Great catch but why did he release it afterwards?? 🙂
Fish tend to grow slower and live longer in colder waters.
WOW!
Around here, a 4 year old bass can be bigger than that.
Angel: after 19 years, any predator fish would be laden with toxins, especially mercury. (again, around here anyway)
:cat:
That is a wow story.
I hope some sort of prize is out there, for some of these special fish, so that maybe we could track them for their whole life. You know, incentive to not keep it.
N
> Great catch but why did he release it afterwards?? 🙂
So it can grow and be caught again! A picture is better than taxidermy anyway.
Angel, Mr Snoop has it right. It's common to practice "catch and release" when fishing for bass or fly-fishing for trout. Even though both of these fish are pretty sumptuous to eat, the "hunt", the hook-set and the subsequent fight are the main attraction. Pound-for-pound, Smallmouth bass are particularly fine warriors and the honorable and respectful thing to do is to let them live to fight another day. It helps to grow the fishery. I do my fishing in lakes and streams near the Canadian border, biggest bass I've caught in these northern waters went 6.5 pounds. I wonder how old that bad boy is, and how many times it has been caught (and released)?
The only time I will keep a fish is if the hook has been swallowed so far into the gut that the critter has no chance of recovery after hook removal. Then it's "catch and devour".
Or, if said fish is a carp or a Northern Pike Minnow (aka squawfish). Those species get destroyed and either chopped up to bury under the garden soil or left on the beach so the eagles can eat their fill. If you leave a dead fish on the beach around here, it will usually be disposed of by the next morning.
Ahhh, ok. Thanks for the explanation, guys. I like to fish but I always want to return them to where they came from. I don't want to eat them. I can remember being 14 and staying on Catalina Island, fishing for the Marine Institute. Whatever fishies we caught we got to put into their teaching aquarium. HUGE thing!! It made me feel good that the fish were going to live and be useful for something.
definition of irony
Catch and release described by a guy with OJ for an avatar... i love this place.
definition of irony
> Catch and release described by a guy with OJ for an avatar... i love this place.
In the case of OJ, his catch had the hook too deep into the gut to release....
re:
>The only time I will keep a fish is if the hook has been swallowed so far into the gut that the critter has no chance of recovery after hook removal. Then it's "catch and devour".
Okay....that's bad.
