My family and I eat a lot of fish, so I frequently retain part of my catch.

Mostly, though I do a lot of catch & release so I can maximize my time on the water.

This is a serious question on my part, and I hope will be answered in that manner.

To use an example, my buddy and I hit the best Chinook fishing in our 100 years of combined salmon fishing time a couple of years ago in the Charlottes.

We caught about 40 Chinook from 18 to 50 pounds in one day. All were released except for a 38 pound fish I caught and was my biggest saltwater chinook ever and a badly hooked 18 pounder that my buddy killed since the fish was bleeding badly. He released a 50 pound fish only minutes earlier.

All fish were played as quickly as possible and released without netting or taking them out of the water. Well, we did try to pick up the 50 pounder for a very quick picture, but that didn't work.

While we were doing this, the other guest as the lodge, who were part of a large group, had limited on Chinook and spent the rest of the day trolling up six pound silvers, instead of playing more chinook.

My buddy and I were both legal as we were below our legal limit. Usually we will kill one fish each early in a trip and save any retention plans until the last day or two.

So, here is my question, asked with serious concern.

As a skilled fisherman, who does their best to handle the fish with the best possible care in releasing, is it morally right to keep on fishing under legal conditions or are we exceeding the numbers of stressed fish by continueing fish?

Thanks for thoughts.

Sebastes

Well, I absolutely love to fish. If given the option of catching kings all day or just for an hour then fishing silvers I would have done the exact same thing you did. I don't think that skilled fisherman who use the techniques you mentioned make that much of an impact on the fish. How many of the 40 or so kings you caught do you think died other than the ones you retained? My guess would be none. Maybe I'm immoral, but how can you pass up catching kings all day???

Well you're going to get at least two different opinions on this subject.

I would have been the other group and chased after some coho's or sabastes after I got my limit of chinook.
I just don't have any interest in stressing out fish just for the fun of it.
I have many friends that do and I can't relate to it but don't knock them for it or consider it morally wrong.
Just a difference of opinions or priorities.

Dan

Serious Question......Serious Answer
You were legal and as considerate as possible....end of story. Congratulations on a great fishing trip! You will know when you've overstepped your own boundaries, and I have no doubt you will then correct any actions you deem warrented.

I don't know about ocean fishing but in rivers catching and releasing fish with single barbless hooks results in extremely low mortality and there is no evidence to suggest that catching and releasing a fish stresses it out in any way that harms it's long term survival or ability to reproduce..

There is nothing morally wrong with catch and release, there is nothing ethically wrong with catch and release and there is nothing biologically wrong with catch and release...

All fishing carries with it a certain mortality rate. For C&K fishing, it is 100%. For C&R fishing it is something less than 100%, depending on where (salt, estuary, upriver) the fish is caught and how carefully it is handled. There is no such thing as zero mortality in any fishery. There is no escaping that what we love to do is blood sport, even when fish are handled with the utmost care and there is no intent to kill.

For those who are ethically challenged by this dilemma, here's one way to rationalize and practice responsible C&R fishing. Quit when you have statistically reached the dead fish equivalent (DFE) of the daily bag limit for whatever it is you are fishing for. If the C&R mortality is 10% and the bag limit is one fish, then your self-imposed C&R limit should be 10 fish. In this scenario, if you were to C&R 30 fish, then you have statistically caused three DFE's, and have legally killed more fish than a law-abiding bonker who only takes one.

I think that C & R fishing is fine. Most stats I have seen don't support a mortality rate of 10 percent if you are using barbless hooks and handling them properly. The rate is more like 2 to 5 percent.

Congrats on a great day of fishing - wish I was with you!

FnP One thing to also consider when talking about mortality is understanding what caused the mortalities in the studies. The vast majority of mortality comes from fish that have sever blood loss due to hook related injury.. Where wild fish are concerned i only fly fish with the wet fly swing. nearly every fish i catch is hooked in the hinge of the jaw and absolutely no blood loss occurs at all. Mortality of such fish is going to be lower than even the accepted 3-7%
of course none of this relates back to salt water or anything just want to demonstrate that using methods where fish are not hooked deeply even further minimizes hooking mortality. I would estimate my own hooking mortality well below 3%

Morality varies from person to person and C&R mortality varies from species to species, by fishing methods and places fished, etc.

For feeding chinook in the Charlottes the mortality might be as high as 20-30% for mooching herring with standard hooks and as low as 5-10% trolling spoons or squid with single barbless hooks provided that they are minimally handled. Circle hooks may cut the mortality for mooching to about ½ to ¼ as much.

As to morality, you have to decide what is right for your own conscience. For me it's to fish long enough and often enough to put a desired amount of food on the table. For some it's immoral to kill any fish but ok to C&R to their hearts contentment. I know some who release every fish and limit their catching to 1 fish per day. We are all different in what is right for our selves and we must live with our own choices.

That should be worth a quarter if you have one.