# Pay Lake article in new In-Fisherman



## 21579 (Jan 15, 2010)

There is a 4 page article in the new In-Fisherman regarding the pay lakes in SW Ohio and the use of commercially caught Ohio River catfish to stock said lakes. The article did a good job being non-biased, showing both sides of the argument. The article focused on 2 pay lake owners in SW Ohio and the fact Ohio doesn't allow sport fish caught in Ohio to be sold and Kentucky does. I thought it was a good read. An interesting number I found is a 2011 survey of licensed Ohio fisherman found less than 1% visited a pay lake. I'm not sure with copyright and TOS how much info I/we can post from the article, but I think if you have a stake, or opinion on the subject I highly suggest the article.


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## C J Hughes (Jan 24, 2006)

I think we have been going about this all wrong ( getting rid of the paylakes ). We need to call the ATF I think since it is all about gambling at the paylakes biggest fish for the hour the day the week . 
I watched 4 guys in a 24 FT $40,000 seaark check their hoop nets last week. When they left to go back upstream on the river I swear there wasn't 2 inches of the boat out of the water anywhere . They had a 225 on the back that was having a hard time pushing the load . Big MONEY in it BIG MONEY !


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## catfish_hunter (May 31, 2005)

That just burns my ass...



C J Hughes said:


> I think we have been going about this all wrong ( getting rid of the paylakes ). We need to call the ATF I think since it is all about gambling at the paylakes biggest fish for the hour the day the week .
> I watched 4 guys in a 24 FT $40,000 seaark check their hoop nets last week. When they left to go back upstream on the river I swear there wasn't 2 inches of the boat out of the water anywhere . They had a 225 on the back that was having a hard time pushing the load . Big MONEY in it BIG MONEY !


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## Salmonid (Apr 14, 2004)

Most Paylake guys are just that and never buy a fishing license, and to some degree, were better off keeping them on private waters because im pretty sure a large number of them hammering , keeping and littering our already overfished waterways for flatheads would not be a good thing...

Salmonid


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## cali2ohio (Nov 27, 2010)

your hard core paylakers have fishing licenses..... you got to have a license to fish in the creeks and ponds to catch bait... the ones who buy the bait at the paylake,,,most likely do not have a license.


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## Catfish_Rob (Dec 4, 2012)

Same old story; nothing will get done with these bureaucratic charlatans in office. I am all for vigilanteism to take care of this problem. Unfortunately I am joking; we have to do it the right way by bring awareness and going to the meetings. That is all we can do.


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## Salmonid (Apr 14, 2004)

Cali, Im sure those are the same guys who castnet and keep all the gamefish they catch ( bass and gills as well as bullheads) that I see over at Acton lake since its 10 minutes from CP2

Salmonid


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## acklac7 (May 31, 2004)

Catfish_Rob said:


> Same old story; nothing will get done with these bureaucratic charlatans in office.


Said it once, said it 10x, Ohio needs a constitutional amendment that states the head of the DNR is to be chosen via Elected Office rather then appointed. Until then the DNR will just continue to be neglected and mis-managed (out side of Lake Erie of course ) To be completely honest I think the lack of inland enforcement of laws/regulations is an embarrassment to our great State.


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## cali2ohio (Nov 27, 2010)

very, very true salomid!! good call on that one.. i watched one keep a slew of gill and bass from a pond i use to fish at.. i even mentioned it was illegal to catch and keep game fish with a cast net....... answer i got was its only illegal if you get caught!!!!


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## bsmith (Mar 26, 2010)

I grabbed a copy of this month's in-fisherman a couple days ago to read this article (thanks for posting yrick82). A couple things stood out. Primarily I noticed that the content largely centered around just a few interviews. It was good to see that Dale Broughton had a voice in the matter. He really echoed all of the sentiments that we often discuss here. However, the KY DNR guy (forget his name) made a blanket statement in an attempt to invalidate Dale's whole argument. If I remember correctly, it was something about an emotional response from the internet community. Then he followed it up with a statement about the study that the KY biologists are conducting to determine if there's a catfish population problem or not.

In an attempt to make it seem less like we're a bunch of whiners with no data, I would have liked to have seen someone quote some of the poundage figures from the tournaments. Those are the most striking arguments that I've seen. To be clear I saw a post once (maybe on a different site) where one of the local tournament organizers had shared the tourney catch weights over the last few years. The drop in the poundage of fish caught in recent tournaments was appalling.

While it's not perfect data, it's better than how we were presented in the article. It shows that we aren't having a wholly emotional response to this issue. That sort of thing really gives some us some credibility.

I don't normally read in-fisherman. Do they have a reader's comments page where the publish things that their readers submit? If so it would be really great if someone with the data could put together something and send it in. That way if they published it, we would at least be able to argue that we aren't just being subjective here.


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## Fisherman 3234 (Sep 8, 2008)

It is no secret that some of the KYDNR by the river are either in the pocket of some of these operations or actually participating in commercial fishing themselves. I will be very curious to see what the results of this "study" yield and about how long the "study" will take. Instead of just having Kentucky Biologists (DNR) doing these "studies", I believe it should be collaboration with the ODNR, IDNR, and WVDNR. Dale and the rest of us are telling the truth when they say there is a problem with Ohio river's big cats disappearing.


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## AkronCATS (Nov 5, 2008)

This radio show had a guy from the KY DNR on to talk about it. here's a link to listen http://mhf.myhuntingandfishing.com/_Kentucky-Afield-Radio-10612/audio/951141/10577.html


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## FishFrenzy89 (May 18, 2009)

RELEASE THOSE FISH BACK INTO THE WILD!!! lol


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## pppatrick (Apr 21, 2012)

its up on their website now..

http://www.in-fisherman.com/2012/12/12/catfishing-in-pay-lakes/

not sure if its the same article, as i've not read the one in the rag.


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