The season for big fish has arrived. Whether it’s huge prespawn crappies on a Minnesota backwater, or those walleyes and pike making their migratory runs up a river in North Dakota or the channels of Devils Lake, spring presents the best chance to catch the fish of a lifetime. It also provides ample opportunity to get in on fast action as warm afternoons and increasing water temperatures trigger feeding instincts in all fish gorging to prepare for their reproductive rituals. With those incredible opportunities comes the chance to practice the effort which, on top of management by wildlife agencies, helps sustain and pass on great angling to others: selective harvest.

This idea of keeping only what’s needed, setting a lower personal limit, what falls into a certain personal slot, or perhaps that one trophy fish, instead of the five, six or ten that might be caught in a banner day or solid stretch of spring angling, is often individually based. Your walleye slot might be fish falling between 14 and 17 inches, as they’re more frequent, better to eat, and generally hold less eggs in spring than their larger contemporaries. For crappies, it could be that those fish under 10 inches hit the basket to take home, while everything bigger goes back to spawn. You may only keep a trout or a bass throughout the season that you hooked too deeply and turn loose all others to sustain the fishery and continue those opportunities for others. Additionally, that one big fish you’ve always been looking for — such as a walleye over 30 inches, a pike over 40, or that largemouth topping 22 — might be the one you keep for a lifetime as those seasons and opportunities open and any other monsters are released and a replica created, if desired.

Whatever the bounds you set for your personal limit on selective harvest, so long as it’s within the regulations of time, technique and numbers written down in this year’s angling rules, is a good start to the process and helps others enjoy the opportunity. In addition to things like length and number, selective harvest can be influenced by other factors as well each spring and into summer. Consider too the water being fished. Is it a reservoir that is part of a huge flow, like the Missouri River, or is it a small impoundment? The taking of a limit of fish (along with others doing so) from the latter in spring can influence fishing throughout the rest of the season, and possibly well into the future, whereas with the former, it’s likely the resource can support more harvest, or perhaps bumping that personal slot up a bit. Additionally, as the openwater season warms, it would be wise to harvest those fish, such as walleyes, caught from deeper, cooler water, as generally fish brought up from 25 feet or deeper will not survive, and delayed mortality after release is almost a guarantee due to barotrauma suffered as the fish is landed. Consider moving shallower after a limit of those fish or angling in those places that don’t have as deep of water in the warmer days of summer as part of your selective harvest plan. Also, if the water allows, try targeting something else after a limit of one species has been caught. Certainly, any fish that’s injured by any means, such as gill hooking or a gullet-hooked fish in addition to the unseen but expected injury from pressure changes, may warrant keeping it where regulations allow during the season.

Selective harvest isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, in fact it’s not a rule at all. It does, however, become a strong personal guideline for many anglers above and beyond the legal minimums required, and has influenced cadres of fishermen such as bass anglers, muskie anglers and trout anglers, in their efforts for pure catch-and-release fishing with an eye toward the future. When other factors are considered — water size, fish population, injury, or even time of year — the mantra becomes more of a sliding scale. Whether your baseline for keeping fish is what the regulations say, or something a little more restrictive, spring is the season to consider selective harvest across a variety of species and think about how each individual water, its population of fish, and various other factors connect with this well-established, yet sometimes hard to define process … in our outdoors.