good to hear the rig is keeping your losses down man
as for keeping fish, most do not at present have minimum retention sizes, only really bass and trout. a lot of it will be down to common sense and showing a bit of respect for the seas and areas your fishing in. far too many small juvenile fish are being taken with impunity, but a widely regarded across the boards size among anglers would usually be around the 30cm size for flats and a bit bigger for round fish depending on the species.
just do a bit of homework on the species that you intend to take and always remember to keep things sensible.
certin species that visit our shores like wrasse are very slow growing and find a territory at the start of the summer and stay there for the duration of the year. a ballan wrasse that weighs 2lb can be as old as 8 years and still not mature enough to breed yet. the taking of too many of these fish from a set area has left a lot of good wrasse marks destroyed this past few summers to a lot of peoples anger. i've seen the same thing happen to a few of our favourite conger marks. these guys find an area that holds a few eels then hammer them until they have killed them all
. showing little or no respect for species like this really gets under other angler's skin and sadly it's only gonna be a matter of time before anglers come to blows over these incidents. i've seen verbal arguments break out and a lot of threats getting thrown around in the past. if you do intend to take a few fish for the table or bait just remember to take only what you need and put the small fish back.
i've lost count over the years how many times i've heard people complain that there are no decent fish left for us to target from the shore. yet the same people are filling plastic bags with small 20cm fish
. obviously they are too thick or ignorant to realize that if they hammer an area filling bags with tiny fish that they are removing a whole generation which would have been a run of bigger fish a few years down the line.
i hope this helps man and happy hunting
just remember to limit you kill, instead of killing your limit. you'll find that a lot of other anglers will be a lot more helpfull when they know you respect the seas we fish in
Al.