Ethical Ice Fishermen

[Eskimo]

Originally Posted by zhitoman

Another thing, many of you practice catch and realize. You need to realize that most of pike and pickerel you guys release, do not survive due to excessive handling. Every day somebody posts pictures holding fish by its gills with blood leaking all over, and then claims that the fish was released "to fight another day." You better of keeping that fish and feeding it to your cats because it has no chances of survival with damaged gills and half of it protective slime coat gone.

There's an old saying, "You can shear a sheep many times - but you can only skin him once.".

Is the value in a bass the experience fishing outdoors and catching a nice bass - or is it in frying up a few mercury-contaminated fillets? I go with the former. The best parts of bass fishing is the experience of fishing and catching - not killing.

At home I keep a small collection of chewed-up plastic baits. These are all someone else's baits that bass barfed up after I caught them. What it means to me is that catch-and-release works!

I don't know who these baits belonged to, but I know there are at least two bass fishermen who share the wonderful experience of catching the same trophy bass. Isn't that amazing?

In NJ, a four pound bass is about 10 years old. In the average over-fished NJ lake, that bass has probably been caught every one of those years, probably several times a year. She is one in a million -literally if you consider how many bass are hatched and how many grow to a memorable size. How many anglers have shared this experience of catching this same fish in her lifetime?

You are free to look down on our catch-and-release culture. Yes, Americans are dreamers and optimistic fools. We catch fish that we have every right to kill, yet we put them back in the water in the naive hope that this fish will grow bigger, populate the water with babies, and make another fisherman's day who will in turn place in her back in the water. We foolishly hope that our children will experience the same fishing opportunities that we had.

I would rather be an optimistic fool who sustains the fishery for my fellow anglers than a shameless consumer of gamefish who cares only about their own self-gratification.


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