On killing trout (or any fish imo)

[dan hufferd]

On 3/28/2024 at 8:59 PM, fishinwrench said:

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

Bass out of the wintery deep are excellent !

[snagged in outlet 3]

1 hour ago, dan hufferd said:

Bass out of the wintery deep are excellent !

Oh the horror😂

[trythisonemv]

On 3/30/2024 at 10:09 PM, Al Agnew said:

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.

I can't whole heartedly agree with this. If that many fish were killed the banks would b lined with dead fish from start to finish. I do agree people kill some fish but 15 percent is out of line with reality . 5 percent is a stretch. We stock most of the fish pursued in recreational ways anymore anyway so I don't think there is a real harm. We raise cattle and we are very kind to them from the moment of birth. We still eat them but no need to shock or beat an animal. People are too disconnected from where our food comes from . You've got politicians saying we don't need farms just go to grocery store 😂 this is real 

[fishinwrench]

25 minutes ago, trythisonemv said:

On 3/30/2024 at 10:09 PM, Al Agnew said:

I can't whole heartedly agree with this. If that many fish were killed the banks would b lined with dead fish from start to finish.

I suspect that you are assuming that fish always float when they die.  In reality very few actually do. 

[Flysmallie]

29 minutes ago, trythisonemv said:

We stock most of the fish pursued in recreational ways anymore anyway so I don't think there is a real harm.

Not true at all. The most pursued fish in Missouri have no stocking program. 

[tjm]

1 hour ago, trythisonemv said:

I do agree people kill some fish but 15 percent is out of line with reality . 5 percent is a stretch.

So, if you had a contained system like a very large aquarium and did actually catch and release for instance a hundred fish all apparently unharmed, except for some mark for future identification; then observed them over a several days and 15 of those fish died hours or days after release while all the uncaught fish did not die, you would attribute those dead fish to coincidence? This is how those studies work, they start with a known number and end with a known number and are compared to a control group of a similar size. Not perfect information gathering but not just WAG either.

I've read about dozen such studies over the past 50 years and some were done better than others, but the ones with better controls and more stringent protocols were often the ones that showed higher mortality. Of course studies done by competent fish handlers in controlled conditions can only lead to an estimate of what actually happens with clumsy or uncaring handling. My feeling is that if fish biologists and hatchery workers find 10% delayed mortality then the actual recreational mortality might be as high as 30% simply because so many people don't release enough fish to ever become skilled at it or simply have to keep the fish out of water and drop it in the dirt 3-4 times to get that image of it.

Those fish that die from handling rarely float and usually get consumed by crawdads or turtles so that keeps them out of sight and out of mind.

If most of the fish you pursue are stocked you must be fishing only the Trout Parks. Trout is the only stocked species of  fish that I have caught in my life time. And not even all of those were stocked, some were naturalized wild things.

Even given a 5% mortality of C&R, when 50 anglers per day float the same stretch of stream and each catch and release 10 bass and they do this 2-3 days per week for 3-4 months per year; we are looking at possibly 3-5000 dead bass per summer on that stretch of creek. It's likely though that many of those fish were caught and released multiple times per day and thus the percentage of mortality increased but fewer fish harmed. And of course many kayakers will only catch 1-2 fish on a given day but then there are guys right behind them that are catching 50-100. And of course some of those fish would have died of natural causes anyway, the heron stalks.

 

 

[trythisonemv]

30 minutes ago, Flysmallie said:

Not true at all. The most pursued fish in Missouri have no stocking 

Which fish do you refer to? Large mouth are protected by length limits and bag limits and are among the most abundant fish isohr great state. They are not stocked but reproduce very quickly and are managed fir recreational purposes. I see the point al was making but think perhaps it's a possibility that the revenue created as well as the life long memories are worth the concerns

[FishnDave]

PSA/FYI:

MDC-run hatcheries produce (in addition to trout) paddlefish, hybrid striped bass, striped bass, muskellunge, largemouth bass, bluegills, hybrid sunfish, grass carp, walleye, pallid sturgeon, and catfish.  Maybe other fish too, but these were listed on the various MDC warmwater hatchery websites.

[trythisonemv]

1 hour ago, FishnDave said:

PSA/FYI:

MDC-run hatcheries produce (in addition to trout) paddlefish, hybrid striped bass, striped bass, muskellunge, largemouth bass, bluegills, hybrid sunfish, grass carp, walleye, pallid sturgeon, and catfish.  Maybe other fish too, but these were listed on the various MDC warmwater hatchery websites.

My point exactly. Alas we will never agree on this collectively

[tjm]

2 hours ago, FishnDave said:

PSA/FYI:

MDC-run hatcheries produce (in addition to trout) paddlefish, hybrid striped bass, striped bass, muskellunge, largemouth bass, bluegills, hybrid sunfish, grass carp, walleye, pallid sturgeon, and catfish.  Maybe other fish too, but these were listed on the various MDC warmwater hatchery websites.

Did it say there that these hatchery produced fish outnumber wild bred  fish on most waters or that most Mo. waters are stocked with these fish? Do they maintain a list of what waters are stocked with what fish?  Is C&R common  for paddlefish or pallid sturgeon?