So lately I have been catching some pretty darn nice rainbows and browns out here in MT. About three weeks ago I decided that I was finally going to start keeping some fish and having wonderful trout fillet's for dinner. I have kept several of my fish over the course of the past three weeks and the more I think about it the more I feel like it is... in bad taste I suppose.

I was wondering what you all felt about the catch-and-release versus the catch-and-eat mentalities. On the one hand, I do love fish (sushi, fried, baked, stuffed, gumbo, etc. etc. etc.) , but on the other hand I am concerned about two things: one is that I may ruin the reputation fly-fisherman have for being relatively more environmentally conscious than the vast hordes of people, and the second is that there are only so many fish in the rivers and if everyone that fished them kept one a day that river would be barren quickly.

I dont think that my few fish will really affect the trout population but I wanted to ask some more experienced folks.


Geoff