Yea in CA our fisheries are run like crap. Thank your local DNR officer that they are running things right in the midwest. An example is that they are closing a lot of good shoreline along the coast to protect the fish (which they only block fishing and not other stuff like oil drilling or sewage pipes) but at the same time they are now increasing the bag limits on many ocean rockfish and reducing the size limit. Makes no sense at all (and the places they are closing are places closest to town instead of the hundreds of miles where no one lives and fishes). This means people can keep more fish from the few places that are open.
Another thing is that our state is in financial death, we barely have any wardens to catch poachers. They don't come when you call that someone is harvesting lobsters out of season etc etc. I remember my dad used to say that they would catch bonito off our piers (a type of small tuna), and now we're lucky if they come once in 5 years. The limit is 5 under 22 inches and 5 over 22 inches, and people would catch 10 inchers all day by the trash-bag load.
As for the trout, there is a private group suing the state department of fish and game because they say the stocked trout are breeding with the native trout and basically making them dumber and weaker. All stocked trout now have to be unable to reproduce by electro shocking when they are still in the egg. This one is hard to tell which side to join, because stockers are fun to catch, but natives are 100x better to fish, fight, and eat.
Oh and lastly, the whitebass lake has an overpopulation of whitebass. Like fish4keep said, you have the option of releasing the fish, or killing it right away to take home. You are not allowed to transport live whitebass. Hmong people don't fish the lake that much because it's way the hell in the middle of nowhere. It's 3 hours from me (and I'm 1.5 hours from LA) and at least 2.5 hours away from Fresno. They've got stripers in Millerton lake, and that's 30 minutes away from Fresno. Also, the lake is high in mercury from both natural and human sources (army base nearby). I hear that during the spawn up in the narrows of the lake, you can almost walk across the river on all the whitebass.
Edit: And it's true about the pike/musky thing. There was a lake up north that pike were found in and after trying different ways, the fish and game with the community decided it was best to poison the whole lake and restart stocking again. The pike are too aggressive, and add to that the warm waters and fast growing times down here equals trouble for the other species. Their biggest problem now is dealing with carp. My local lake has opened up bow-fishing for carp, anyone have recommendation s on a bow? If I can use it to hunt deer/turkey it would be double good!