re: Louisiana's Specks Five Years Later--a fishing guides take on impact of BP spill

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including their inability to catch speckled trout

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I'm gonna hurt some feelings, but this is a major source of all this "lower limits" stuff. Contrary to the belief of many, trophy trout are somewhat difficult to catch, and extremely targetable. Just because (insert fisherman here) isn't going out and catching a limit doesn't mean the fishery is in trouble. Social media plays a HUGE role as well.

I don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other re: changing the limit, but the trout fishery in this state is healthy. Everyone I know in the scientific world agrees with that, and when I suggest otherwise, they quickly provide facts to shut me down. I've spent a lot of time reading and researching things those folks have told me, and it all seems to add up just fine.

It's pretty easy to see that not that many people have the know-how, desire, and/or luck to catch trophy trout. Take it from somebody that has devoted an absolutely unhealthy amount of time to studying patterns of big trout: the pattern is somewhat cyclical. There are periods of down years followed by periods of up years. Obviously things aren't as bountiful as they were prior to gill netting and the like (some older folks I know around Lake P talk of flipping 7lbers in the boat back in the day like it was nothing), but I've been fortunate enough to see some truly huge trout in my lifetime, and I'm pretty confident I'll see more.

eta: I also just saw someone suggested putting a limit on white trout. That's it. I'm out.