Is 'catch and release' cruelty???

[Buddy Sanders]

I've been thinking about this. The recent thread about TV fishing brought it to my mind again.

We all like to fish. Most of us 'catch and release' or, as it used to be called, 'throwback' most if not all of the fish we catch.

Sometimes you have to pull the blinders and recognize what we are actually doing:

We are enticing a living creature to take into it's oral cavity something it 'believes is' or 'reacts to as' food, that really is not food. It's a fake that contains a sharp steel hook, that, after the fish 'bites' it, we pull on to jam it into the flesh of the fish's mouth. We keep tension on this penetrating instrument so that it won't, ideally, come out of where it's lodged until WE decide to take it out.

One end of this hook is tied to a line that the fish can't be aware of. We pull on one end, and the fish, having no clue or experience with such things, fights for it's survival against us. The fish struggles not because it wants to give us 'good sport' but because to not struggle means to perish. The fish knows not that we will 'let it go', it only knows the mind numbing terror of being dragged about by unseen forces beyond it's control that are surely leading it to it's demise.

At the conclusion of this struggle, the poor fish is often lifted from it's natural domaine, where it can't breath, often for extended periods of time (remember that the fish can't breath. What seems like a quick dive into the bag for the camera for you can seem like an eternity to a disoriented creature that can't breath and has just exhausted itself in a life or death struggle). We take proud pictures, hold them up for admiration, and then, feeling somehow merciful and noble, place them back into the water....

Now, mind you, we do this to a creature that many of us profess to hold in high esteem, if not look upon with great love and respect.

Do we take the time to consider what damage that hook point may do? Do we know how it might effect how the fish feeds, how it tastes or deals with it's food.

Do we take the time to consider how that massive expenditure of energy might damage the fish itself, effect it's ability to grow, to reproduce, or to even survive? We blindly put it back, feeling good about it, even. But is that fish now too exhausted to avoid a predator? Heal from a wound? Did we stunt it's growth?

Will the fish even survive? Many don't. Catch and release is not without it's mortality rate. In warm water environs, it can reach ten or fifteen percent, but is almost always at least in the three to five percent area. In cold waters it can average less, but most trout are more delicate than most warmwater species and improper handling can cause this rate to skyrocket. AND, you never 'see' it, as these fish die slowly and don't become the 'floaters' that many associate with mortality. Many of those fish we released died a slow and painful death.

And, even more troubling, we did this for FUN. Not to feed ourselves, not to take our rightful place in the circle of life, but just for the shear enjoyment of it all. Are we are all enjoying the terrorizing of a lesser creature?

We do pay for the priveledge. It's our own dollars that support the habitat, stockings, and regulators that keep the fishing reasonable and safe. But, can we justify it?

Is THIS is the argument that damns us in the eyes of those who seek to stop us? How can such a thing be 'fun'?

It's certainly something to think about.

Buddy