I have heard it estimated that on certain BC rivers, some steelhead are caught as many as 3-4 times before the anglers go away and leave them to do their things over the winter.
This was a little shocking/disturbing to me as I had always liked the idea of a solitary C & R experience for a certain (smallish) percentage of the fish headed towards the gravel. As it turns out, on some of these systems with smaller runs of aggressive fish, a very high percentage of the run gets caught, many of them multiple times. However, I don't think this scenario is particularly relevant to winter run fish in the northwest where I would think a small number of the total get caught and those that do typically get caught once. If they are well handled, the mortality rate is well known and acceptable for most conservation minded anglers.
In fact, while fishing productive spots that held multiple fish, many of us have caught the same fish a second time within an hour and thought the fish fought quite well under the circumstances. Heck I've even seen this done with percieved inferior hatchery steelhead. While fishing a few seasons back, I landed a fish that looked like it was missing half it's head and only one eye ball intact. Crazy thing was is that it was probably 200 river miles from the ocean. C&R = dead fish, sorry not buying it.
Previous Topic
Index
