"Why the need to kill native fish?"

Good question!

Why do catch-and-release anglers need to kill native fish?

I like to eat them but if one does not kill them for food...
Then why not restrict your catch-and-release mortality to Hatchery stocks.

The following letter seems to fit this thread exceptionally well.

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Debating the Merits of Catch-and-Release

Dear Mr. Letherman:

My name is John Nelson, and I'm writing in response to your editorial, "Just My Opinion," in the May 2002 issue of Fish Alaska magazine. I'm 61 years old, and I've hunted and fished all my life - still do. I helped build Nick Botner's lodge on the Talachulitna back in the 70s, and my wife and I ran Stephan Lake Lodge one summer back in those days. While working for Botner, I guided Europeans for king salmon and trout during the summer and American hunters for sheep and caribou in the fall. I've dry fly fished the Boardman in Michigan and the Big Horn in Montana and a few places in between. Let me offer some considerations on catch-and-release fishing. What follows is fact - not conjecture, not opinion - but fact.

First, catch-and-release kills fish. Period. At a catch-and-release mortality rate of five percent, one out of every 20 fish caught and released dies, or, said another way, the fish dies the 20th time it's caught. At a mortality rate of eight percent - the catch-and-release mortality rate for Kenai kings as defined by ADF&G studies-one out of every 13 fish caught and released dies. Period. Moreover, the closer the fish are caught to saltwater, the more that rate rises.

If the guide mentioned in your editorial is serious about not being able to stomach a client killing a Kenai king, he should stop guiding. Even with catch-and-release fishing, that guide is killing kings.

The guides and their clients on the upper river rainbow trout fishery are killing the rainbow trout at a rate of five percent. In 2000, there were 78,000 rainbow trout caught on the upper river from a population of 25,000, which means each trout was statistically caught 3.1 times during the year. Five percent of the rainbow trout have only one eye, and 85 percent of the six-year-old trout present mouth damage. Moreover, by the time the fish is seven years old, it will have been caught 20-plus times. Statistically, the fish is dead. Area biologists are noting a decline in large upper river rainbow trout - it would seem that fewer and fewer of the fish can live long enough to get truly large.

Second, catch-and-release fishing, that is fishing for the fun of deceiving an animal, fighting it to exhaustion, enjoying the animal's struggle, and releasing it to do it again, killing some in the process is simply animal abuse that panders to boorish human impulses.

An angler fishing for table fare must on occasion release a fish: too small, wrong species, etc., but that kind of catch-and-release is an unavoidable concomitant of "meat" fishing. All harvest of human food involves some waste - it's unavoidable. However, catch-and-release simply for its own sake is another animal altogether. How can we justify deceiving an animal and then taking pleasure in its fear and violent efforts to free itself? As one has concluded:

"The enjoyments of catching fish for sport, in large measure, consist of purposely inflicting fear, pain, and suffering on fish by forcing them to violently express their interest to stay alive. [ . . . ] The very real challenge to anglers, then, is to find a justification for their cruel treatment . . . ." -from a paper by a professor of ichthyology at a Canadian university."

That catch-and-release fishing kills fish simply to gratify the crude human impulses that enjoy experiencing an animal's struggle to live is fact. That kind of enjoyment is synonymous with the kids back in grade school who'd pull the wings off flies or turpentine a cat. Conservationist rhetoric to the contrary, catch-and-release kills and abuses fish for no other reason than that some dolt can get off on the animal frantically expressing its will to survive. That, Mr. Letherman, is fact.

Simply put, catch-and-release fishing is driven by money. A fish that can be caught 13 times or 20 times before being killed generates more money for the sport fishing industry than does a fish killed the first time it's caught. All the hypocritical blather aside, catch-and-release fishing makes guides and sports writers more money. And that's the bottom line.

Someday, Mr. Letherman, catch-and-release fishing will go the way of Jim Crow laws and cigarette smoking in public buildings. We'll never be rid of human stupidity, but we increasingly disallow its public expression. Think about it the next time you hook a fish. Does anyone imagine a fish jumps and pulls and twists to amuse us?

Sincerely,
John Nelson
Soldotna, Alaska

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