Over Fishing

[Jiggathon]

I live in Cambridge Minnesota and fish rush lake in chisago county very often, and over the past few years i cant even comprehend the amount of people on the lake. The fishing is still GREAT for crappies and walleyes but i am afraid that it will go on the downfall if more and more people figure out about this great fishery and it gets fished out. The new crappie limit is a nice thing for the lake but the problem is its thirty feet or better where most of the fish are caught. So even if the fish are to small to keep they often die from coming up from so deep. I just want to hear some thought about this situation and see what other people think?

[CedarLaker]

sounds just like cedar lake it is kind of shallow compared to that but there are more crappies in there just smaller ones you can catch a ton of 6 inchers, sounds like a genuine problem that is sad.

[fishuhalik]

I've seen it time & time again.  I found one lake up north when I was living there.  It was no bigger than 30 acres with one 30 ft hole in the middle the size of a big house.  Every crap in the lake was stacked in that hole.  I would only take a few every time I went, which was about every other weekend.  I was trying to preserve it.  And these were quality craps, almost all of them between 10" & 13".  The biggest I got was 15 1/2".  My buddy finally talked me into taking him there, & he promised me he'd keep his mouth shut.  Well, he took a buddy that would "keep his mouth shut", and the cycle continued.  By the end of the winter, you were hard pressed to be able to pull a fish out of there bigger than 8".  There are many lakes that this has happened to, but this one really hit home 'cuz I put alot of time into finding lakes like this, & when you try to preserve a fishery like that, it really hurts cuz it almost feels like they're your fish.  Last time I ever take anyone to my spots!