Ethical Ice Fishermen

[zhitoman]

Originally Posted by jimcnj

Agree. I never seen that either.
Also, using legally caught fish as bait is not necessarily unethical, trout or not.

Search Passaic river pike in this forum. So many bleeding pike it makes me sick. Many of those posts don't say whether the fish was released or not, but who in their right mind would keep pike from the Passaic river? So I am assume they were released.

[lennysky]

Zhitoman your have a point. Numerous times I caught fish injured by fisherman, cormorants and other fish. But the question remain, how many actually die? I'm sure there is a study on mortality. There was for stripers and this is why they were pushing circle hooks.

[15FOOTER]

I like to use 4inch native browns from the south branch to catch 15lb lakers in round valley...some times youll even get huge rainbows and browns on them lol..the key is that they have to be native..everyone knowz stockiez dont work duh....lol go back to gst troll boy

[lennysky]

Everyone knows Atlantic salmon smolts work best so leave those baby trout alone and go get some of those

[15FOOTER]

Omg never thought of that..wonder how many i can keep alive in my bucket?

[Jigman13]

Just to chime in here... The pike in my avatar was taken on a tip up. It was out of the water a few minutes for measurements and photos. It was then released, swimming away just fine. It was then confirmed to me that the fish was caught about 6 months later on open water by another angler...again, she was released.

These fish are more resilient than most people realize...

Sometimes it's best to keep overly controversial comments to one's self...you feel a certain way or have a particular opinion? Practice as you deem fit and within reason. Bashing people for being within the legal means of fish & game laws is absurd; especially the trout thing. If an angler buys a license and trout stamp, he/she is allowed to do what they wish with their legal limit of trout, end of story. Bucket brigades keeping everything is whole 'nother ball o wax!

[Eskimo]

Originally Posted by zhitoman

Another thing, many of you practice catch and realize. You need to realize that most of pike and pickerel you guys release, do not survive due to excessive handling. Every day somebody posts pictures holding fish by its gills with blood leaking all over, and then claims that the fish was released "to fight another day." You better of keeping that fish and feeding it to your cats because it has no chances of survival with damaged gills and half of it protective slime coat gone.

There's an old saying, "You can shear a sheep many times - but you can only skin him once.".

Is the value in a bass the experience fishing outdoors and catching a nice bass - or is it in frying up a few mercury-contaminated fillets? I go with the former. The best parts of bass fishing is the experience of fishing and catching - not killing.

At home I keep a small collection of chewed-up plastic baits. These are all someone else's baits that bass barfed up after I caught them. What it means to me is that catch-and-release works!

I don't know who these baits belonged to, but I know there are at least two bass fishermen who share the wonderful experience of catching the same trophy bass. Isn't that amazing?

In NJ, a four pound bass is about 10 years old. In the average over-fished NJ lake, that bass has probably been caught every one of those years, probably several times a year. She is one in a million -literally if you consider how many bass are hatched and how many grow to a memorable size. How many anglers have shared this experience of catching this same fish in her lifetime?

You are free to look down on our catch-and-release culture. Yes, Americans are dreamers and optimistic fools. We catch fish that we have every right to kill, yet we put them back in the water in the naive hope that this fish will grow bigger, populate the water with babies, and make another fisherman's day who will in turn place in her back in the water. We foolishly hope that our children will experience the same fishing opportunities that we had.

I would rather be an optimistic fool who sustains the fishery for my fellow anglers than a shameless consumer of gamefish who cares only about their own self-gratification.


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[Gatto1227]

Fish bleed especially when you drive hooks into their face and making them fight for their lives. That's fishing. I'd rather release a bleeding pike and give it a chance over shoving it in a bucket where it has zero chance.

[lennysky]

Eskimo, I understand your point and practice CR 90% of the time. However, if one is to be educated on Limnology, Ichthyology and basic conservation principals it is clear that keeping some of the fish ((Mercury or not) is not only healthy but necessary for the lake in order to sustain bigger fish vs numbers of stunted ones. I personally conducted an experiment on a 40 acre upstate lake where following numerous bass contests no large fish was left as the rules of contest required in person in the store weigh ins and not a fisherman brought these large one ( up to 9lb) fish back. When I started fishing the lake, vast majority of bass were bowering around 12-13 inches and very skinny. So I decided to keep and eat numerous 9-12 inch fish to thin the crowd. Within 5 years the average size of bass improved to 14-16" with several 5+lb fish mixed in. Not only I was fishing but I knew all that did and I queried w them. Across the board they agreed to a great improvement.

Another example is a well known private lake in west Windsor NY where's verbal fishermen believed that killing all tiny perch they catch benefited the ecosystem only to discover that eventually bigger fish starved to death due to lack of forage. It is not cut and dry across the board, but strict CR never works in long term improvements to a fishery. If pike not kept in Passaic river eventually 99% of pike will be hammer handles with a few decent ones which will caninalize on the smaller brethren. I am against bucket brigades regardless of ethnicity only because they do not adhere to the established regulations but they too play a role.

[Chrisper4694]

I caught a pike with one of its gills hanging out and all white. I said wow this fish is still swimming around ok??? Released it. 2 months later in the same area I caught that same pike...still ok. I'm just throwing in another experience of fish being resilient.

As far as 100% c&r... Look up how they run those personal giant bass lakes that guys like bill dance fish on tv and only catch tons of giants. Lennysky is right, keeping small legal fish helps a lake grow more big fish! I know you all know a private lake where no one ever keeps a bass...and the mass of the population is 12-15" most likely. Look at rvr with the lakers no big ones over 30 pulled out this year. We do our part and take every laker in the slot because of the stunted lake trout population. Not enough forage there for them with the over stocking when they thought they wouldn't reproduce successfully. Nothing goes to waste, plenty of people love fresh fish.

Do what you want within the rules one way or the other but don't turn people off from keeping small legal fish please, it helps grow trophy sized fish. But please release the big ones