Quack wrote:If a person chooses to spend less of their free time in the field or on the water does that mean that person shouldn’t care for the resource?
Nice pickle pile MLDS!
No it just means they don’t impact the resource as much as the avid angler, even if the avid releases a lot, and shouldn’t be preached to for eating fish they catch.
Fishing for eating is a natural course of nature. Many species do it.
Fishing for catch n release is perversion and ego stroking.[/quote]
I don't completely disagree with the blanket statement premise you lay out, but there's so many different variables....countless.....and for a maybe a handful of specific ones, at most, I vehemently disagree. Overall? I agree with you. The couple exceptions though where I don't? I disagree so strongly that it's hard for me to agree with you on the 98% plus of the rest I agree with you on.
The whole bassmasters created and perpetuated bullshit view of catch and release?
I couldn't agree more with you.
Bassmasters took a fish that was a staple in a lot of farm ponds that wound up on stringers of bluegills whether big or small to be brought home, cleaned, and eaten....and for profit and perverted sport deliberately changed the entire culture of fishing. Bassmasters created and then perpetuated the myth that bass aren't good table fare in order to create Fisheries full of bass, and then grew them into big bass.
It still sometimes cracks me up....and sometimes leaves me shaking my head....when guys talk about bass not being a fish you eat. Unless you're Hmong and also make fishhead soup with the heads from all the carp you catch. Yet these same guys will go all ga-ga over the thought of frying up a gallon ziploc full of sunnies filets.
They're the same damn fish. Little fish taste better and that's why they claim to prefer the sunfish...if they have actually eaten bass which a lot of them haven't I think.
Fry up a bag of 14" to 16" walleye filets and a bag of 22" or bigger walleye filets, put them on separate plates with some side dishes in-between them, and invite some peeps over for dinner and see which plate is empty first. The plate full of small fish will get smashed but you very well might have leftovers of big fish.
Bass are the same. Filet out some under 14" and give them a whirl. Breaded or battered and then fried.....they're as good as anything else.
But bassmasters perpetuated a bullshit myth in order to get guys to release all the bass they catch versus keeping them, and they did it so effectively.......
.....that forty years later I'm an oddball weird fukc for encouraging people to eat bass on the internet.
That's how effective they were....completely engrained into the fishing culture and industry the bassmasters concocted bullshit has been driven. To where eating a bass....a fukcing big sunfish.....makes you a fukcing weirdo.
All so a bunch of rich dorks could race around in glitter covered boats and "compete" in what has otherwise always been a leisurely pastime. When these phags saw guys with a stringer full of one to three pound bass...or the blood boiling sight of a four, five, or six pounder......they saw "their" fish being robbed from them. That five pounder a dude was bringing home for dinner? That could have been their "money" fish that would have put them over the top in a tournament. They envision making the perfect cast to where it is....and then watching it go "Marty McFly's family in his photo of them in Back to the Future." There's a point in time where that fish is going to be this important big fish for them, and some fisherman's family was unceremoniously devouring it before it could be that.
Don't believe me?
The why did the Holy grail of bass fishing, George Perry's world record, wind up that way? Bass tasted totally different back then? Or people just enjoyed eating muddy mush?
Or, a bunch of bassmasters dorks made people believe that?
So in that regard.....yes, catch and release fishing is somewhat gay. People should be able to catch and keep their fish and eat them if they want. It's inherently part of what makes it great.
For most species I don't think it matters that much....bass, walleyes, panfish, catfish, perch, trout.....in most cases I don't think catch and release is that important, or matters at all in most cases, when fishing a large, healthy, and balanced fishery.
But..........to be continued
