stlhdh20,

The rule is talking about "legal fish" and your example is about an illegally kept fish.

The way I read the rule is that if you are fishing under selective rule and you happened to catch a fish that for example was hooked in the tongue, you "should keep it if legal" even if you want to release it. Now this fish could be anything legal such as Native, Dolly, Hatchery, ... For example lets say you caught a native hooked in the tongue and you want to release it. This rule is telling you "don't release it if legal to keep" and I was wondering about the logic behind this.

I personally think the purpose of the rule is to stop people who are doing selective harvest. Lets say you catch a fish and is bleeding but the fish is small and you let it go to catch a bigger one to harvest. This way you may have already killed the previous bleeding fish and by letting it go your daily limit is still open and now you are going to harvest the next bigger fish as well. In the process you killed 2 fish (assuming that bleeding fish may die) but only one is going towards your daily limit since you released the bleeding fish.

This is my interpretation of the logic behind this rule. The only problem is what if you are not harvesting and you want to release the fish. You could technically be in violation of the law! Any other inputs?