News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
TWRA has changed the size and creel limits for fish located at White County’s Bridgestone and Firestone Wildlife Management Area.
Anglers are now allowed to catch and keep certain fish within certain specifications. Region Three Fisheries Manager Will Collier said the restrictions are being made in regard to the health of the fish and their habitat.
“The best analogy is thinning the herd, right? You have finite resources in a pond like that and anything will start to overpopulate to the population has to be kept in check,” Collier said. “And so by a change in regulation it just allows for the process to take place.”
Other changes include the removal of a youth-only designation at the Bridgestone Firestone ponds. Collier said that the change has been welcomed by residents as opposed to the much stricter catch-and-release rules previously in place.
“The changes at Bridgestone are the same changes we’re putting in Lake Kefafer and Madison, Tennessee which is a city-owned lake,” Collier said. “We’re also making the same regulation changes in Indian Boundry Lake.”
Collier said law enforcement officers will be enforcing the new rules as before, checking the ponds for overfishing.
Collier said that fisheries workers and wildlife service have been coordinating for about a year before making the rules change.
“We went in last fall and electro-fished the ponds of there and collected data,” Collier said. “We’re able to really get an idea of what the population characteristics were and fine turn a regulation that really fit them.”
Collier said that once his team proposed the change to the fisheries division, it moved up to the commission. Collier said that the new rules just received approval and will go into effect as of March 2024.
