Striper on top in Delta

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srqjVfd0i-w

I guess this was last week near Sherman Island.

[Darian]

Great lookin' fish.... From the amount of time it was out of water for photo's/and admiring, I'd say it was kept. Probably not the best eating fish. Wonder how old it was

Still,... nothing illegal there....

[Katz]

There is a spot where you can see him putting it into a large cooler or something and then taking it back out..

Would have been nice to keep that one in the gene pool...

Kraig

[Jgoding]

We need a slot limit to help protect the high volume spawners but people will bitch about it either way and like DFG has the resources to enforce it anyway....

I did see on the Sniffer that they caught 60+ fish that day and all but one were released as it swallowed the lure/bait. So I guess "Bertha" is still out there.

JEff

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

I would love to see a slot limit.

Those big fish are full of toxins so why would you kill one?

People take a lot of big fish home to just show off too.

I think taking them home to eat out of clean reservoirs like New Hogan is best.

They are stunted there so it won't really hurt anything.

[slimfishin's]

I don't they kept it. Those guys look like pretty serious tournament fisherman - and they rarely keep fish. I suspect that fish is fine. Stripers can take some serious abuse and turn out fine. Not that I'm endorsing this sort of behavior, but I think that fish is still swimming around out there. I didn't see any cooler on the deck of that boat, and I just don't feel like those are the kind of anglers to keep a fish like that.

SF

[Trout Nut]

Randy and Pat, the champion boat owners, released this fish. I went out with Randy several days prior to this and caught a 5 lb fish on the surface, and several other fish (biggest 10 lb.). He was using Zara Spook topwater plugs, as the guys in the video were using.

On the Smith waiting for water to fall. heading to the Trinity....

Tigh Lines!

[Tony Buzolich]

As a follow-up to Bills comments about big stripers:

Large stripers are almost always females. Though some males get some size on them, I've never seen or taken one over 15#.

The females though are the spawners and one female like that taken can produce over 3 MILLION eggs in ONE season. That is a lot of baby stripers for next year's run.

The other thing is, she's old. A big fish like that can be over twenty years of age or more. If you go to a restruant and order a steak, do you order an old piece of beef off some cow, or do you order the younger tender cut of filet. Same thing here. These bigger fish are old and are not good eating. Under 10# are fine. They are younger, more flavorful, more plentiful, and contain less toxins.

Last point, as Bill mentioned, she carrys toxin levels (primarily mercury) that are very high beyond the recommended level for human consumption even in small portions. Do you want to eat this?

Lastly, if you should be so lucky to take a big fish like this, DON'T lift her and hang her by the jaw. This damages the internal organ arrangement as she has never felt any form of gravity being suspended in water all her life. Fish, according to Dept. of F&G, intended for release should always be craddled only briefly for a picture and returned to the water as soon as possible.

So, take a quick picture, and let the big ones go instead of pulling millions of eggs out of the gene pool and then throwing away a trophy that is not edible anyway.
TONY