Section: tips-tactics
Bill RiversCatch & Release SensibilitiesImportant Issues |
 | Privileges, including hunting and fishing, can be extended or revoked by legislation. Political action groups are currently lobbying for restrictions on - even the abolition of - trapping, hunting and sportfishing. Total catch and release practices lend support to the belief that fishing has no purpose other than recreation - personal, sadistic entertainment - at the expense and suffering of living creatures. Animal rights activists must be made to understand that fishing has practical purposes, too - i.e. sustenance and nutrition, the monitoring of water quality, population regulation and conservation, and employment economics. |
| Research on live release, while incomplete, has proven inconclusive, even contradictory at times. The effectiveness of live release in sustaining or improving fish stocks has yet to be fully. However, experience and history have clearly demonstrated what overharvesting can do to fish stocks. Selective harvest is an affirmation, albeit unproven, that anglers believe that they can have an immediate, beneficial and lasting impact on the fisheries resource. |  C&R Motives |