COASTAL BEND � The Texas Parks & Wildlife Commission Wednesday decided not to pursue a change in the daily limit of speckled trout as a coastwide regulation.

TPW Coastal Fisheries Director Robin Riechers recommended against the change from the current 10 fish limit at a Wednesday commission meeting in Austin.

The department received a record 1,243 comments from individuals, businesses, organizations on this issue. These comments came from seven scoping meetings, by e-mail, through the TPW website and Facebook page, by mail and by phone. The Corpus Christi scoping meeting had the highest attendance with more than 100 people.

The overall opinions submitted for or against change (1,229) were split 49 percent to 51 percent, with 608 favoring some kind of change and 621 favoring the status quo. A smattering of others did not clearly state what they wanted. Of the folks who favored change, about 52 percent (315 comments) suggested a five-fish daily bag. About 36 percent of the change group suggested some other form of harvest regulation, ranging from keeping the first 10 fish to changing the minimum harvest length or designing various slot rules that limited the number of bigger trout (females) we could keep.

Hot off the press !!!

Go get'em guy's !!

.. and gals !!!

... and kids !!!!

They still need to develop a foolproof way of telling males from females and then designing limits around selective harvest of males. More girls means more trout. Its just like the West Coast Salmon runs. When they close down a fishery to both Indians (think gill nets across the mouth of the river) and sport fishing, obstensively because the fishery is threatened, the resulting run several years later is a record high run. Not hard to figure that if you let the fish breed, there are more fish.

Sometimes the people making these decisions don't fish these waters like we do. Although the limit will remain, doesn't mean us fishermen have to abide. Personally I never keep more than 2-3 for a meal and release all that will survive.Careful handling and using the arc dehooker insures it will fight another day. You wonder how many of them 10 trout get eaten. My 2 cents. Limit your kill-don't kill your limit!! Good fishin.

i agree with you that's how i fish i mean more power who want's to keep ten trout but me i'll just keep what i can eat and take pics of the rest

Great post flydoc, agree 100%. Personally I would like to see a slot like the reds, 17"-25" with no oversized being kept as these are the big females. Also ,in my opinion, there is just not enough meat on a 15 or 16" trout to mess with.

I know I am in the minority in my opinion but I do not keep any trout at all unless I want a fish dinner that night and have not caught my limit of reds. I just think reds taste better.

I generally limit myself to no more than 6 trout 18" or better. Of course I seldom catch 6 trout better than 18" in one day so it's even mo' better for the fish.

You can't please everybody all the time. Thumbs up to TPWD

It has been my experience that common sense won't matter. Most of the Rockport area people in the know, are for dropping the limit. Heck, over the last several years the "10" fish limit doesn't matter much. I don't really know how this didn't pass. I guess it wasn't TPW's idea to begin with.

Your last sentence is correct, I will give your post that much credit.

According to gill net surveys the fishery is better than it has been compared to the 80s. Some fluctuations plus or minus, but nothing negative to warrant a change.

The 80's weren't that good. The 90's were tremendous and I will assure you the stocks of "keeper" size fish are no where close to the numbers of the 90's. The truth, the average fishermen catches somewhere between 1.2 and 1.8 trout per 8 hours in Rockport. That doesn't sound healthy by anyone standards. And if the stocks are wonderful, why not impose a slight restriction to plan for the increased fishing pressure. I haven't noticed fishermen numbers declining at all.

When comparing the numbers you have to factor in the major fish kills in the 80's, making the 90's look alot better. TWPD knows that people make their living catching fish, and any rash decision would of course,adversely effect them. TWPD bases a decision on data, and therefore,states that the fishery is healthy. The recreational fisherman collectively doesn't catch alot of fish. There are numbers for the guides also conducted at the boat ramp, and they catch alot more fish. Guides' numbers far outweight the average catch of the recreational fisherman. Maybe, when TWPD conducts the survey at the boat ramp, they should include one for the avid fisherman? When I was learning how to fish, my numbers supported the Rockport numbers. But as I learned how and where to fish, my catch average increased significantly. I agree that fishing pressure is a big problem in the Rockport and Aransas bay areas, but what can you do?