Hey D badger. If you would have spent a little more time on this board, you would ralize it is mostly dominated by catch and release fisherman on native fish. I fish in a Zipperlip river every year, where we catch steelheads in excess of 20 pounds. 4 of us spend a lot of cash to make this trip. After three trips, and 12 fish over 20 pounds, I am proud to say, they were all released to fight another day. If you look very far, you can see that in comparison to the rest of the country, your salmonids are in a pretty sad state of affairs. You can't catch them again, if you kill em.

You should be proud of landing a fish that big, but even prouder taking some pics, getting some measurements, and having a replica made. The replicas available are better in quality than the real McCoy. 12 pound test, nice job, but you can bend size 1 an 2 hooks pretty easily with 12 pound maxima and a good rod. We lead 30 pound kings around like they arte on a dog leash in the fall on our rivers with 10 pound maxima and a 9 weight fly rod. Keep us in touch with your "adventures" but hopefully the next one is about a toad that you released. Take the high road and show your buddies what they should do in regards to taking care of these fish. Don't be concerned, because if the current mentality pervails, you'll be sitting on the bank in March and April up on the Oly penn, wondering why the season is closed. I'll look forward to seeing yuou in Wisoconsin and Michigan, when all your fish are gone.

Wouldn't use the frickin Indians kill all the fish with their nets crutch either. Hitler killed all kinds of people, and it didn't ever make it right.

As other posters mentioned, I am hoping that you simply posted this too jerk a bunch of chains. If so, mission accomplished. I wouldn't refer to the members of this board as "environmentalist" in a derrogatory manner. I would be happy as would many others, if you want to call me a stup*d as*hole who wants there to be wild fish around for his kids to catch and release. I'll wear that badge with pride.

Nuff said