I figured that's where you were headed with that...how extremely diplomatic of you. I agree with you whole heartedly except, if I were to use the health of the native runs on my home river to determine my ethics I might not make any changes at all. I'd like to do what I can now to contribute to the future health of the resource before there is a concern, even if it is only in a small way. With the numbers that have been presented above by Smalma I figure that by switching as I have I've allowed three more adults to return (conservatively) minus my predation. Also, I've convinced two other fishermen to do the same, there are ten returning adults right there, far more than I've killed than C&R'ing natives.

Sure, its all based on research that hasn't been proven conclusively and lots of people will question my math which is perfectly legitimate (the questioning, not the math). Hell, out of those 'ten fish' eight of them were probably caught in nets and sold for cat food, which is discouraging.

I'm not trying to preach at all...there are anglers on this board who are just beginning to fish and hopefully just beginning to wrestle with questions of ethics. I hope they look at this issue as objectively as possible and find solutions that are based on the best interest of the resource first.