Oster also notes that as a bonus, the 15-inch limit provides more potential for a higher quality bass fishery. A larger percentage of bigger fish appeals to many anglers, especially since most bass anglers no longer keep bass for the table. Some anglers just like to catch big fish, and the 15-inch limit improves their odds.

A question that might occur to lots of anglers is that since most of us are returning our bass regardless of size, is there any longer a need to have a size limit? Maybe we can even drop the creel limit?

Good, logical questions, and ones to which Oster and other fishery managers have given some thought.

“In some lakes in the south -- Georgia, for example -- the minimum-size limits have been reduced on bass,” said Oster, “because almost everything anglers catch is going back in the water.

“What’s happened to those lakes is that in some cases, the forage and habitat available for bass is being overwhelmed by their numbers, because hardly any are being harvested.

“When you get too many bass in the population for the food supply, their quality and growth rates start to decline, and the ability to produce larger, healthier bass slips away,” Oster continued.

“Managers on these kind of waterways then reduce the minimum-size limit, trying to encourage anglers to keep more fish so that the system doesn’t become overloaded.”

Kentucky hasn’t yet reached the point where the lack of bass harvest on most lakes is creating an imbalance in the predator-to-prey ratio.

“I think there’s a lot of misconception among bass fishermen about how a slot limit works,” said Oster. “We routinely get questions from tournament anglers about why we don’t use slot limits on more waters than we do.

The catch-and-release concept has certainly contributed to better bass fishing in some ways, but at times, fisheries management relies on the fact that a bass harvest will take place.

“Paintsville Lake in northeastern Kentucky is a good example,” he said. “We have a 12- to 15-inch slot on largemouths and smallmouths, where you can keep bass under 12 and over 15 inches long. Everything in the slot has to be released.

“We see some of the best catch rates from tournaments at Paintsville that we see anywhere in the state. But the problem is too many of these bass are 10 to 11 inches. They’re not getting into that quality 12- to 15-inch range we’d prefer.

“A slot limit is designed to remove a portion of the smaller fish, so that the rest can grow faster and become bigger fish to catch,” said Oster.

“But if bass anglers are releasing everything they catch, including the small ones they can legally keep, we’re not achieving enough reduction in the small fish to make the management work.”

In a situation like that, catch-and-release tends to hamper, rather than help, the plan to improve the quality of the bass population. The catch-and-release concept has certainly contributed to better bass fishing in some ways, but at times, fisheries management relies on the fact that a bass harvest will take place.

“We manage for both the anglers not interested in keeping bass to eat, as well as those who do,” says the biologist. “There’s nothing wrong with keeping a bass when you can. We try to give as much opportunity for that as possible, as well as manage for higher-quality fishing where waters have that potential.”