These are not gigged bass

[Flysmallie]

28 minutes ago, MOPanfisher said:

The best advice I ever got was, son if you have to choose between a looker and a cooker, remember that you get to eat supper EVERY night, and they just get better at it with age.

I don't know about that. I've been cooking for myself for as long as I can remember. I'll take the hottie over Betty Crocker any day.

[MOPanfisher]

There is someone out there that fits each of our needs.  Snagged I know you was teasing, so was I hence the smile face.

[grizzly]

On February 11, 2016 at 3:02 PM, mjk86 said:

Always kinda thought that myself....C/R fishing is inhumane and disrespectful.  I mean....i dont care, i still do it when i dont feel like getting guts on my hands, but to deny that its cruel is silly.  Nobody actually cares about the bass in the river, they just care about CATCHING the bass in the river. When hunting...it is the hunters responsibility to ensure a clean and quick kill to minimize suffering.  Fish certainly do not get that luxury, they get tortured mercilessly. 

 

Sorry for jumping in so late and maybe this is a dead horse, but I cannot believe the amount of outcry regarding C&R and the ethical implications of such an act.   Everyone on this forum fishes and there are really two options once you land a fish: keep it or release it.  I personally prefer to catch and release.  Call me what you will (trophy hunter, number counter, unethical . . .) but I can sleep at night with my decisions.  You have your way, I have mine:  as for the right way, the correct way and the only way, it does not exist.  If this makes me immoral, then maybe I’m just having a better time fishing than you. 

As far as caring about the fish in the river, ask the people who purposefully avoid fishing a stream when the fish are spawning.  In my opinion, the will to defer a passion that one loves in order to allow for a better future of the river/stream is nothing short of reverence for the fish.  I will continue to "torture" fish in a merciless manner.  Here's a nice little quote to sum up your hypocritical stance on fishing: "He who fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself.   And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

[Terrierman]

9 hours ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

Man Rick.

That's cruel.

Ok I take it back.  Go fishing and stay fishing.

[Terrierman]

6 hours ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

Stick with the first two requirements, get your crap straight and get rid of the dog.

 

I saw a message the other day that this guy had the most awful news.  His wife was allergic to their dog so he was going to have to rehome her.  Her name was Janet and she was 42.

[Al Agnew]

6 hours ago, grizzly said:

 

Sorry for jumping in so late and maybe this is a dead horse, but I cannot believe the amount of outcry regarding C&R and the ethical implications of such an act.   Everyone on this forum fishes and there are really two options once you land a fish: keep it or release it.  I personally prefer to catch and release.  Call me what you will (trophy hunter, number counter, unethical . . .) but I can sleep at night with my decisions.  You have your way, I have mine:  as for the right way, the correct way and the only way, it does not exist.  If this makes me immoral, then maybe I’m just having a better time fishing than you. 

As far as caring about the fish in the river, ask the people who purposefully avoid fishing a stream when the fish are spawning.  In my opinion, the will to defer a passion that one loves in order to allow for a better future of the river/stream is nothing short of reverence for the fish.  I will continue to "torture" fish in a merciless manner.  Here's a nice little quote to sum up your hypocritical stance on fishing: "He who fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself.   And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

 

Well, it's pretty obvious that most of us are okay with catch and release angling, and probably most if not all of us do it at least part of the time.  Maybe (or maybe not) it's good to examine our outlook on this sport once in a while, though.  In-Fisherman went through a stage where they were discussing the ethics of catch and release angling, and one of their points was that angling started out as a way to put food on the table, and perhaps we should honor that by actually keeping and eating fish now and then.

In my lifetime (better than 55 years of fishing and being old enough to remember fishing), I've seen bass fishing go from a point where practically nobody released a legal bass, to where a lot of anglers seem to think that anybody who keeps one is evil.  In the 1960s when I was a kid reservoir bass fishing with my dad, we wouldn't keep anything under about 2 pounds, because we figured we'd always catch enough bigger ones than that to keep the freezer stocked.  I think Dad figured that if he was going to clean them, they might as well be big enough that just one of them furnished plenty of meat, since it took about as long to fillet a 12 incher as a five pounder.  It wasn't until B.A.S.S. became popular and non-tournament anglers started being ticked off about the pros coming to their lake and hauling out a bunch of big bass (yes, in early tournaments the bass were NOT released) that the tournament people started promoting catch  and release as much for the PR value as for the conservation value.  But they played up the conservation aspect, of course, and pretty soon everybody started realizing it might be a good idea.  I've still got photos from up to the mid-1970s of stringers of river smallies and largemouth that I kept, in large part because Dad always thought they tasted better than the lake fish and had convinced me as a kid that I should keep them, which was about the time that the catch and release idea really took off.  When it did, I pretty much stopped keeping river bass, and didn't start again until I saw my rivers being overrun with non-native spotted bass.

For a long time I was completely militant about catch and release for river smallmouth, and I'm still a bit that way.  But as the years have gone by and I've learned more and more about our rivers, I've come to realize that catch and release is not always the best thing for the population structure, and that's what should be most important, not keeping or not keeping individual fish.  I wonder, how many anglers who are now completely catch and release guys would start keeping a few fish if MDC came out and said, "We need you to keep some bass from this stream because it has too many small fish eating too much of the forage base, resulting in very slow growth rates and few bigger fish."  Would you keep some in order to make the fishery better?  I suspect a lot of catch and release anglers would not.  Certainly a lot of them don't keep spotted bass out of the Meramec River system, even though MDC is practically begging them to do so.  In my opinion, when your catch and release outlook reaches that point, where you wouldn't keep one even for a very good reason, maybe you've gone a little bit overboard.  Either you're just too lazy to clean them, or you don't like to eat fish at all, or you're putting the value of individual fish above the value of the resource as a whole.

It's why I've always said that the truly ethical angler decides to keep or release a fish based upon sound reasoning and sound knowledge of the waters they are fishing, and not just as a knee jerk "releasing them is always GOOD" sort of mindset.

[fishinwrench]

I like to eat fish fairly regularly, and I usually have just under the allowable possession limit in my freezer at all times.   I don't keep bass very often but I will if I haven't done well on the Whites and crappie lately and I'm hungry for fish.  Never keep a Smallie from a stream just cuz I love them too much, and I'm only good for 1 or 2 meals of catfish per year, they just aren't among my favs for the table.   I only like bluegill if I can catch some big ones which is only during the early Spring for me. And I only mess with Goggleye if I'm on a overnight float trip.   A good walleye always comes home with me but I don't know why.... Whites taste just as good to me and I don't chance cutting a finger off while cleaning them like I do EVERYTIME I fillet a walleye. 

Bottom line is that I fish ALOT so it would be insane (and illegal) to keep fish every time I go.   

[Mitch f]

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2016 at 1:20 PM, Mitch f said:

They will for sure issue a citation if the person keeps the fish. I'm asking whether they would write a ticket for mistaken identity, when the guy throws the dead bass back and doesn't keep it.

 

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2016 at 1:50 PM, SpoonDog said:

Yes, because whether you keep it or not you still gigged the fish, and gigging sport fish is illegal.

Got the response back from the MDC...I'll stick by my original statement, if a guy gigs a bass accidentally, and throws it back, he wouldnt get a ticket even if an MDC agent is in the boat. 

 

[Hog Wally]

Like I've said before.  It's not against the law to gig bass.  It's against the law to keep them.  That's the problem with gigging. 

[Jerry Rapp]

just curious, how many gigging guides are there?  Gigging outfitters?  Resorts catering to giggers?