I know most here on this forum are in favor of imposing some kind of restrictions on the older large blue cats caught in our state waters.

Blows my mind that as of today you can keep 25 - 50lb fish, per person....per day. Seeming it takes between 15-25 years for these fish to get that big...harvesting them makes it a LONG JOURNEY before you catch that fish again.

Here is an example of what happens on state waters year round...and IS what happened on Tawakoni last week...trotlines. Sure makes it easy to see "why" we need to protect the older fish.

It would be nice if the "trophy" class fish were limited to a smaller limit. They're too fun to catch and not that great to eat.

I know where your coming from Salsa. I have become rather unpopular with some folks on my home lake for preaching and practicing CPR. Until there are some regulation changes all we can do is continue to solicit TP&W to make those changes and continue to practice and preach CPR.

I hear ya Don. What's working best is talking to folks keeping big fish. A friendly presentation of catch and release has worked best here on Twok. I give my spill bout once a week...sometimes more.

One things for sure...keeping quiet about it doesn't work,

The real "why" is WHY do these guys need to take this many big ones, and WHY is TPWD still allowing them to do so???

Behind tha' times Jerry...Texas is behind tha' times.

If it's the same boat I think it is...that boat is here every February and makes a HALUVA haul each year on lines n' jugs. Thousands and thousands of pounds...

I know I saw both them boats there last time I was there 3-4 weeks ago. I wasn't sure they were working together then, but this pic confirms for me they were.

One line had so many large fish on it (every hook) that boat 1 called boat 2 over to get room to put fish.

when I saw them the big flat bottom had gotten a line hung in the prop and smaller boat had to come help.

It doesnt take that long to fill the effects of that many big fish being pulled out of any lake. Texoma for example is hit very hard with jugs every year and it has a major affect on the fish. With our new lenght limit up here it has helped I believe but its getting the support and effort from TP&W to inforce these laws and limits that will truely make the most impact. Catfishing is starting to become more and more popular by the day and if we do not step foward and protect these fish now we will not be able to grow catfishing into the sport we all want it to become in the future.

Well said Daniel...

and don't mistake, this is happening on many lakes that put out large blue catfish. And, in some cases it's worse on smaller lakes that don't have the bigger populations like Tawakoni.

i don't get why those guys need OLD FAT NASTY FISHES... old meat does not taste good....

Well, the limit on oversized redfsh sure seemed to help that fishery recover. Why not a special limit of only 1 or 2 blue cats greater than 'x' length in a daily bag limit?

If they did put a limit on larger fish, how well would it be enforced? People keep tons of undersized crappie every spawn because there's not enough LEOs to police it.