Here is my take on the this topic. Myself, I do whatever it takes to return each and every fish I catch back into the waters (except for the fish for my tank ) I have no intention on eating fish unless I know for sure 100% that it's not going to make it. And even then I don't eat them, but I have plenty of friends that love them some fish. Around here, I think fish are one of the worst things you can eat and that goes for a lot of places in NA. There are many, many fish consumption advisories, if there is an advisory on something that is edible, I don't want to eat it.
Any fish that I want to mount, I get reproductions. Now the fish I currently have on my wall are real but at the time I was young, didn't know any better.
Eating fried fish is not healthy in any way, shape or form and the way I eat, I don't want that garbage in my body. Fried fish along with all the other chemicals in their body, no thanks.
It's up to each person do due their part for the outdoors, some don't give a crap, some are so so, some live it. Just because there is a limit of 6 fish a day, doesn't mean someone should fish the waters and catch their limit of fish for a month straight. The fish were not put there for you to eat (besides put and take), but certain places need fish to be kept when caught to help balance the waters. Not at bodies of water need to be balanced by man. Bodies of water have sustained healthy populations of fish well before man intervened. A lot of lakes that are unbalanced are due to human interaction more than anything such as over fishing, pollution, etc. The balance gets out of whack and its up to us to help balance it. Personally I think lakes, etc. can balance themselves out over a period of time. I remember as a kid fishing a lake behind my house, we always caught such small carp, bullheads, bluegills, channels and small bass. I started to stock the lake with bigger fish, mainly bass and catfish. I released my biggest bass to date there, was over 8lbs and caught her just after the spawn, so she was probably a good 10lbs just a month prior. Over the course of 5-8 years, the bass kept getting bigger and bigger, channels were over 10lbs, bullheads were less dominant in the lake, the carp started to thin out and grow bigger.
We got access to a small pond filled with hybrid bluegill. My buddy loves to eat fish, so he kept each and every hybrid bluegill. Well hybrids lay about 97-99% males, that's doesn't leave room for many females to live to become breeders. Well he took both male and female. Then his dad and buddy came down, they kept all they caught because the owner of the pond didn't know any better. Few years passes by, the pond isn't worth a crap now for hybrids, because there are very few left. I haven't been back in probably 5 years. I used to go there for the hybrids and grass carp. The owner wanted the carp out of there, told me to toss them over the hill but there was no way in hell I would toss out any carp. These carp were huge and was the place where I caught my biggest grass carp at 47lbs on 6lb test using bread on top water, just a few pounds shy of the state record at the time which I was trying to beat. They owner also said some of his friends put some large flatheads in their as well, he just did the arm thing, its was this <---------------------------------------------> big, so I'm sure those big cats helped demolish the hybrids. The bass weren't big, biggest I caught was maybe 3lbs.
Anyways, in the end I don't go around tell people what to do, I just wish more people would educate themselves on the outdoors more and take into consideration of the impact they may have, it's not only them that always take their catch home, its other people as well. But people will continue doing whatever they want, usually that's littering, killing fish they don't like such as carp, gar, other rough fish and being greedy by taking home all they catch. All I know is I do my part, as long as I do my part I'm happy.
By the way, I practice this when hunting as well but obviously I harvest them but don't over harvest. I don't wipe out every single squirrel I see in one set of woods, nor do I shoot 3 woodcock a day for the entire length of the season which is very easy to do. Usually my buddy and I make limits for ourselves such as 1 bird a day during the late season because of the hard weather conditions. We like to leave resident birds that actually stay in KY the entire season.
Here are my two biggest smallies that I have photos of. I had one bigger but was tossed out of the meat freezer when I worked at Thriftway loooooooooong time ago. Both were released for another day.
especially musky!