That would be awesome if you could share! Thank you! I am going to try to go tomorrow. I am an hour or so from Graham or an hour from Denton creek. Haven’t decided where to go yet.

Only keep the ones over 12 inches. Not much meat on a 10 inch fish once you cut the red out. I only keep 10 sand bass at a time. I hate cleaning them. They dull my knife and cutting the red meat out takes too much time.

I think they are fine to eat if they fried correctly. I target mostly crappie but end up with lots of by -catch sandbass, LM Bass, Stripers and catfish. I really don't think it matters much to a lake how many you keep because sandies spawn like rabbits.

Dennis: My uncle used to say " crappie is fish for people who don't like fish"

I agree PKfishin, the fillets on a 10" fish just arent worth how much they dull your knife. I haven't noticed much difference in how the larger fish taste compared to small ones, but I sure notice the extra weight in the fillet bag. And I'll be quoting your uncle in the future, crappie is definitely fish for people who don't like the taste of fish.

Ten sandies 13 inches and thick . All others go back . Red meat removed the easy way , dull side of knife down cutting edge slightly up . Rinse and soak in sea salt , salt removes fish oils . We eat them at my house no less than twice a week year round??

Gborg, glad to know you and yours enjoy em as much as I do. And I'm right with you, I don't understand the issue with getting only the white meat? Removing the red meat is not difficult if you pay attention to what you're doing when removing the skin and have a nice sharp knife.

If it is over 12" and I want some fillets, I'll keep whatever size I catch.

We keep anything over 11.5" if in harvesting mode. That seems uber precise but we often get into fish, mostly males, that are just over 11" yet are clearly a year class ahead of slightly smaller fish that don't have the girth. So, yeah, I'd say 12" but truthfully it's a shade under. That seems to be the sweet spot for fish that yield enough meat to warrant the effort.

That said, if I've already caught a mess o' fish in the preceding days (I vacuum pack fillets and they're good for 2-4 months), I'll only keep a few mid-size (12-13") fish for a fresh meal.

I haven't had a lot of fish over 2lbs but agree that releasing the biggest fish after weighing and photographing is going to be best for the gene pool. Really big fish are usually anomalies of genetics, not age, so yes, please release them.