It seems to me that a lot of guys are working off of the assumption that we are cathing ALL of the fish that move up on the beds. I don't think that we even scratch the surface, even on henry. there are just too many beds that are too deep to see, or too inaccessible to fish, or spawned too quickly for fishermen to make much of an impact. Biologists say that it only takes a comparative few successful spawners to pull off a strong year class anyway. As far as Henry's crappie house bass go, I feel like the fish are there because of the forage around, not the tournament release. That said, I was one of the guys taking their fish back Sat. at Mel's tourney. I think that if those bass are ready to spawn, then they need to be released back in spawning water, not early spring main lake water. trying to put them back on their particular bed is a wasted effort though. after 7 hrs. in the livewell they'll no more remember where their bed was than I'll remember the last time I worked hard at something productive. But there's always another buck somewhere close struttin' his stuff for all the girls. She'll drop her eggs for one of them. I've caught more than a few spawners with holes in their faces and dry lips, and they were still bedding. Good luck and turn 'em loose!

Take them home and when the eggs are dumped sit on them for 2 weeks and then after they hatch return them to their home.

My dad was telling me the other day, he lives on fork on the water, so he see's the everyday attacks on bedding fish. He complains constantly that us tourney guys should not be allowed to fish during the spawn. Now, how do you regulate that, you cant, each lake spawns at different times. Mark is right, eventually someone will shut down the spring fishing. If the guys bed fishing were destroying the brood stock, there wouldn't be 13 pounders being pulled from that cove, not to mention you can catch 30 bass a day per angler. What we dont pull out the bass and bream eat. It is all a matter of nature. Tourneys dont hurt the spawn anymore than other predators do. If that was true, many of us who have "honey Holes" wouldn't catch big sacks each time. The fish we release do not always make it back home. How many bedfish do you actually catch that you see and how many of those do you keep?