: Bluecatkayak] #11534154 04/11/16 02:44 PM
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Respectfully Texasian your ignoring my rational argument. You must be a democrat. THINK - Your not hearing what I'm saying. Google CAPEESH! It can be spelled either way. "You're" or your? So what! Correcting my grammer mispelling is not the point, but I guess your trying to show us how smart you are, which is not the point either. You get the meaning. You and I will just agree to disagree. I have already filed a complaint with TPWD. I would urge anyone that hears, or agrees with what I've said to file a complaint with TPWD as well. Just my two cents...

I hear what your or "you're" saying Muzzlebrake and couldn't agree more. Common sense is not so common anymore. Texas is looking more and more like Crazifornia everyday.



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