I’d like some opinions from my FFOL friends. According to an article in the latest Fly Tyer magazine, a gentleman from Australia traveled to the Northwest Territories of Canada, apparently in search of one or more fly rod records. While fishing for shallow water lake trout, he caught and landed a 30 pound 8 ounce laker. Nice fish! My personal gripe: he did it on a 3-weight rod, with a 2-pound tippet. The fight (?) lasted- get this- 4 hours and 13 minutes. The fish was released after being “rested”, and swam away.
The question: is this sport, or is it ego? My opinion is the latter, but I’m open to others views.
Sounds like stunt fishing. I’d imagine the lactic acid buildup in that trout after a 4 hr fight would be fatal; after it swam away it probably floated to the top later. Admittedly, all of us who practice catch-and-release are really playing with our food, but at least (I hope) we’re giving the fish a chance for survival if we play them and get them back in the water as quickly as possible .
The answer is yes. It is sport but there is also a generous helping of ego. As long as the people who keep fishing records keep line class records, there will be someone trying to break them.
I don’t know if it is ego or what but I think the guy is a jackass. And the only reason I call him a jackass is because I can’t post what I really think of him or anyone else that persues such records.
As long as it is legal, more power to him. Jackass? Hmmmm, perhaps the people of the NW territories are the jackasses for allowing such practices/laws. Not him. He is playing by the rules.
My my we are quick to condemn others for playing by the rules.
If it’s what he wants to do and it’s legal, I have no problem with it.
If he’d have kept it and ate it, that would have been a sure death for the fish. At least the fish had a chance for survival this way.
The fish may have died, but we don’t know that for sure, and anyway, it IS just a fish.
Lots of ego in fly fishing. This is pretty minor stuff.
But in answer to your question, if fly fishing is a sport(and I’d argue that one), and you do it according to the rules, then why can’t it have been both?
[FONT=Verdana][FONT=Verdana]DUB, respect your opinion but because it is legal does not automatically make it correct. I can walk down the street calling people vulgar names legally but it is not the right way to behave. Just as I toned down my opinion of the guy to be acceptable here.
Kerry, you might aswell hate bait dunkers, ultra light users and anyone else that doesnt live up to your standards of fishing. I guess Washington isn’t as Liberal as I thought. Most other places will give you a ticket for calling people vulgar names. Maybe our definition of vulgar is different.
I would love to see you personally berate and chastise that guy in person for playing that fish for that long. I am sure the game warden would give him a ticket under the “jackass” statute just to keep you happy.
He wanted to catch a huge fish on light tackle. Nothing wrong with it whatsoever in my opinion. The fish was rested and released. Would you care if he killed and ate it after pictures? Would that have been better? Can’t have things both ways…nor can you dictate what others must get from flyfishing, or the value they place on each aspect of it. We all only stand in one pair of waders.
NJTroutBum … no offense intended, but I am NOT standing in the same waders with you.
Kerry … going after world records makes one a jackass? I certainly hope to be a bluegill jackass one day, then. Or a Large Mouth Bass jackass. Anything on a fly rod that’s bigger will do. I don’t have the money to fly to remote areas to fish, but a big one for my State will do just fine. And I agree with Buddy and NJ … if I’d have caught it, it probably would’ve been dinner. It was a line class record, not a world record. It is very possible that the fish in that remote lake get so little pressure and so few are caught that a little catching and eating isn’t a bad thing.
IMHO the whole line-class record thing is silliness. Last time I looked you can’t even see what the records are unless you’re a member. But, to each his own.
Fighting a fish for 4 hours and likely to its death for the purpose of having a record is being a jackass. Acheiving a record that doesn’t cause a useless death of an animal is not. Now, I don’t know for sure the fish died but my guess it did and if it did the guy is nothing more than a jackass. In my opinion. Yours may vary.
It’s ego. All sport fishing is ego, especially catch and release. You are trying to prove you are smarter than somthing with a brain the size of a pea (in the case of trout), and not doing it for sustenance. Why else fish for bones or tarpon, etc? How many people post bjornian numbers of fish, or sizes when on special streams, etc? Or talk about a size 32 fly they used to catch a 20+er?I for one don’t care…stroking my ego by fishing grants me relaxation, so it’s cool…and as Buddy said…it’s a FISH. i woulda ate it, if legal, because I like having more culinary options with trout, and big’uns give you that more than smallfry do.
The only difference between that guy and myself is that I would have made fish steaks out of that lake trout, grilled it over charcoal, seasoned with lemon, salt and pepper and have really enjoyed the outing.
In a Freudian sense, it would be more accurate to call it a failure of the ego to serve the id. It would also be Sport simply because it is the pursuit of such a fish within the legal and generally accepted rules of the sport. Personally, I don’t think too highly of the achievement, but my opinion is just that; my opinion. All that means is, it wouldn’t be right for me to pursue it. I can’t speak for him.
… for the fish or a casual swim around the lake ??
I mean, how much pressure could this guy put on the fish with a 2# tippet ?? So it took the fishy four plus hours to find his way over to the boat. How stressfull was that ?? He probably just accidently wandered up close enough to the angler that he could be netted.
As to needing some time to recover, the fishy probably wandered off after being landed the way he wandered around before being landed. The odds of a big wild fish like that dying after such minimal exertion seem pretty slim to me.
This was not an active event for either the angler or the fish, or so it seems to me. Boring at best, tedious at worst. If that is how this angler wants to spend his time, that is his business. Certainly not something I would pursue since I enjoy hunting and hooking fishies and landing them quickly and releasing them so I can get back to the hunting and hooking part of it. If I hooked up with something that was going to interfere with my way of enjoying fly fishing, I’d break that puppy off pretty quickly. With a 30# fish on a 2# tippet, that wouldn’t take much more than a flip of the wrist.
One other thought - the longer that guy is up in Canada doing his thing, the less time he has to get on water I like to fish in my neck of the woods. I’m kind of hoping more and more people take his cue and head further north.
I’m just guessing that this is ‘sport’ for some AND/OR ‘ego’ for others. Personally, my feeling is if it’s legal, have at it. One of my biggest ‘heroes’ in fly fishing/tying is Lee Wulff. He fished with the most unusual equipment given what he fished for. Just two examples: he used a 6 foot bamboo flyrod (5 weight) for salmon and large salt-water fish; small flies, as tiny as size 28, for Atlantic salmon. Maybe there’s another choice like testing your abilities and knowledge versus the natural defensive mechanisms and strength of those fish? Sometimes you win, sometimes they do, and sometimes if you’re able to release the fish for another day, you both win.
True, and he knew how to fight fish, too, pushing himself and his equipment to the limit. I can’t imagine he’d subject himself, or that fish, to a 4hr boat ride.