As long as they leave the bag limit of box fish 15# or less at 25, I don't have problem with limiting number of large blue cats, say at least 5 large fish per person per day. I do believe havesting those old fish actually help overall fisheries.

Your dang right it's past my bedtime! But iv been busy putting my teething 11 month old to bed. Just now had a chance to catch up on this thread. Il catch up with you guys in the morning.

Wasn't thinking about you when l register, just quickly made up a short name, l fish from bank all the time and l am 50 yo, bankfisher50 came up.

Gotcha, no big deal! Good luck and let them big fish go so they can get bigger!

I think everyone is in favor of keeping a healthy number for harvesting eating sized cats and limiting a number of the larger sized cats. I think that's a win/win situation for everyone involved. In regards to what lambcotx said I would like to offer a comparison to Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Tx.

A while back Carp anglers (myself included) started catching 20,30,40lb Carp out of this lake. It was a bonafied Carp utopia! Word spread and pretty soon anglers from all over the state, the country, the world, started to arrive and catch these fish. Even bow fishermen got into the mix and would proudly post pictures of dead 20-30+ fish. With that in mind a petition, meetings, etc, etc, were set in motion and eventually the regulations were changed, just for this very special lake, to ensure the lake will stay a trophy fishery for this special fish for years to come.

I think we're at a similar point with Twok with the Blue Cats. Like lambcotx said, local word of mouth, guides, etc are preaching the right gospel and we're educating alot of local people but that doesn't stop *cough* an angler coming from another state and catching a bunch of trophy sized blues and going back home and posting pictures showing a bunch of big ol dead fish on his boat *cough*. I can't stress enough it's not about today, next month, or even next year. It's really about the future of the lake years from now. New regulations put in place to protect these mega blues is going to be a win for everyone involved. I don't see how anyone can disagree with that.

How long you been catfishing? How long you been fishing Twonk? I will speak your language so maybe you will understand a little better. Maybe you cant see the forest for the trees that the fishing on Twonk has faded over the years. Ask anyone that fishes Tawakoni on a regular basis and they will tell you the numbers of big fish they are catching on a regular basis is down a lot. Yes, Tawakoni put out a new official water body record of 87.5 last year. This means 2 things.

The overall numbers of big fish are going down.

The fish are getting older and bigger.

Like salsa said, if we don't take all those big old fish outa there just wait and see what happens a few years from now. We may see fish over 100 lbs caught from Twonk in a couple years. Give them more time and we could see a new state record over 121.5. We could even see a new world record over 143.

Just gotta give them some time to grow. Iv said it before. You cant grow 50 lbers overnight. You sure cant grow 80-100 lbers overnight

I'm just tired of seeing this fat ignorant rednecks keeping 300 lbs of fish just to let them get freezer burned and thrown away. I was raised not to kill somethign unless you're gonna eat it!! I have a hard time believing those 50lb blues are good eating, id bet 1000$ most of that fish gets thrown away or fed to the dogs in the end. Thats the part that makes me sick. It's almost like bad karma to me.

Them "fat ignorant rednecks" as you so eloquently put it, didn't get fat by letting their fish freezer burn.

In one post we talk about how there are more trophy cats than ever due to our efforts on C&R and then the next we talk about how populations are suffering because people keeping to many and lack of regulation. Bodies of water can only support so many lbs of fish per unit of area or volume, if the average size has increased the numbers must decrease, it takes more to feed a 50 lb fish than a 5 lb fish. I feel like people jump to conclusions to support their belief and don't step back to look at the whole picture.

Im not at all familiar with the carp world but it sounds to me like the carp anglers recognized a problem when they saw one and worked together to fix it. Most of all they were not afraid of CHANGE.

Maybe the cat guys should take notes.

Might watch how much you use that "change" word... may bring up some bad feelings about our current predicament

wow. i guess the admin does not like me and he took down my post lol... ok fellows getting out from catfish section.

censoring the truth

The name calling is the problem. Regulations will change. I am looking into making a statewide petition and then when the signatures needed are filled I can forward it to where it is needed. My petition will not stop the harvest of large catfish by any means. It will not demonize the taking of catfish by any means either. It will simply put a much smaller limit of large catfish taken by any license. The cutoff length is still undecided.

The only other thing it might touch is the total number of hooks per license. There is no doubt of the overwhelming support for the changes. It is just following the proper steps in getting it done.

I'm the admin and I didn't take down your post. One of the moderators did, but I have removed a few myself.

We are all about conservation here at the TFF. Before any regs are changed, there needs to be a lot of discussion and what's going on in this thread is a good thing. BUT, we are not going to use photos of people who were obeying the law and harvesting within the limits as an example. Speculating about whether or not the fish got freezer burn or went to the dogs is just that ... pure speculation. We have no idea what happened to those fish. For all we know they were used to feed the homeless.

Again guys, let's keep this discussion civil and reasonable.

I am remain a skeptic about you and salsa, your expressions so far seem to be one sided and of a close mind opinionated conjectures type with very little evidence to back them up. You and salsa intention on changing regulations in a lake that has been an excellent fisheries for decades will potentially harm the great blue population in tawakoni. If you really want to preserve a healthy and sustainable blue cats population, here some important points to consider
1. Big fish need time to grow, we all understand that, but they also need to eat A LOT OF FOOD to get really big. Think of a large pizza that feed 4 small children, that same pizza might not be enough to feed one 300 lb man. Tawakoni does not have a running feeding river year round like the red river that feed into texoma. If you don't remove some of the big fish from the lake, there won't be enough food to feed All the fish, so what you will have are stunt fish that remain small years after years. That is not what we want.


2. If you disagree with #1, spend sometime study the blue cats fisheries in lake Lewisville, then ask yourself why that slot lake hasn't produced the kind quality fisheries anywhere nearly as good as tawakoni,...then go back and read point#1 again.

(To demuncie: on new electronics, a. From the bank I can tell you those things can't help you catch fish anymore than good old $9.50 topo map and a calendar. B. On boat, go to tawakoni on any weekends and whatch those clowns with fancy boat and electronics chasing guides around the lakes... new tools same fools. C. big blue cats harvesters are mostly old school flat bottom boat guys who come during winter months, but those are not "new world", they are old school catch that's been going on tawakoni for decades )

So bank 50 do you think that it is fair to drain all of the large catfish out of the lake and still make people who fish for a picture to pay for a license? Or is it only about what you want? Who really has the closed mind? Will you reimburse me all of the money I have invested in my tackle to handle giant catfish when there are none left for me to catch? I don't know hoe to explain it any clearer. Especially to somebody unwilling to listen.