Good point, but, they would have ended up as bird or mammal feed otherwise, along with the 10 others I returned to the river from the " mudhole" they were in.
Must have been stocked in high water and hunkered down. Then as it receded, they ended up trapped in a small ditch that gradually got smaller and smaller over the course of a month. Seemed like less pike each time I passed it so I decided to "transplant" them back into the river. Each one spent less than 10 min in a 5 gal bucket of water until they were walked 50-60ft back to the rivers edge. Even threw some rocks to scare away potential predators from the release site.
So I kept 2...... Bedside, I released them right after that video was taken............
