God....can't leave the kids in the room alone with the lightsocket...somebody's going to wet their finger up their @$$ and stick their finger in it...
I've not BEEN to the Caney since September [although that's going to change soon] and I still get props on here...outstanding. They ain't no such thing as bad press. Look, the reason I've been such a jerk over things in the past is such a thing as this...ignorance. Who gives a rat's what they shock up? I saw a study before that only showed a couple fish 20-21". Shocking...in a tailrace...is a joke. Shocking...in a lake...is a joke, UNLESS you apply proper knowledge to it. NO ONE in the field really applies the angling knowledge pertaining to weather and water conditions [i.e. you go shocking on Dale Hollow the day after a cold front? You ain't going to pull to many fish...in fact, you'd probably think the lake was DEAD, because they're all down 30-40 feet at least]. In the nature of a tailrace when you're dealing with current, that messes with things inherently, as fish automatically drift when stunned and may not rise up as planned for netting. The only place I can imagine it to be truly effective might be over up by the dam, right along that current line. It's only 5-7 feet deep there then and you might be able to take a good sample there. netting of course is out of the question. If you really want to see how many big fish are in there, go shocking during the spawn and watch how many 10-20 pound fish roll up. I've never been one too much to depend or give much notice to shocking surveys on larger or flowing waters. A pond? Yes. Not a large lake, and not a river, I don't care how many formulas they throw into it. 90% of the fish are in 10% of the water and all that...and most of the surveys conducted are "scientifically unbiased" so they don't take into account things most angler would know inherently. So if you're not shocking in that 10% of water, your numbers are skewed.
The only REAL way to assess a fishery is through FISHING. Creel reports and surveys and your own hook-and-line assessment. The state was shocking 10 pound walleyes out of Kinkaid Lake for years and people weren't catching them, thus all they were doing were depleting resources for bass and muskies and occasionally giving a crappie fisherman someting to write home about. It was wasted money and resources...and it didn't matter WHAT was being SHOCKED...even though the fish WERE there, they weren't being caught. The situation you describe on the Caney is reciprocal to this.
Of course, compared to Florida, TN is a genius of fisheries management. It continues to amaze me how they keep placing tighter and tighter regs on the snook fishermen when the real problem is the jewfish that live below the pier that are still a protected species under an archaic ruling...they can't be harvested, they can't be harmed...under any means...and they are sucking up 30-40 pound snook and redfish like a largemouth does a shiner, and the state wonders WHY THE REGS AREN'T MAKING THINGS BETTER???
All this aside, let's go by what people are CATCHING. Just because you aren't HEARING about it doesn't mean its not happening. I just get a small slice of that, but I know my boys were out a couple weeks ago, got 4 21"+ fish in about 3 hours, and then just called it quits. Another boat in the same party got 3. They've been routinely hooking and breaking off fish in the 30" class range, and seeing even larger. I had a friend, a psych professor I turned onto the jerkbait thing before I left, bring a 15" to the boat back a few months and had a brown [he got a good look at it...it was not a rockfish] come out from under the boat and slash it...slashed a 15" brown trout. He then again hooked a brown that he got to shore but was unable to land that he says had a head like a football. This is a man with a doctorate. He's got nothing to prove...he's not doing to lie. I myself, come up for 2 DAYS in September, and get several keeper fish, one being 25.5", and seeing a couple considerably larger behind my bait.
All this aside, anything you say concerning this is conjectural until a regulation is passed. I still get tickled by the fact that some think that at the current stocking rate that catch-and-release is the way to go. Gil, I love you.. you seem like a smart guy, but God man....it's called a Put-and-take FISHERY. The reason it exists is BECAUSE of harvest. You take that away, there will be NO FISH IN THE RIVER. Most of the people paying for trout stamps are harvesters. And I get sick of being labeled some stupid hick [the latter part I take some pride in] for wanting to harvest a couple nice fish now and then. And anyone who thinks that we should put stocked brown trout and rainbows under the same protective status that we do manatees and red pands is some kind of Prius-driving progressive thinker. It's a joke! And then you all get on here and squabble like a bunch of gulls yelling "Mine! MINE! MINE!" because you all think that it's YOUR fishery. Do I think there should be a slight alteration in regs? Yes. I think the minimum brown kept should be 20" 1 between that and 24", and then protected to 28-30" and then have that open for trophy fish. that is my take. For rainbows? There's a reason they're bigger for the most part down where no one fishes...I say protected slot for rainbows 14" to 20". That gives the old farts with their RVs down there to catch some dinner and enjoy themselves and them allows for some larger rainbows to grow. DO I tink t he regs at this point are a death sentence to the river? NO...angling ignorance is doing a good enough job at keeping the fishery safe for overharvest. It may seem like alot of fish to you guys, but the man I study after caught 120 bass between 4-12 pound out of a 22,000 acre lake...Apopka after the state of FL had said there were no game fish in it after shocking, netting, and even spiking sections of the lake. That WAS a very special situation, but I've never been one to think that the majority is ever really tapping into what a fishery has to offer. When there are still browns that come up and attack 15" trout, and guys catch 20 pound plus on live brook trout...I ask you again, how many of you are TARGETING those size fish with THAT large of prey? Ever notice how the largest rockfish in the Cumby almost always fall to someone using a 15-20" skipjack? not a 9-10" jerkbait or swimbait?
...alright I'm done.
