This article was reprinted from a recent issue of Wisconsin Outdoor News and contributed by Max Wolter, Hayward.
Anglers often have an interest in regulations. Some anglers think about regulations in terms of how it might affect their harvest, but many look at regulations from the standpoint of what they allow others to do. The motivation to support lower limits is often a belief that other anglers are keeping too many fish.
We hear such comments often. Some human nature is at play, but applying some statistics helps to understand the situation better. How likely is it for anglers to reach a full bag limit? We have a few ways to look at this.
DNR recently evaluated a suite of lakes that received experimental reduced bag limits for pan fish. We asked anglers how many fish they kept on these lakes. Harvesting a full bag limit of panfish was very rare. No more than 2% of anglers hit their limit, even in cases with the most restrictive big limits.
We can also look at DNR creel data to answer this question with Sissabagama Lake, one of our areas most popular crappie fisheries. Creel surveys saw just 18% of all panfish anglers kept a full limit of 10 panfish. That means a huge majority of (82%) did not get a limit and 33% kept no crappies.
The odds of harvesting full limits are not much higher for other species. On the Chippewa flowage, just 14% of anglers keeping pike hit a limit, even when the limit was five, and with harvest promoted heavily and incentivized. That does not count for unsuccessful pike, anglers, meaning the true percent harvesting a full bag is even lower.
Walleye anglers in the ceded territory reach a three-fish limit about 3% of the time. We see even lower numbers for bass where often 90% or more of anglers have no interest in keeping even one bass.
This data should be a reset for how we think about the success of fellow anglers and their harvest. It also provides insights for fish biologists, and how we think about regulations. Often, reducing bag limits only changes the harvest patterns of a select minority of the most skilled or dedicated anglers, as the majority of anglers already harvest very few fish.