Originally Posted By: Direct-Drive
Originally Posted By: eyeFISH

I agree with FF02.

There could well be an appropriate time and place for meat market flosseries.

There probably is a legitimate place for terminal snaggeries.

I disagree.
I would never vote to legitimize snagging, anywhere.
Sets the wrong precedent and just imagine a whole generation of snag-weaned young anglers never learning how to fish.
And then there's the sub-culture of flossers. Another group that never learned how to fish.


No question about it, DD, that is an ugly prospect. Sadly, if you ask me, that's what we have today (granted, to a lesser extent). Career snaggers/flossers will teach their kids to snag/floss, and so shall the cycle continue. Snagging (not even trying to hook fish in the mouth) is clearly illegal, yet you can still observe people practicing it just about everywhere. Making flossing illegal won't stop people from doing it. My naive hope in proposing a legalized snaggery was that people who want to fish that way would have an opportunity to do so, in a limited area, apart from where I like to try to make fish bite hooks. My proposed potential benefits may be a bit lofty, but I do think it would remove more excess hatchery fish from the system and decrease the level of waste somewhat.

Flossing is, at best, borderline snagging, but it is legal, and realistically, it may even do less damage to fish than legitimate, inside-the-mouth hooking (it's rare that I see a snagged fish bleeding). In my mind, the biggest problem with flossing (I don't think it even registers on a scale measuring the threats various factors pose to the future of our fisheries) is the management problems the grey area between flossing and snagging presents. 4 out of 5 times, when I run across an enforcement officer, it is at or very near a hatchery zone. This is probably due in part to the ease of access to such areas, but I think it's also because such areas lend themselves to people crossing the line between flossing and snagging. Concentrating the practitioners of "alternative" fishing methods in clearly defined areas and making it legal to snag would virtually eliminate the need to monitor such areas [except perhaps for a fish counter, to make sure nobody exceeds their legal limits, retains wild fish (where illegal), or retains non-target species], which would free up enforcement staff to spread out and target poachers and out-of-bounds snaggers, for example.

Of course, I did say I was only halfway serious. Your points, plus the fact that advocating snagging in any form feels fundamentally wrong, account for the non-serious half.