What's the point of outlawing spearing freshwater gamefish?

In alabama like most states it is legal to spear non-gamefish such as catfish, carp, drum, and the likes.

However it is illegal to spear bass, crappie, bream, and other "gamefish". Regular fishing are allowed to take 10 black bass, 50 bream, 30 crappie and 30 stripped bass in ONE day.

My question is why? What's the reasoning behind this?

The fishing lobby is worried the spearfishermen will destroy the fish populations.

They think spearfishing is easy.

Texas is the same way, but bream aren't gamefish here. There are some who want to protect gar as game fish to keep the bow hunters from shooting them. Arkansas is really liberal on this rule.

TwoBit

In a word... "Politics"!

Actually, I really think it's ignorance.

You probably don't do much h/l fishing, but if you have visited a decent size tackle store (ie Bass Pro shops) then you'll begin to understand the trash talking that goes on between your fishing buddy when it comes to equipment. Your buddy buy's a $13 lure and you call him stupid for spending so much. Then on that lure he catches a monster bass and for 7 days straight you feel the rath until you also then go and by the $13 lure. Next time out you have "invisible mono line" and pull a fish and you tease your buddy endlessly to tears. And this goes on and on for years, trust me.

Now comes me, mister spearo and neither of the boat guys wants to get wet and go underwater. So you aren't going to get an unfair advantage on the fish and they will keep it a level playing field with the regulations.

For a twist on the question, could you bring a fishing rod underwater with a lure in front of a fish hole and use it to hook a fish? In most states, the answer is YES !!

I actually do alot of hook and line fishing, probably more than spear fishing, due to the lack of suitable spearfishing waters nearby. So I do understand the competition, although Bass Pro Shops is one thing I dont understand, things are so overpriced they're much more expensive than walmart or even the local bait shops, never understood how they ever survived.

I was asking more along the lines is there a scientific reasoning or some sort of proof or is it just the old "rules are rules" deal.

I have written my state fisheries division director. So if I hear back i'll post up what he says.

Johnoly, is pretty close to the true situation. There are few dive shops, compared to Bass Pro type places. Boat dealers can "trick" out a bass boat for big money. Bass clubs, can send a thousand emails in a week's time. And wildlife departments don't think there are very many divers, so they can be ignored.

Many years ago, Texas could draw 250 divers to a spearfishing contest, and those numbers were not enough to get Texas lawmakers to open up catfish. There are fewer divers now than 10 years ago. . . so any consideration for improvements are unlikely. Everytime I talk with a fisherman, they think divers shoot all their bass, and divers are to blame for line fishermen not catching fish. . . They don't know what is going on underwater, and those divers are responsible.

We actually have a Game Warden (Texas) in our dive club and I asked him about line and lure fishing underwater after an old diver told me they used to do it all the time. He said as long as you aren't snagging them then it is legal. You are subject to the same limits as above water fishermen of course. One Game Warden's opinion so you might want to check with your local authority.

I used to fesh water spear fish a lot in South Dakota. Day in day out on average I could do better with a rod and reel as it was a lot less condition dependent and you could cover a lot more water in less time if fish were hard to find.

On days or locations with bad viz the rod and reel angler has the advantage as its hard to spear with 2' viz as game fish normally don't get that close to a diver. On days wuth excetional viz it coudl get hard to spear fish a with 30-40' viz many won't come in that close. You end end up making your own little silt blind.

Now on a good day 20 years ago I could get my limit of 6-8 pound walley in a couple hours and we'd pass on anything larger as they were frankly not good eating. That was not always the case with some divers. We had one in particular who would shoot a 12-15 pound walleye once every year or two and get his picture on the front page with an article suggesting he does it all the time. It was very bad press for divers and fed the beliefs of fishermen that spearing was not fair and less than sporting.

Today, no one gets 12 lb walleye but it has a lot more to do with a GF&P salmon stocking disaster, poor water level management by the Corp of Engineers's bias toward barge traffic and the fishing pressure from exponential increases in hook and line fishermen due to a very greedy tourism industry. Tournament fishing has also further damaged the fish stocks as most tournament fishermen put fish into a live well and then keep culling out the small ones as they catch larger ones - with the result that the smaller fish released still die. It was common to see the bottom of productive points littered with dead walleye after a major tournament.

The end result has been a fish population with few if any large year class fish, and a huge number of smaller juvenile fish that gain weight very slowly and live on the edge of starvation due to limited food fish for them. The GFP response has been envelope limits where you can keep fish only within a specific size range - that makes spearfishing very complicated.

The trash fish spearing contests also do not help the diver image. Some divers may view it as a public service by removing carp, etc. but many fishermen just see divers quickly getting hundreds of fish - further proving that spearing game fish is unfair. And frankly I used to enjoy swimming with 30-40 lb buffalo carp and I think their loss has been a loss to diving in general.

So in effect, spearing in SD has remained legal but has become a sport very few divers engage in, making it even more prone to being targeted for extinction by a much larger and more powerful rod and reel lobby.

Here's another silly one. They are trying to clear out all the lake trout in one local lake (Pend Oreille, which is a huge lake that's 1200' deep), so there is a bounty on the fish. Yes, they actually pay you to catch them so they can eradicate them from the lake. The have even placed big gill nets across some bays (I know, because I scootered into one :shocked2. But it's still illegal to spearfish for them.

That's just dumb.