Would you still fish if all fish caught died?

[minno]

Yeah! So watch out if your a vegetable. LOL I like soup as well.




Minno

[Little grey men]

Minno

I know humans eat fish and crustateons, but we are the really lowest form of life on earth.. We torture and kill everything that has any type of flesh on it's body..
I can understand where Vegans are coming from.

The only reason Vegans don't kill is because they don't have enough strength in their little malnourished tofu fed arms to lift an axe. Do you think these poor buggars actually like eating kelp burgers.
It is our job as resonsible carnivores to force feed a steak to the next poor thin shaking vegan that we come across.

And yes I'm only joking........or am I.

[KGW3]

LGM..
It's one thing to be a fish and crab murderer.. But a fish and crab murderer with a sense of humour... We are all actually Omnivores, so the odd tofu and kep burger are ok.

[Little grey men]

Truth be told mate, I have a lot of friends who are vegetarians and I was really surprised at how nice a lot of that stuff is. I'm a huge chic pea curry fan now...but you must admit..Carnivore sounds so much cooler than Omnivore.

love your avatar......WOT ME WORRY !!!

[KGW3]

What avatar ???

That self portrait was done recently by a local artist..

[Little grey men]

Well in that case, you were truly blessed with astonishing good looks my friend.

[Chas & Clarry]

Now we are all just hoping that your's isn't a sefl portrait LGM

[Barraless]

Yeah my catch rate is a little too lean to depleat our stocks! Unless cat fish are endangered

[Little grey men]

Now we are all just hoping that your's isn't a sefl portrait LGM

Hey, I'd be happy if I was half as hansome as that cod.

[Maxg]

People who make statements about fish survival should consider this.
Firstly the ocean is a meat grinder and fishes are the meat source.
Only a very, very small percentage of the oceanic fishes are hooked, whether they are released or not. And if they all died it would not be anything like the number of fishes that die because of natural causes. Like being eaten by bigger fishes.
Commercial fishers, world wide, kill so many fishes the effect of recreational fishing on fish numbers is not worth bothering about. But the effects of the commercials on the bottom of the food chain, the pilchards, herrings, sardines etc, the oceanic bait fishes, creats more problems that any commercially caught other fishes, Aquaculture is a very serious problem due to the number of bait fishes fed to the aquaculture species. Like millions of tons yearly. So much so that the lack of bait fishes has caused the ocean to go from a Co2 absorber to an emitter which seriously adds to the GHG problems.
So why all the fuss. There is always a fuss.
Example the number of marlin tagged and released over a 10 year period on the GBR amounted to in excess of 20,000 and only 189 tags were returned.
So where were the other 19,811.
No-one can say, and if you ask who returned the 189 tags, they were mostly from longliners.
There are some pretty sad stories on www.western angler.com.au about black jews, and poor old mulloway and we now know that demersal fishes taken from depths greater than 30 metres do end up dead from the effects of barotrauma. Specifically the bends caused by circulation cessation due to swim bladder expansion, which causes the capillary vessles to be destroyed by expanding blood gasses. Victims bleed to death in 3 days, no matter how well the fish is treated.
Western Dhufish are very sad cases when taken from even shallow depths and it seems that the wonderful lead weight release system doesn't really work because the damage is done on the way up.
Sooner or later it will hit the Fisheries and Angling Associatiions that what they thought happened is almost certain to be not the case and there wil be some very red faces on a number of very big knobs in certain Fishing Associations who have been mouthing off over the years about how wonderful the thing is.
You do less real harm if you just eat what you catch, but there is nothing wrong with releasing fish, if it gives you a thrill because the predators will clean up after you in short order.
Fish are live animals, not just objects for our fun and joy, and they have a very sophisticated metabolic system, which is seriously effected by stress and handling, and one has to handle fish to release them, mostly. But that good old barotrauma is the killer. Pretty deadly stuff.
I don't release fish I can eat and the others I can't eat I do release because it doesn't matter a toss one way or the other.
Cheers Max Garth

[onerabbit]

well said MaxG

Muzz

[Maxg]

Well have been to a meeting, to discuss the rec fishing future, and unless someone does something about catch and release things are going to get tougher.
Fact is, with rec fishing alone, ever since bag limits were introduced they have been getting reviewed every few years and reduced, until there isn't much left to reduce. The point is that all the while anglers have been doing the catch and release. And its unregulated and obviously uncontrollable.
No matter what the bag limits are, anglers will still fish and use catch and release. With demersal fishes, the snappers etc, the survival rate is species and depth dependant, and if it get under 50% you would be very lucky.
And therein lies the problem, anglers mostly don't know anything about it because the "facts" you are fed are not "facts" as such but hopefull guesses.
Most damage from biotrauma is as I have already said, from the "bends" circulation failure due to swimbladder expansion and resultant capillary failure. So its like odds on that if you bring up a fish that has a badly swollen belly, its already on the way to being dead. If its stomach is out its mouth, its gone for all money.
There is a hell of a lot of stuff available on the net, but in WA on Dhufish, baldchin groper snapper mulloway and black jew, apart from a lot of others not mentioned, are on the way to extinction if catch and release isn't hit on the head.
Fisheries have had a lot of changes made, by the Minister, to commercial efforts and commercials can no longer catch crays and do the bait fishing bit at the same time.
The story is that demersal fishes are in the hot seat, catch your bag limit of te demersal species and then go looking for tailor, or pelagics. Or whatever. But change your ways, or there won't be anything to catch.
Its your ball in the court.
maxG.

[fish-n-dive]

I generally eat what I catch so I voted yes. Because this is a hypothetical question, I don't see moral issues of keeping and eating undersized fish coming into it. If everything caught died then the Gov would have stricter laws in place to counter the devastation..................

[artesian]

Hello Max,

It's always interesting to read what you have to say.

I usually only fish to eat what I catch, provided it is legal of course.

But I am about to make my second trip to Monduran to catch and release the barra there. Catch and release, because the one and only I ate tasted pretty ordinary, and I say that as someone who likes yellowbelly and bass :-) on the plate. It was 114 cm and fat like me :-)

I'll be thinking a fair bit more about how that fits my values I guess. May have a lot of lures, and a couple of rods and reels to part with...............

Were you involved in the discussion a year or two (or three) ago about camera flashes and barra eyes? do you know where that ended up?

[Cammy]

i said i was unsure, because i am unsure. max has given me a different view of fishing.thnx

cam