Thanks mickey, that makes perfect sense! never thought about the buoyancy factor that salt produces

You also need to remember we are taking them out pretty fast also. Guides are every place you look.
I see at least a couple of fish floating across the lake everyday from bad releases.
If it's lip hooked and we are not keeping fish we release it.
If it's gut hooked and legal we put it in the box.
One way to stop catching and killing small stripers is fishing large gizzards only.
We have not been keeping any threadfins for several weeks.

Fishing is great and should stay that way for a while.

That's good advice Randy, I watched a boat with a few guys that were running riggers catch one and throw it back into the lake today. It immediately went belly up, and they looked at it and kept going. Tons of guides everywhere today, mostly downrigging it seemed. It's was quite the parade in one area, they were all lined up following each other. We were lucky today and didn't deep hook any. They all got released and swam away with only their feelings hurt. It was tough weeding thru the small shad to get some decent ones to fish with. The 2" to 3" TF shad were plentiful though.

As randy stated above. This right here will keep you from killing small stripes.

Randy: I have not been able to find any shad I can catch with a throw net in a long time down lake. The cloudy water certainly has not helped. That's one of the reasons I have crappie fished so long. Fishing lures for stripers seems much tougher than live shad.

Even with shiners I catch small stripers that kill themselves by getting the hook in their gills. If it goes in their stomach I can usually get it out pretty well with needle nose. With the 18 inch rule I have to just let them float.

I have some young nephews coming up this week. Love to put them on some stripers if I can get bait. The water is too hot in my opinion to be releasing keeper stripers. If I catch them they will likely need to go in the ice.

Killed another 20 today. Sitting on the porch with fish cleaned by 10:30.

I may as well join the bandwagon, PK was good this Weekend for us as well. We caught some nice ones and had a good outing. Bait was a little tougher today, but we found enough decent ones to scratch out several fish and kept a couple to eat tonight. The Bluecat in the cast net first throw this morning was a disaster.

Wait till you get 150 or so baby cats when you throw your net in the dark.

I can still probably show you the exact spot that happened to me at three years ago. Very bad situation.

What a mess that must have been with that catfish in the net. bad enough to get a tree limb.

Ive had the baby cats in my net before when casting on top of the bubbles at Bport. Not fun.

Yep that's the place. Took me twice to learn to wait till first light before throwing the net.

I would lose $100 and just throw my cast net away

A tip for those baby cat fish in the cast net.
As soon as you realize it's a net full of finger stabbers keep it as open as you can, then drape the cast net inside out over some cleats and get as much of it as you can in the water.
Most of them will swim out of the net very quickly. Leave it long enough and they will swim out, but most will be gone in less than 60 seconds.