My heart was nearly broken - how i almost hung up my poles - can you help?

[Piscine]

i prefer eating what i catch over market ANY DAY

i've almost always ate for dinner that night what i caught that day. heck, i've even fillet fish on the spot and thrown on the portable little propane grill. fish on the hook one moment, 10 minutes later it's in mah belly. don't get no fresher than that

Fast food, for men.

 

[TheBeastInside]

Typically i like to fish away from the crowds. But this past weekend the lake was quite crowded. So I began my bass fishing adventure like any other, throwing hula poppers with great success. In fact I had a fantastic day overall, landing and releasing some real giants.

Then I happened upon this boat, anchored and throwing baited lines. Two men proceeded to land a largemouth and release it, because it was too small, so that was nice. But then they caught a 5 pound hog, and added it to a chain stringer of 4 other largemouth, hooked by the lip and dying at the side of their boat.

I hadn't seen a sight such as this one in many many years. In fact i have not seen it since the days of fishing with my dad and my uncle, where catch and kill was not only an option, it was law in my family. My father, an immigrant to this country believed that it was his duty to provide for his family, and animals on the table were a means to this end.

I swear to you, my hand to God, my stomach turned and i spent the rest of the day and the long drive home contemplating the sport that I love so dearly.

Look here, i don't judge people who follow the laws of the land in terms of what they can catch and keep - and I enjoy a shore lunch of a single non-super breeder fish as much as the next guy - but I cant come to terms with what i saw, 5 beautiful 5 pound largemouth ready to die.

I swear to you this has broken a small part of me, and i hope this post doesn't sound sappy or maudlin, but can you offer any advice or sympathy in regards to someone who loves sport fishing for largemouth, but cant quite wrap his mind around killing multiple fish or limits of large breeding fish.

I have no where else to vent what i saw this weekend.

I hadn't seen a bass kept, outside of being put in a live well, for so long, i wonder if part of my passion died that day too.

Am i so foolish to think that as a nation, we were over killing large breeding females, could I have been so wrong?

I wish the regulations were much stronger, like slot limits for bass - just to keep my romantic notions of the modern sportsman alive.


Sorry, this is not meant to be a rant or a attempt to pass judgement at all, and i mean no offense to those who catch and keep.

Perhaps i am devoted to the wrong sport.

You are not alone sir. My thoughts match everything you said except I feel much more anger and a little more intense about it. I mean, one thing I find deplorable is even though we have regulations for fishing, these regulations are not enforced enough. I mean any joe blow can go fishing nearly anywhere they please without a fishing license, and catch as many fish as they please and break the law without any concern of the fish and get away with it. It just aggravates me. I mean I understand that they can't monitor every little canal, and pond but its just atrocious. The laws that protect animals are not enforced enough, and to me that is more important than many laws to protect humans. A portions of our money is going into the pockets of government officials and it isn't being used on important things, instead its used on stupid things like drug wars, new fancy roads, and other insignificant things. I also feel that the regulations need to more strict because the bag limits are far too large, sure most species may still be able to survive and not go extinct but their number should never go down, and if you eliminate humans from the food chain their populations will be plentiful and most likely remain plentiful. We don't need to eat the fish we catch, its just "look at me, look at what I caught" and to me that is not a good enough reason to kill a wild animal. It just makes me sick how careless we are as a species about other species who inhabit this planet with us. And it bothers me that the general population is uneducated or misinformed about the animals who occupy the same region they do. The news and its counterparts for misinforming the public about a "giant man-eating shark that will kill any human it gets the chance too" its just such foolish ignorance.

 

[fishwhisperer]

im not gonna lie.. i kept and plan on eating a 3lb i cuaght today...

 

[fishwhisperer]

im accually eating it now...