in defense of Tim

rw wrote:
Tim has a point of view about C&R. It's a pretty extreme point of view,
and not one I share wholeheartedly by any means, but it has a logical
consistency, even if he does undermine his case with some bogus
factoids. It's made me think about what I'm doing.

At least 95% of the fishing I do is C&R. I might conceivably catch 30 to
50 fish in a day if I worked at it (on a really good day), but that
"score" wouldn't reflect the quality of the fishing, and I'm not
interested in it. I like the memory of one or two good fish hooked and
landed in a perfect spot, maybe with a difficult presentation, where I
could actually foresee the whole thing playing out ahead of time. That
is trout fishing Nirvana to me.

Think about it, C&R ROFF fishermen. Don't count fish. Quit and be
satisfied once you feel good about the outing. Enjoy the scenery. Take
some photos. That's a point where Tim is correct, I believe, but he
doesn't express it in those terms.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

I wondered about the Alaska statistic about the number of injuries, and then I
remembered their fondness for pegging beads above the hook. Even the legal 2
inches is enough slack to put the bead in the mouth and the hook in an eye.
Fishing one or two single egg flies around here and up in Alaska not gill
hooked or even injured a steelhead yet, and that's probably about 50 fish.

I say blame the beads, not C&R.

Chas
remove fly fish to e mail directly

On Thu, 03 Aug 2006 02:41:18 -0500, chas
wrote:

I wondered about the Alaska statistic about the number of injuries, and then I
remembered their fondness for pegging beads above the hook. Even the legal 2
inches is enough slack to put the bead in the mouth and the hook in an eye.
Fishing one or two single egg flies around here and up in Alaska not gill
hooked or even injured a steelhead yet, and that's probably about 50 fish.

I say blame the beads, not C&R.

Hmmmmm. I've fished beads for three years in Alaska and have never
seen a hook in the eye. The whole reason for the beads was to cut
down on mortality. I was told that fishing with a normal egg pattern
resulted in the rainbows striking the egg so hard that hook-ups were
deep within the mouth, often causing injury and bleeding. With the
bead, when you feel/see the strike, you set the hook pulling the bead
out of the mouth and hooking the fish in the jaw. Most hook-ups I
witnessed were in the upper jaw, while the rest were in the lower jaw,
and that's about 400 fish. No gills or eyes were damaged.

For the past two years, I've used the same technique in Maine fishing
the sucker spawn for brook trout. Not once did I foul hook a fish,
and all the hook-ups were in the jaw (lip). I used to fish the sucker
spawn with egg patterns and often hooked the trout deep on the
"tongue" or elsewhere inside the mouth, sometimes causing bleeding.

So, I can't blame the beads.

Dave

chas wrote:

I wondered about the Alaska statistic about the number of injuries, and then I
remembered their fondness for pegging beads above the hook. Even the legal 2
inches is enough slack to put the bead in the mouth and the hook in an eye.
Fishing one or two single egg flies around here and up in Alaska not gill
hooked or even injured a steelhead yet, and that's probably about 50 fish.

I say blame the beads, not C&R.

Chas
remove fly fish to e mail directly


But I'm sure you "injured" a few of them by the Alaskan study's criteria.

The study cited not just "serious" injuries, such as a damaged eye, but
minor ones such as being able to distinguish the small area where the
hook had penetrated the mouth - any visual indication that a fish has
been hooked. "Novice anglers injured proportionally more fish than
experienced anglers (70% and 56% injury rate, respectively)." Based on
their criteria, the majority of fish caught by the anglers in the study
were "injured".

ALL heavily fished, C&R water (or water with strict slot limits) is
going to have LOTS of fish that have some "minor" indication of having
been hooked. ANY heavily fished water is also have a considerable number
of fish with significant injuries ie. damage to the eye, gill cover,
missing maxillaries etc.

No matter how careful you are as an angler, you can't stick a piece of
metal through a fish's mouth and drag it around without leaving some
indication that this had been done.


Willi