Hey Fishin'-Rookie, aint you getting married or something ??? ??
Jenn, keep what you are going to eat, be reasonable with yourself and with what you take. Granted, its probably a personal bias but I feel that a bass that I caught fresh an hour or two before is one of the best tasting delicacies that one can put on a grill or beer batter for the oven (
coming late winter - recipe section 
). If you as an angler keep some of the fish you catch for eating, there is nothing wrong with that, provided that you have kept a fish that adheres to the current "regulations" imposed by the all knowing FM people...
I respect people that are 100% C&R but more because they choose to do so, not because it should be the only choice. I kept two fish all season and I'm sure they had spawned more than once but I released a bunch of keeper fish as I did not feel the need to put evey single last fish on the table. Thats just me.
Here is something that will tweak alot of people,
IF and that is a
BIG IF the fishery could be managed properly year after year, I'm not even against commercial fishing for bass as long as it is managed in a responsible manner. It makes me pretty sick that a commercial fisherman in Mass can keep
40 fisher per day, that's obscene. A commercial fisherman in Rhody can keep two to three fish by rod and reel during one month in the spring and one in late summer. Certainly a little more reasonable than 40 per day in Mass. Gee, maybe if you take out the available LARGE revenues of commercial striped bass fishing it would be easier to manage. (What am I thinking??) Maybe some day there will be some sort of commercial fishing which has a greatly reduced pressure on the fish. But maybe there really is a tooth fairy too. My dilema is that these fish are not being managed properly but I would not be against commercial fishing if they were properly managed. I hope that all made some sense...
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