[jad2t]

I agree that's a little excessive. I'm usually the one pissing people off with talking about keeping fish so this may surprise some people but there is no need to keep that many trophy cats.

Personally, I've eaten large bass and you can believe the first time I catch a 24+" brown trout from the Caney, it's going home with me. If I needed a bass and I caught a 7 pounder, yea it's going in the cooler. However, if I caught a bunch of 5-10 lb bass one day (man that would be fun!), I'd keep one and let the rest go. I'm not near as conservationist as the majority of the people on this forum because I view fishing not only as a great hobby and sport but also as an age old tactic for humans to gather food, but I wouldn't have kept that many trophy fish.

What's done is done but master_cat brought up a good point. A fish that big, especially catfish, is going to be full of contaminants. That same reason is why I know guys who are fantastic striper fishermen and catch 20-30 pounders on the regular but won't eat them. They'll eat the 5 pounders instead. Fish that big, especially fish higher on the food chain like stripers and catfish, get most of the contaminants.