I like to fish the rivers of Montana and eastern Washington. I hook a lot of fish and release all of them. Many of the trout show the scars of many previous hookings around their mouths. That to me shows that Catch and Release really works. Also, it is rare to observe dead fish on the bottom of the rivers as we drift over the water. When fish die they usually don't just float downstream, they sink to the bottom and the water really doesn't move them very much. It is easy to see the salmon that have spawned and died and every now and then I see another species of fish, often Northern Pike Minnow, dead along the bottom, but rarely do you see trout. When you consider how many fishermen fish a river like the Missouri River in the Craig to Cascade stretch, if there was a high rate of fatalities from fly fishing then you would see the bottom littered with dead fish, but you don't see that.

If the fish is brought in quickly and handled properly that fish will live to catch another fly another day.

Larry ---sagefisher---