Chain Pickerel Possession Limit

[Jimbo]

Chain Pickerel have a daily bag limit of 10 but I can't find the possession limit for them. Where I'm from you could have two times the bag limit in your possession as a general rule. Is that the same in MD?

Typically I don't need so many in the freezer but I'm going to have several family members visiting over the holidays who love CP as much as I do. And I don't know if it's just me or not but the CP seem to be even better here than back home. I suppose the Severn's brackish water has to do with it. Back home it's just fresh water.




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[kevinfry]

Chain Pickerel have a daily bag limit of 10 but I can't find the possession limit for them. Where I'm from you could have two times the bag limit in your possession as a general rule. Is that the same in MD?

Typically I don't need so many in the freezer but I'm going to have several family members visiting over the holidays who love CP as much as I do. And I don't know if it's just me or not but the CP seem to be even better here than back home. I suppose the Severn's brackish water has to do with it. Back home it's just fresh water.




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This site is generally negative on keeping CP.....I doubt there is a man on here that has ever even bothered to look at CP bag limits. I food fish for just about everything but CP myself...LM bass I rarely keep but will on occasion....but have never kept a pickerel.

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[Jimbo]

This site is generally negative on keeping CP.....I doubt there is a man on here that has ever even bothered to look at CP bag limits. I food fish for just about everything but CP myself...LM bass I rarely keep but will on occasion....but have never kept a pickerel.

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Why is that? Population? I've been hammering them on the Severn. I assumed the stocks were high. Where I'm from they're considered a nuisance fish.


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[kevinfry]

jon veil has several posts on here about the precarious pickerel population in the Severn.....just do an archive search for pickerel

[Memory Maker]

First, keep what you want to use that is legal. While many don’t, it is up to you to know what you need. There is nothing wrong with a great holiday feast for friends and family. I’m sure the DNR set the necessary limits to preserve the fishery. As far as limits, it’s 5 for freshwater and 10 for tidal. I can’t seem to find any limits listed for pickerel. I would suggest calling DNR to get them to show you the reg stating the possession limits.

[Jimbo]

jon veil has several posts on here about the precarious pickerel population in the Severn.....just do an archive search for pickerel

Wow, there are a lot of posts about Pickerel. In particular, tournaments for them, lol. Honestly, I couldn't find anything other than anecdotal info about populations. I suspect the daily bag limit is a more reliable indicator.






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[Jimbo]

First, keep what you want to use that is legal. While many don’t, it is up to you to know what you need.

Completely agree.

I respect a persons position who doesn't like to keep fish. I don't keep fresh water trout because of an affinity for them so I get it.






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[dirtyjake237]

Chain Pickerel have a daily bag limit of 10 but I can't find the possession limit for them. Where I'm from you could have two times the bag limit in your possession as a general rule. Is that the same in MD?

Typically I don't need so many in the freezer but I'm going to have several family members visiting over the holidays who love CP as much as I do. And I don't know if it's just me or not but the CP seem to be even better here than back home. I suppose the Severn's brackish water has to do with it. Back home it's just fresh water.




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It is a little confusing but I'll do my best to explain. The same rule applies here, total possession limit is 2 times the daily creel limit... But there is a catch. In non tidal water the daily creel limit is 5 and the total possession limit is 10. In tidal water the daily creel limit is 10. So total possession is 10 and one good day on the Severn fills your total possession limit. I'm glad you asked and wanted to also give you this link to the COMARS it is the state reg.
http://www.dsd.state.md.us/comar/com...8.02.11.04.htm
So there are options, you can store some of those pickerel in my freezer if you want?!?

[Jimbo]

It is a little confusing but I'll do my best to explain. The same rule applies here, total possession limit is 2 times the daily creel limit... But there is a catch. In non tidal water the daily creel limit is 5 and the total possession limit is 10. In tidal water the daily creel limit is 10. So total possession is 10 and one good day on the Severn fills your total possession limit. I'm glad you asked and wanted to also give you this link to the COMARS it is the state reg.
http://www.dsd.state.md.us/comar/com...8.02.11.04.htm
So there are options, you can store some of those pickerel in my freezer if you want?!?

That’s exactly what I was looking for. Thanks Jake!
Appreciate the offer to use your freezer. You’ll need to fillet them though. ;-)


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[J.A. Veil]

Wow, there are a lot of posts about Pickerel. In particular, tournaments for them, lol. Honestly, I couldn't find anything other than anecdotal info about populations. I suspect the daily bag limit is a more reliable indicator.






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The DNR's daily bag limit for pickerel goes back a long time. I am not sure why the limits were set that high. About a decade ago several of us avid tidewater pickerel anglers met with DNR fisheries to see about tightening up that limit to protect the somewhat stressed pickerel populations in the Severn. After some consideration the DNR elected to let that limit alone. From a fisheries population perspective, the bag limit has no relevance on actual pickerel populations.

Until early November of last year, pickerel could be found fairly easily in many Severn tributaries during the cold winter months. I personally practice 100% catch and release on pickerel. Most of the guys with whom I fish feel the same way. When there are no other local fishing options during the coldest months, I hate to see any pickerel removed from the limited populations either by taking them home to eat or by poor handling before release.

You are correct that there have been several pickerel tournaments over the past decade. I often participated in the one sponsored by the Severn River Rod and Keg Club and generally did well in the tournament. I no longer fish in any tournaments -- my personal choice.

That is the old story. The new pickerel story is that something happened to the Severn pickerel populations starting about a year ago. I joked at the time that pickerel liked Hollywood movie stars. When Trump won the election, some of them announced they were moving to Canada. The pickerel took off immediately to swim to Canada.

All joking aside, the reduction in pickerel catch from Nov 2016 through the present is very obvious to me. See my recent post that shows my pickerel catch statistics for the past few years. http://www.snaggedline.com/showthrea...ng-suggestions I fished the same locations using the same tactics last winter and again this fall. Last Thurs, I fished in four different Severn creeks that historically held lots of pickerel. In over three hours of casting live minnows, I had only one bite. I did not catch any pickerel during the spring and summer while perch fishing in the same areas -- that is not the normal pattern either.

Something has caused numbers to drop. Some possible factors are: a) disease, b) salinity or other environmental condition is too high, c) a toxic pollutant, d) poor catch and release handling techniques, or e) excessive catch and keep in areas that have limited populations. While I support each angler's right to keep a legal limit of fish, I strongly question the practice of keeping a lot of fish from individual modest populations that are already somewhat stressed by other factors.

If you want pickerel to eat, I hope you will consider fishing in some freshwater lakes that are loaded with pickerel. I encourage you to release any tidewater pickerel you catch.

[Jimbo]

Thanks for the feedback John. For clarification, when you say the modest populations are “somewhat stressed”, is that based on any formal study, or your lack of success. No disrespect intended, I just want to make sure I correctly understand what you said.


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[Mark]

I really appreciate John's insightful and measured response.

The MD DNR is not aware of a tidal pickerel decline. I know because I recently asked them. I suspect pickerel are not a fish of high interest within the DNR. They certainly do not merit the attention of state officials that striped bass, black bass and snakeheads do. Those species get a whole lot more DNR attention and justifiably so because their potential economic impact on the state is far greater than that of the pickerel. (Those of you on this forum who attended today's excellent CCA event at Bass Pro certainly got that message today.)

I do not profess to be an expert angler. But I am pretty good at catching fish with lures and flies. I have not caught a tidal pickerel since November, 2016. Yet I catch them routinely when I visit Eastern Shore ponds in both MD and DE. I know how to catch them. And I caught them often in the Severn's tributaries prior to last fall.

I am not the only one who has noticed their decline in tidal waters. Others have stated they are scarce in the Magothy and the South Rivers. They have stated so here and on other forums. That is why I queried the DNR. Unfortunately, the DNR had no explanation to me other than to say pickerel populations fluctuate with the predominance of SAV. Nor did the DNR acknowledge a scarcity to my query. Frankly, I think tidal pickerel are not a significant blip on their radar screen with so many other economically important fish in MD for them to track.

As someone mentioned on this thread, I am an angler completely uninformed on pickerel catch limits. I've caught many and never kept one. I was surprised to read here that they have a limit of 10 in tidal waters. From what I understand, pickerel are not migratory fish. I believe they live their entire lives in or close to the creeks and tidal ponds into which they were spawned. Given their likelihood to stay in or near home waters, a limit of 10 daily would seem to be excessive, especially if they were heavily pursued. A few highly motivated anglers could seriously decimate a population in a particular tidal creek. But what do I know about fisheries management other than as I said above I have not caught a tidal pickerel in 12 months? Limits are for the experts to decide.

So I join John in saying that since the fall of 2016 there are absolutely fewer tidal pickerel to catch in the Severn waters we have access to. As fairly proficient anglers, our combined lack of success in catching them is an indicator that something is very different from prior years. My hope is that the present decline is just a cyclical aberration and they will bounce back in the years to come.

I thoroughly enjoy catching them. They are my primary local target in cool weather when most other fish depart the Severn. They've given me many hours of enjoyment in the late fall, winter and early spring and they pose an excellent challenge on light tackle. I like to put them back so that I and others can meet up with them time and time again. They may get tired of seeing me. But I never get tired of seeing them! And I've missed them a lot in the past 12 months.

[Memory Maker]

It is a little confusing but I'll do my best to explain. The same rule applies here, total possession limit is 2 times the daily creel limit... But there is a catch. In non tidal water the daily creel limit is 5 and the total possession limit is 10. In tidal water the daily creel limit is 10. So total possession is 10 and one good day on the Severn fills your total possession limit. I'm glad you asked and wanted to also give you this link to the COMARS it is the state reg.
http://www.dsd.state.md.us/comar/com...8.02.11.04.htm
So there are options, you can store some of those pickerel in my freezer if you want?!?

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It appears there are conflicting regs ........ the one I saw said there was a closed season and yours says there is no closed season

[J.A. Veil]

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It appears there are conflicting regs ........ the one I saw said there was a closed season and yours says there is no closed season

Rick - There is a closed season for keeping pickerel from March 15 to some time in April. That was established to allow them to reproduce. That closed season definitely applies to tidal pickerel. I don't know if it also applies to freshwater pickerel.

[J.A. Veil]

Thanks for the feedback John. For clarification, when you say the modest populations are “somewhat stressed”, is that based on any formal study, or your lack of success. No disrespect intended, I just want to make sure I correctly understand what you said.


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Although I am not trained as a fisheries biologist, I have worked with environmental issues, primarily water-related, for my entire career (over 37 years now). Some of that work got into ecology and fisheries populations and management. Pickerel are naturally freshwater fish. Their physiology evolved for freshwater environments. Pickerel seem to have the ability to move into brackish waters, like the Severn, Magothy, and South rivers. But they are not optimally suited for that environment. When a species or a local population lives in conditions that are somewhat marginal (in this case primarily fluctuating salinity), they are more susceptible to different sorts of perturbations, like a spill of oil or chemical, a prolonged hot spell that lowers dissolved oxygen, or stormwater runoff. Also human interventions such as excessive catch and keep, or catch and release in a careless manner, can also weaken or kill individual fish.

As Mark noted above, I believe that Severn pickerel remain more or less in place throughout the year and are not migratory. They are caught less often in the summer for various reasons. I don't know which of these is more important, but I suspect they both play some role: 1) during warm weather, thousands of perch are in the same shallow shoreline habitats. They often grab my lure before a pickerel gets there. As the perch move away from the shallows in mid October, pickerel catches go up immediately. 2) There is so much natural food available for the pickerel during the warmer months that they don't need to work as hard to find food and are less likely to hit a lure.

I have been fishing from my kayaks for pickerel in certain Severn creeks for about a decade. Given the poor public access on the Severn, I am limited to fishing in tributaries from half a mile upstream from Rt 50 to half a mile downstream from Rt 450. In the roughly ten tributaries within that range, I have caught pickerel in all of them, but have observed cyclical catch success. The creek where I first started winter pickerel fishing from the shoreline was good for the first two years then dropped to almost no catches for the next several years. Three years ago I did well there, then it dropped again for the next two years. During the same time that fishing went up and down in that creek, pickerel fishing in other creeks also fluctuated, but not on the same cycle as the first creek. I have never experienced a winter that had poor to nonexistent catches in up to ten of my tributaries at the same time. That is the evidence that leads me to believe the pickerel decline is a wider phenomenon than just the natural cyclical behavior.