On killing trout (or any fish imo)

[BilletHead]

On killing trout | Hatch Magazine - Fly Fishing, etc.

Food for thought no pun intended.

[fishinwrench]

It's actually kind of a shame, that the best eating bass are 13-14"ers. 🙄

[BilletHead]

13 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

It's actually kind of a shame, that the best eating bass are 13-14"ers. 🙄

  I agree and we harvest some early pond bass for some of that good eats. 

[Mitch f]

Holy Mackerel….(no pun intended), that’s a long article and I’m too tired to read it all.. But I find myself getting more catch and release on everything….even crappie. I like to see things live and not suffer. 

[BilletHead]

28 minutes ago, Mitch f said:

Holy Mackerel….(no pun intended), that’s a long article and I’m too tired to read it all.. But I find myself getting more catch and release on everything….even crappie. I like to see things live and not suffer. 

   So setting the hook and crossing its eyes yanking into the boat out of their environment so they cannot breathe. Taking a hero shot and pitching back into the water isn't making them suffer? 

    Mitch buddy I know you are not a vegan. What about those other animals you consume? What do they go through? 😆 I know something we don't see. Probably something we don't want to see. Out of sight out of mind. 

    I got to thinking about the beef we bought on the hoof a couple of years ago. I got to take a truck and big cattle trailer with three outer cows after we ran them into the trailer to the process plant. As I drove up the highway I could feel them shifting back there. I thought wonder what they are thinking right now? Those pretty cows are about to meet their maker. At the destination they were unloading into a pen. Eyes wide and wild. I thought oooh what a way to go. 

  Gonna keep our bellies full.😃 I think a few innocent fish we eat will be ok. As long as we ask a blessing over it.

[MOPanfisher]

3 hours ago, Mitch f said:

But I find myself getting more catch and release on everything….even crappie. I like to see things live and not suffer. 

Me too but not because of the suffering angle, usually because I am just lazy and don't want to clean them.  Don't eat as many fish as we used to so saving myself the mess and effort of cleaning them while still having the fun of catching them seems to be a win win for me.  However I will keep a few and clean them for a very select few people. 

[Mitch f]

6 hours ago, BilletHead said:

   So setting the hook and crossing its eyes yanking into the boat out of their environment so they cannot breathe. Taking a hero shot and pitching back into the water isn't making them suffer? 

    Mitch buddy I know you are not a vegan. What about those other animals you consume? What do they go through? 😆 I know something we don't see. Probably something we don't want to see. Out of sight out of mind. 

    I got to thinking about the beef we bought on the hoof a couple of years ago. I got to take a truck and big cattle trailer with three outer cows after we ran them into the trailer to the process plant. As I drove up the highway I could feel them shifting back there. I thought wonder what they are thinking right now? Those pretty cows are about to meet their maker. At the destination they were unloading into a pen. Eyes wide and wild. I thought oooh what a way to go. 

  Gonna keep our bellies full.😃 I think a few innocent fish we eat will be ok. As long as we ask a blessing over it.

Oh, I’m saying is when I clean a fish I usually whack them in the head before I start cutting on them

[BilletHead]

I guess this here is the way we need to treat our fish,

https://www.facebook.com/reel/405993258713581/?s=single_unit&__cft__[0]=AZUsJwYyv2kxKUAk9Va8T9s5Jo6e9-3MPeXkJVoYce7ZRG4dRoohTqY_Yh5CZzXSaC50wLkBWwVXSxPf-7qS7KzaEFyYDMabIm3hs_naFpEkbYuV4y2dmiXemg6EyC8raIw2ypdy_FaIYTR2g_Jf5UQ_GwDywLSsHV0LbOs9binasFGVsMUSujIh8HhTWbr-4Uwf5CbslKe2T-gFsjz2tVT5&__tn__=H-R

  Torture! Pure torture I tell you. 😁

 

[tjm]

Should be a law that you have to eat every fish you catch. But then the permit sales would plummet to low numbers and the tournament anglers would be trying for small fish because who can  eat 15# of bass? All the money in this  $10.6bn recreational fishing business is dependent on C&R.  Taxes on other things would have to increase to make up for all the taxes taken in on the estimated "$50bn a year on gear and trips".

It doesn't bother me at all to kill fish to eat, but as long as C&R is legal I'll keep turning most of them loose out of laziness. I do expect that one day the animal rights segment will use C&R cruelty to ban recreational fishing, but maybe not for a few more years. 

[Al Agnew]

I've thought a lot about this as well, and my thoughts align fairly closely with those of the author of the article.  We really ARE playing with our food.  We really ARE causing a lot of stress on the critters we catch for no good reason other than our own pleasure.  And the better the angler, the more fish he's killing by "accident".  All the studies show that delayed mortality after being caught runs somewhere between 5 and 15%.  Even if you are as careful as possible, if you have a day where you catch 50 bass, you're killing somewhere between 2 and 8 of them even if you release every one.  Heck, I have the occasional 100 fish day, and even though I don't think I'm badly injuring many of them, I'm probably killing at least as many of them as my daily limit would be anyway.

But there is always a difference between consideration for individual fish, and consideration for the POPULATION of the fish you seek.  Worry too much about the lives and comfort of each individual fish and you go the way of the animal rights folks.  I prefer to consider the population of bass in the streams I fish as a resource.  I do what I can to protect that resource, and don't worry about the individual fish I catch except to handle them as carefully as possible if I plan to release them...because the point of releasing them is to keep them in the population, so it behooves us to give them the best chance to stay healthy.

To that end, I think that the ethical angler learns as much as he can about the population of the fish he seeks in the waters he seeks.  The beginning of ethics is to follow the regulations, but it's not the be-all.  Most regulations are one size fits all, and most waters are not the same.  It might very well be that some fish need to be culled in some waters, up to the legal limit, while in other waters if everybody kept a legal limit the fishery would soon be horrible.

I love to eat freshwater fish.  And I eat them about every other week, and several at a sitting.  In one way, the invasion of spotted bass in my home rivers has been great; I can kill a dozen spotted bass whenever I want a great meal or two.  I haven't eaten a smallmouth or largemouth from any of these waters in more years than I can remember, but I've sure eaten a pile of spotted bass.  I also eat smaller bass from ponds that need thinning, and a few crappie and bluegill meals whenever I get the chance.