keep the big walleye throw back the small ones

Hey folks, Earlier this spring I was scolded for keeping a big walleye. The guy told me that was a prime spawning fish and didn't eat good anyway so I should have thrown it back. I was irritated and didn't really believe him about not eating good so I cooked the 30" female alongside his 18" inch female and deep fried them. I wanted the pieces to look identical so I filleted the larger one twice and cut the pieces into identical sizes. I invited the guy over for supper and neither one of use could tell one fish from the other. I don't catch large fish often, so I haven't been able to do a taste test again, but as far as I can tell they taste the same. As far as spawning goes, my research showed that the larger fish could have spawned 300000 eggs that next season which is a lot. However, I read that larger fish often skip spawning years, not to mention the fact that that fish was pretty maxed out on its lifespan. If it was lucky it might have lived 5 more years, however due to a long fight on light tackle, a lot of handling it could have died 5 minutes later. I have heard other guys say if you catch a trophy throw it back and get a replica mount made, but around here replica mounts are hundreds of dollars more than conventional. It seems like if you were that concerned about the fishery and had to have a fish mount you would be better off keeping the fish getting a conventional mount and donating the money you would save to your local fishing club for fish stocking. Last time I checked the DNR records that $200 you saved could have purchased around 200 fingerling walleye.
Now getting back to the 18" female he caught. The guy praised himself for keeping this one. However that fish had just become mature, not to mention the fact that it had now grown to a size where nothing in our lake was really going to eat it. If not kept by an angler that fish more than likely would have lived and spawned up to 20 times. It could have spawned up to 4 million eggs. I think that smaller fish was much more valuable to the fishery than the larger. I have heard other guys say keep the small males and let the females go, but that theory has problems to. You can have all the females in the world spawning, but without males the eggs wont hatch. The more males you have, preferably one on each side of the female, the more eggs will be fertilized. A very large percentage of eggs that are layed are never fertilized.
As a general rule large females are not very efficient spawners either.(I will explain). Generally, they spawn early in the season in the most ideal spawning areas on the lake. Unfortunately the water is usually to cold for proper egg development so eggs either die or are slow to mature. Then, a week or so later all the younger fish will pour into the spawning grounds when the temp is perfect. These fish also head for the most ideal spots, but they are forced to spread out due to there large numbers. These ideal locations already have eggs developing in the gravel below, but that doesn't stop the smaller fish from disturbing the site and laying there eggs right on top. If the eggs are damaged or do not have enough oxygen they will die. The other smaller fish will spawn in areas that may not be ideal but their eggs will have a better chance of reaching fry stage because they will be left alone. These ideal spots will hatch the most fry, but the egg to fry ratio will be low because of all the spawning activity on one spot. Now if the lake has an abundance of great spawning habitat then there may not be as much overlap, however these type of lakes are going to have amazing hatching success regardless.
Now I agree that on most lakes the best way to keep your fishery strong is catch and release, but if you have to take fish home wouldn't taking one 10 pound fish which will yield about 6 pounds of meat be better than 8, 1.5 pound fish that yield less than 1 pound of meat each. Those 8 fish would be spawning and fertilizing eggs for the next 20 years easy. That big one might die the next day. I have heard other guys say if you keep the big ones than you wont have any trophy size fish for others to catch. In part they have a point, however you will never get all the trophy fish because they are hard to catch. Also, if you lay off keeping the smaller fish you will have amazing year classes of fish coming up each year to replace the larger ones you take. I have heard other guys say to keep the 12-15" fish because they haven't reached sexual maturity. In my opinion that is silly because the next year they will be sexually mature, and will spawn the next 20 years there after. Those fish have basically hit the fish lottery by being hatched and escaping death around every corner for 3-4 years and when they are almost out of danger from predation, some angler kills them. It will take you about 15 of those little fish to equal that one 10 pounder. Not to mention your going to spend an extra hour cleaning all of them. Another point I feel that is worth mentioning is that large walleye love to eat large perch. Myself, being a perch fisherman as well, value keeper size perch and by keeping a larger walleye around your robbing your fishery of a lot of the larger perch in the lake. The smaller fish however, love eating small perch. In many lake systems perch are very prolific and unless you have something that eats the small ones then they will become stunted. If you like catching Jumbo perch then you better leave the small walleye alone. Sometimes you need to keep the small walleye to prevent stunting as well. There definitely is a fine line there that needs to be balanced. On our lake systems stunting has never been an issue. We have to much angling pressure and to little spawning habitat and stocking for our walleye to reach large numbers.
All the advice I hear from the guys on tv is totally opposite to what I have written. It seems to me that they are more concerned about catching a trophy for there tournament or tv show in the near future than the overall long term health of the fishery. Thanks for reading and let me know what you think.