Most people who go fishing would like to catch bigger fish.
The DNR has been doing research on if some adjustments to regulations for catching panfish could help.
DNR Panfish Team co-leader Alex Latzka recently updated the Natural Resources Board on a 10-year study that got started in 2016.
He said a 25-fish bag limit for panfish has been in effect in Wisconsin since 1998.
Some lakes can handle that level of harvest, but Latzka says it does create a challenge in others.
“Panfish are growing just fine, they’re not overabundant, but harvest is so high that a fish growing… as soon as it hits that harvestable size… it’s likely to be kept, taken out of the lake and overall the population is left with mostly small fish. So this study set out to see if reducing bag limits would reduce harvest enough to overcome that problem and improve panfish sizes overall,” said Latzka.
Three different regulations have been tried on waters picked to test the concepts.
Some of the regulations provided improvements on some waters, but it depends somewhat on the lake.
Latzka says lakes that have a panfish population that is too abundant can actually see a decrease in fish size if the harvest is restricted.
Latzka says a suite of regulation proposals will be brought before the spring fish and game hearings next year to get public input, targeted toward the specific panfish populations they think can most benefit from it.
That could see the overall 25-fish limit for panfish maintained, while limiting the number of a particular species of fish that can be taken where appropriate.
