How do you keep fish limits while fishing?

Crappie fishing yesterday and was visited by the Game Wardens. They ask how many we had and we told them,then they ask each of us how many we had. We said 24 or I don't know,all our fish were in an ice chest.We were told each person was to have there fish separate so if there was a violation they knew who to ticket.Only thing I can find in the rules address fishing with a guide you can combine your catch.This would apply to all fish I suppose,Whites,hybrids,etc?No tickets were given.

When not fishing by yourself, you are required to keep your catches separate and this does apply to every kind of game fish with regulations.

Usually when the game wardens stop me I don't have any
fish so I never ran across this.

Good to know however, as I (we) never separate our catch.

Like this is going to make a difference --- "Hey Bill, be sure
and put that one in my "bag" as you are topped off".

Didn't know that. When we go crappie fishing they all go into one cooler. It would suck having 8-10 coolers on board for everybody's fish.

We put ours in plastic bags right on the ice yesterday...LOL!!

They were yellow perch out of 45 FOW, and DELICIOUS!.

Just use your fingers and toes if you’re lucky.

Everyone I have ever been fishing with puts them in one live well or ice chest. Apparently that’s wrong.

Was it because they were in a cooler instead of a livewell?

Those were some bored out of their minds game wardens. That is if this story true, of course.

The easy solution is for each person on the boat to use a crappie counter, move a bead each time you drop one in the box...hard for the GW to refute it...

Said each person had to have their catch separate.They said if there was a violation they would know who to ticket.The bead counter would not work.

If you have to keep them seperate, how do guides get away with putting all the fish in one cooler?

See original post,if you are with a guide you can combine catch except for the guides.

The bag limit for a guided fishing party is equal to the total number of persons in the boat licensed to fish or otherwise exempt from holding a license minus each fishing guide and fishing guide deckhand multiplied by the bag limit for each species harvested.

All that is saying is the guide or deck hands cannot contribute to the catch.

There is no rule, regulation, or law that says the catch must be kept seperate. The warden suggested they be kept separate for his convenience. If the catch is over the limit, he will ask who caught the most.

We ask these questions,wardens said you are required to keep your fish separate,this was not a suggestion. I do not know,would like to see this in rules and regs.Dove,duck,etc.require each hunter keep their harvest separate from other hunters.If catch is combined who gets the ticket for shorts,over limits,sandy vs. hybrid?

Who gets the ticket if, on a guided trip, and four clients combine the catch and are one fish over the limit?

Guide, his job to keep track

I have always been told the game wardens can do what ever they want and can make up the law as they go.
I would have loved to take them to court on this point and hopefully get a judge that likes to fish.

Did he contribute to the catch? Law says he can't so he wasn't fishing. You cannot ticket someone for not breaking a law.

Really sucks when you find out that you are just a milk cow for the state.

Game wardens may need to be reined in. This is wrong.

Huh. Have been checked a few times over the years. This was never an issue on the times that the GW's checked our fish while on the water.

Once with my pop, and another time with a co-worker, I was putting all our fish into the ice chest. The GW's were very concerned with size limits, but didn't question anything about separating the fish out. Maybe it was relevant that we were clearly under our bag limits no matter whose fish they were?

The way I see this is, if one partner is out fishing the other partner and catches his 25 fish, he's done fishing for the day. But with 2 people the limit is 50. So therefore you keep fishing until the 2 of you get both limits. So therefore 1 partner is in violation. But who gonna say? Understood now?

I agree with this.When I have 25 crappie I close my ice chest and work on the rest until all are full.Same as 4 people with 100 crappie in 1 ice chest,GWs reply was who gets the ticket for a 9.5" crappie in the chest.Don't know the answer.Would probably have to go to court and let a judge decide.

where do I gotta go to catch 45 yellow perch? My lifetime total is about a dozen, all in the Trinity river below Lake Livingston dam .... a long time ago!

Wow! Trinity has yellow perch?

Yellow Bass, maybe. You've got to go to somewhere like Lake Meredith to catch any Yellow Perch here in Texas.

I could only "wish" I knew what a "limit" smelled like.

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Then it logically should be the boat owner who gets the ticket. If they wanna get that picky. Now they have someone to ticket and do not have to worry about separating the fish.

I have never heard of this with fish....Dove's yes, but not fish. I'm all about game laws, but i really can't see how this can be a law, or even remotely practical. Reference example below.

Example: I have a 20' Bay boat, legally will hold 6 folks, we decide to go try and catch some Specs, all limit out, that's 60 Specs, so the Game Warden is saying that i have to have 6 - 45 quart coolers in my boat!?!

I'm gonna see what i can dig up.

Want to know the real answer, call up his boss and ask him. If he answers they have to be separated then ask him where that information is located? I wouldn't confront the game warden at the time he was checking you because that is how you talk yourself into a ticket. If the supervisor says there isn't any law that states that then tell him of what happened and ask him to correct it with the game warden who gave you the information. They make mistakes or interpret things differently.

What ChuChu1 said. If nobody claims the illegal fish, everyone gets a ticket. That simple. Also, this time of year most of the lakes are still on a you must keep regardless of size for crappie, so what exactly constitutes an illegal fish if you are under the quantity limit?

I never catch a limit anyway, so I don't worry about that!

Limits are per person not per boat. Technically the guide rule just means that a guide or deck hand can't keep a limit when with a guided Party.

Traditionally the Wardens have managed this as you can't have more in the boat than the limit of all licensed or exempt from a license combined. They know they have no proof of who caught how many. So if the trout limit is 10 and you were with a guide the boat couldn't have more than 20. However if he asked who caught them and you say "I smoked them, caught 14 of them" he could write you a ticket as you had possessed more than your limit.

The Game Warden's interpretation that you have to keep them separate is just that, a interpretation. There is nothing in the rules that specifically state you must prove who caught them. However you better have enough licensed or exempt to cover the limits possessed.

He could still write you a ticket and "let you tell it to the judge". I wouldn't suggest you argue the point with him.

I have seen this occur where everyone threw their trout into a cooler. 4 guys were wading. There was one short fish in the cooler. The Game Warden gave them a chance for someone to claim the fish. No one did. He gave the ticket to the boat owner. They split the fine. To this day they all know who they think had the short fish.

I don't even keep my ducks or dove separate. Never had a problem.

If the Game warden is sitting over there with binoculars and watches you catch 30 fish and your buddy catch 20 for a total of 50 you will get a ticket for the 5 over your limit. I saw it happen with striper and a 5 fish limit. GW watched one guy catch 6 and his kid caught 4

I did this last week and was told that page 25 states each persons limit is 25 crappie. You can not legally keep any more fish even if others in your group have not reach their limit.Limits are set per person.

Yes but what about requiring you to keep them separate from the other guys catch?

If they are in the same container and there are too many or a short fish, the boat owner should get the ticket. We were checked last year with two limits in one cooler and nothing was said about it. They did try to claim a yellow was a sand bass, and was undersized. That was resolved when I pointed out the fish was a yellow, and had no size restriction.

Only way to prove how many you have is to keep them separated.There is not a regulation against combining your catches but you must be able to show which fish and how many fish you kept,only way I see that being done is to keep individual stringers of fish until you leave.As was previously said if you and I are fishing together in one boat and you keep 30 crappie and I keep 20 you are 5 over your limit and in violation of the legal limit law,does not matter if we have a legal limit for 2 in the boat.

I've been checked multiple times when I had up to 4 people on my boat putting fish into the same cooler. Of course we were well withing our limit with no under fish. I have never been told we had to keep fish separate. I video every interaction with a game warden now. I've never received a ticket from a game warden, but I have had some very negative interactions with them during safety checks. I just tell them the second they pull up that I have a video running and I assume they have the same. Seems to eliminate the king of the world attitude many of them have.

NOT TRUE!!!

Whats not true?

I always wondered if this happened until I was stationed in Alaska. They take their game laws very seriously. They have no problems using binos, hiding in the brush, etc... and catching you doing something illegal. They will measure hook gap at some locations. Up there, you can apply to fish by proxy. If granted, you can catch a limit for someone else. Bottom line: the limits were set per person, not per boat or group. If I'm fishing with you and you keep trying to catch my limit, I may have a problem with that. I used to use catching my limit as a signal to sit down and have a beer and a cigar. Great way to pass time until someone catches one or two more.

The way I do it is: The captain of the boat is responsible for violations. So he sets the rules on what size can be kept (for example, don't keep anything under 11" even if 10" is the minimum limit), and has to monitor the count. Yes, it's more responsibility, but the captain is already responsible for everything else on his boat. Just add this to the list of responsibilities. I expect the same when I'm on another's boat. It's just the way I do it.

Yeah, have been fishing with a guide in Alaska. He kept careful count of each persons's individual catch, and when a given fisherman hit their limit of coho, he took that persons rod out of the water.

Wow, this is so simple it's crazy. They make nylon stringers that cost less than 50 cents most places. Someone claim the cooler, usually the best fisherman and lets them fly, the other guys just put theirs on yellow, red, or blue stringers and then throw the stringer in the cooler too. Now everyone knows how many fish they have, if the GW stops you and says how many fish you catch, to the guy in the back of the boat, he says mine are on the blue stringer, he pulls out the blue one and theirs 12, simple. Why make this harder than it is, everyone has their own personal limit. It's not a community effort! It's the law!!! They can't trust everyone on what they say! Other simple way is if two people are in boat with a livewell and it has a divider than each use their own side of livewell. On to next topic

No need to seperate fish. Put them all in one cooler. If you have 3 guys and the game warden asks you to identify your fish, then each guy claims every 3rd fish. Fisherman 1 identifies the first fish pulled out of the cooler as his. Fisherman 2 says the second fish is his, and the 3rd guy claims the 3rd fish. Then back to fisherman 1 for fish number 4. Fish 5 is the 2nd guys, and so on. Problem solved. Who is the game warden to tell you that your fish are not separated in the same cooler. They are seperated, but they are sharing ice.

If you ride to the lake with me and we get stopped coz you arent wearing a seatbelt, who gets the ticket?

If it were "required" then he would have ticket you for whatever infraction you broke. Must not have been as required as he thought it was huh?