Why? Yes I am 110% for catch and release.. but not neccesarily on private water... My girlfriends family has a ranch with a lake on it, and we keep alot of bass from it because in private ponds like this they tend to get overpopulated and then undersized.. He kept them, and enjoyed eating them.. lay off.

It is a private lake and I was with 2 friends..
just my $.02

nice mess of fish! i bet they were tasty!

thats a hell of catch. Bass are good eating, I've ate more lmb than any other fish

it's like people forget catching fish was done first as a food source. Catch and release came around when populations of fish were declining and it NEEDED to be done.

but like he said, it was a private pond and those bass in there have little to no fishing pressure and almost no natural predators once they reach a certain size(i guess minus birds of prey?), so all they do is eat and make babies...

might as well eat some of them to keep somne sort of control on the population in the pond. otherwise the pond will die off cause the bass will eat everything, then eat themselves, and all you'll eventually be left with is just one big bass who ate everyone else...lol

haha i guess so..but I dont even fish it hard but once every 6 months. I mainly catch and release or help other people catch fish.

Boy all this talk about eating bass has got me hungry...Think I'll go get those small mouth filet out of the freezer for dinner tonight.

yeah, you catch and release everything on private waters and in a few years your pond will be crappy due to high numbers of stunted fish. I say that's a great stringer, young man, and I'd have been proud of it too.

Keepin' & Eatin' out of an overpopulated small pond will not only make the pond more healthy for the fish, it will put a smile on your face at the dinner table!!! Catch & release is great on any body of water that is heavily fished by the public. However, it spells disaster for those small private ponds. Therefore, I tell the boy:

Congratulations on the stringer, & Good Fishin',
LlindeX