I see endless posts about the trout people take out the waters to eat.

I must admit, I am new to fly fishing but when I was younger I did catch many trout and grayling in our local stream/river bait fishing.

We always made sure we looked after the fish and put them back healthy and was extremely sad when somthing would happen to hurt the fish.

Since joining this forum it seems most fly fishermen will kill the best trout they catch and then in the next sentence talk about how you should look after the fish by using barbless, unhooking in water etc....?

Is it just me that thinks you shouldnt kill the fish out of our rivers and streams?

I know i will get a torrent of abuse for this message, but go ahead....a good reason for doing it would be good though

Each unto their own mate.
I take very few fish each year and these are exclusively stocked fish. I can see no problem what so ever in doing this.
I now never kill wild fish such as grayling, brownies and salmon.I will knock on the head each and every rainbow I catch in a river.
They will get eaten though.

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It is in truth not glory,nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting,but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with his life.(Declaration of Arbroath, 1320)

It's just you.

Jim

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The Fishermans Friend is the Flirty Fly,Fickle Food for Fleeting Fish.

It may be just me. Grayling

I just personally hate the thought of killing the fish in our rivers.

I do respect the first post in a sense of only taking stocked fish, as where i grew up fishing was a place where the fish would never get replaced so amybe thats where i'm coming from

Maharg,

That's pretty racist in my eyes.

I'm with Maharg on this.I eat lots of fish,but theyr'e mostly stocked fish.I have a few grayling every year because I like it,and they are not endangered .but if you can't stand killing fish,then you may be in the wrong sport.what would happen if your hook had stuck in the gills,would you have a priest on you to quickly dispatch the injured fish ??? could you use it properly.

Jim

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The Fishermans Friend is the Flirty Fly,Fickle Food for Fleeting Fish.

Grayling....with all due respect i've fished for 20 years and for the first 6 years of that it was every day.

I understand that sometimes a fish will get hooked sadly wrong (too far down and in the gills so they just bleed and bleed trying to get it out) and yes I have dispatched a fish when it is needed....(feel sorry for it though as said in opening)

I also dont think there would be a need to stock fish if people didnt kill all the fish the caught.

What makes me laugh is he fact that people will bang on about barbless hooks etc, I would prefer people to deform a fish than kill it.

I think the key is that anglers need to take responsibility for educating themselves as to which (if any) fish can be taken from a given body of water and accept that in many cases the answer may be "none".

It may also be that when fish can be taken, it may well not be of the size or type that the angler would prefer. For example, in many trout streams here in the US, the slot size regulations only allow anglers to keep small fish. The idea being to eliminate the killing of trophy fish and those fish that have the ability to survive and breed over the long term.

I always cringe when I hear the old, "I only keep the odd fish or three for the table," line. The number is really irrelevant, you can do as much damage to a body of water by killing three fish that are in the prime size for breeding as you can by killing 50 smaller fish from a different body of water.

Everything depends on what the water will support in terms of harvest, if it will support any harvest at all. There are, unfortunately, still many anglers out there who still believe that keeping fish is some kind of birthright. The problem with the "one or two fish won't matter" theory is that so many anglers think this way, so that "one or two fish" quickly works out to hundreds or thousands of fish removed from the waters every year.

Obviously, I'm addressing wild fish here and not stocked put/take waters.

Grouse

Sorry but you did not answer my question,Do you carry with you a tool that comes readily to hand for Dispaching injured fish.
And Again I have to disagree with you about this matter.
There is never going to be enough fish in this country to satisfy the angling pressure without stocking.

Jim

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The Fishermans Friend is the Flirty Fly,Fickle Food for Fleeting Fish.

Sorry, honestly, you would prefer someone to keep a fish alive and in serious pain, rather than kill it?