Oster believes that it’s important to continue using size and creel limits to protect a segment of all bass fisheries, despite the fact that lots of bass are put back into the water.

“Bass, like any other species, die of a variety of natural causes, angler-related mortality, and sometimes disease and predation.

“Though a lot of fish get put back, it would be a little risky -- at least right now -- to depend completely on released fish to keep the numbers of bass mature enough to spawn at the level we need to carry the fishery year after year,” he said.

“I guess it’s like an insurance policy, particularly on waterways that aren’t as fertile in the first place. You always want to know there’s a base population in there that’s not in jeopardy and ready to reproduce when the conditions are favorable. Contrary to what some anglers think, bass don’t produce good spawns every year. And sometimes not in the next year or the year after that.

“But when they do,” Oster said, “we want enough present to re-supply the population and keep available forever the opportunity to fish bass in Kentucky.”

He says that on lakes such as Kentucky, Barkley, Barren and Cumberland, bass fishing has benefited from having size limits. Creel surveys indicate that anglers are catching good numbers of higher-quality fish pretty consistently from year to year.

“When we see good things happening, we tend not to make any kind of a major adjustment to the regulations,” said Oster.

“It’s often a balancing act, too,” he added, “like the case with Taylorsville Lake.” Taylorsville, the biologist says, is a reservoir where bass “live fast and die young.”

Largemouths have tremendous growth rates early on, which gives Taylorsville Lake good potential to grow some higher-quality bass.

After bass reach the 15-inch size limit and are not harvested, they grow a little more but tend to max out in the 18-inch range.

“When we check bass there, we rarely find fish more than 7 or 8 years old,” said Oster. “So we know their longevity isn’t as good as in Kincaid Lake, say, where higher numbers of bass 12 years and older are found.

“So for example, it wouldn’t make any sense to try to manage Taylorsville for a trophy bass fishery, with a high size limit,” he said. “Most of the bass aren’t going to live long enough to surpass a 20-inch mark anyway. So instead, we go for offering the balance of a fishery that produces a lot of bass that get to that intermediate range fast, and are considered quality size of 15 to 18 inches.”

Trophy bass management is employed at only one state-owned lake. Cedar Creek has a one-fish daily creel and a 20-inch minimum-size limit. Oster says that the trophy approach is working pretty well right now, and there are good numbers of fish at or above the size limit.

He is also quick to note, though, that one critical factor -- besides high food availability and low mortality of big fish -- is limited recruitment each year. That’s “biologist speak” for not having too many small bass in the system to compete with other bass for space and food.