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You are not sportsmen you are pigs.
This is my first post so here goes. I was out on bantam today and meet deerslayer. Nice fishing with you, I was picking up and saw a game warden coming over to me. He checked my licence and saw my iceshanty patch on my coveralls,and asked if I would put a post on here about the masacre. He was the one that responded to the call about the fish on the ice. He found the fish and turns out the under size pike were pickerel. He found the guys and gave them a warning. He asked them why they left the fish on the ice, they said to feed the seagulls.
Enjoyed fishing with you today Ruger03. How'd you do after I left? Glad the game warden caught the ***holes that left the fish on the ice. Pickerel or not they should have been returned to the water if they weren't going to be eaten.Haven't decided on bantam or squantz for monday yet, I'll shoot you a PM tomorrow night.I caught a couple more dink perch. Let me know how you did at the derby,and where your fishing monday.
I would like to address the "Bantam Lake Massacre". I was one of the guys in the group that left the fish on the ice & am speaking for all in the group. I want to tell our side of the story to set the record straight.First of all, the "pike" left on the ice were not pike. They were chain pickerel between 8" - 10" that were caught by our group on Burr Pond on 1/10/2010. Mistakenly, we had been using them as pike bait every Saturday & Sunday since then. At the end of each day, we would put them back in Ziplock bags, re-freeze them, and bring them back the following weekend. We are admitting that we should not have been using them for bait, having found out from speaking to the game warden this last Saturday that it is illegal. In our defense, WE DID NOT KNOW. In fact, we were told a couple of years ago BY ANOTHER GAME WARDEN that not only we could, but that they made excellent pike bait. Apparently, we were either misinformed, or the laws governing allowed bait have changed. Either way, we did confirm this by checking the Connecticut Fishing Guide. SHAME ON US! We should have checked in the first place!There were some yellow perch left on the ice as well. These perch ranged in size from 6" - 10" and there were only four of them. Two of these were caught on 2/6/2010 and were used as pike bait. The other two were caught on Burr Pond with the pickerel. We're pretty sure thet yellow perch can be used as bait per the Connecticut Fishing Guide. If anyone knows otherwise, please let us know. Both species got to the point of decomposition that we could no longer use them. We left them on the ice thinking the sea gulls would take care of them. I guess not! For this, we apologize to the local residents & agree with the game warden that they shouldn't have to see things like this.On average we each have over 30 years experience fishing both hard & open water, as well as hunting most game in North America. We as responsible outdoor sportsmen pride ourselves on a very clean records and promise our fellow sportsmen that we will never allow anything like this to happen again. Over the years, we have seen fish left out there and had the same reactions as you guys. It is a waste of our natural resources!To the warden we spoke to on Saturday, thank you for doing your job well & for your tenacity. You should be commended!To Mungo544...before posting...get your facts straight, learn your fish species, learn how to count, learn how to measure fish, and last but not least...learn how to spell!
I have a possible solution to the problem...lets start a campaign to legalize usage of pickerel and trout as bait