01-31-2019, 02:06 AM
I'll have to trust that the DWR is making the right call on this one....
I rarely catch many under 22" there.....unless it's the 10-12" variety. The area around the Benson marina bridge and boat launch gets hit pretty hard and catching a bunch of decent cats is pretty hard to do there, but get in a boat and take advantage of the other 95% of the reservoir and it can be disgustingly easy to catch a couple dozen nice cats in a nights fishing!
Keeping four nice 22-24" channel cats is plenty for a couple or more good meals anyway. However, it would actually bug me if I could only keep one nice one because sometimes I want to keep some meat, but no need to keep 8 unless I'm trying to get enough for a family reunion.....not very likely that I'll need to do that!
It is a rare night when I go there for an all nighter on the boat and catch less than 12 or so nice cats (I think Derek can vouch for that), but even after catching that many I usually only keep 2-4 of them to eat. I know us Utah anglers are used to thinking of 24" channel cats as "big", but that is really just an average mature cat on Cutler. I've caught many over 30" and a few up to 33". I'm thinking there are crap loads of the 22-28" cats and I'm not sure the limit reduction is going to matter at all, in fact I'm a little worried that it could cause stunting, but I'm all for it because 4 nice cats is plenty.....especially if there are more than one of ya fishing and keeping them. Heck, one 28" fish is enough for a family of 5 to have a big meal of fried catfish!
The perfect size catfish in my opinion is 18-20" for a meal, but I catch WAY more in the 22+ inch range than I do in the smaller 16-20" range on cutler.
Just my .02 cents.
Mike
P.S. I think you are right Jeff, if they are going to keep more than the limit then I'm sure they won't worry about the law and will just do it anyway. It would be great to see DWR check people more often at night there to make sure this is being enforced.
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I rarely catch many under 22" there.....unless it's the 10-12" variety. The area around the Benson marina bridge and boat launch gets hit pretty hard and catching a bunch of decent cats is pretty hard to do there, but get in a boat and take advantage of the other 95% of the reservoir and it can be disgustingly easy to catch a couple dozen nice cats in a nights fishing!
Keeping four nice 22-24" channel cats is plenty for a couple or more good meals anyway. However, it would actually bug me if I could only keep one nice one because sometimes I want to keep some meat, but no need to keep 8 unless I'm trying to get enough for a family reunion.....not very likely that I'll need to do that!
It is a rare night when I go there for an all nighter on the boat and catch less than 12 or so nice cats (I think Derek can vouch for that), but even after catching that many I usually only keep 2-4 of them to eat. I know us Utah anglers are used to thinking of 24" channel cats as "big", but that is really just an average mature cat on Cutler. I've caught many over 30" and a few up to 33". I'm thinking there are crap loads of the 22-28" cats and I'm not sure the limit reduction is going to matter at all, in fact I'm a little worried that it could cause stunting, but I'm all for it because 4 nice cats is plenty.....especially if there are more than one of ya fishing and keeping them. Heck, one 28" fish is enough for a family of 5 to have a big meal of fried catfish!
The perfect size catfish in my opinion is 18-20" for a meal, but I catch WAY more in the 22+ inch range than I do in the smaller 16-20" range on cutler.
Just my .02 cents.
Mike
P.S. I think you are right Jeff, if they are going to keep more than the limit then I'm sure they won't worry about the law and will just do it anyway. It would be great to see DWR check people more often at night there to make sure this is being enforced.
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