How we fish matters

[afishinado]

An article about C&R of trout and factoring in how, when and where we fish. We all may not agree with everything stated in the article, but food for thought.

https://www.hatchmag.com/articles/how-we-fish-matters/7715392

 

[Fredrick]

When water warms up be smart leave the trout be and go fish for snakeheads int:

 

[afishinado]

Fredrick wrote:
When water warms up be smart leave the trout be and go fish for snakeheads int:

Or smallies, if you can find any....

 

[a23fish]

Interesting article. I freely admit I'm not the best at handling & releasing trout, on occasion simply laughable. So, are there any articles or videos on the "best" way to handle trout you're going to release?

 

[Canoetripper]

Interesting article. At one of the fly casting courses that I took recently with TCO Boiling Springs, the instructor said that out west, killing non-native Brook Trout was encouraged.

I learned to fly fish as a young boy at a Dude Ranch in Wyoming. I was 10 years old and knew nothing at that time about wild and native cutthroats or stocked brook trout. A trout was a trout and all i wanted to was catch them.

At my R&G club in the Poconos I kind of think that we may actually stock too many trout given that nobody really knows that if this is biologically sustainable.

I am not a biologist and don't know the answer. I love the club and spend most weekends there.

Predatory animals like ospreys, eagles, mink, and otters are everywhere there because they know that there plenty of trout.

Members are allowed a weekly kill limit of 5 trout. I spend a lot of 4 day weekends(that would be 2 weeks) there in one of the 3 primitive cabins. At this time of year the stockings have long since stopped and the trout surviving and holding over have acclimated to the food in the water.

I keep 1 for supper and 1 for breakfast if I can catch them. I am very new at winter fly fishing.

I am experimenting with my cooking. The evening supper is grilled on my Coleman 4 in 1 cooking system grill, and the breakfast is in my cast iron skillet.

I am experimenting with breakfast grease like bacon or sausage, but am curious about lard.

I love waking up in the cabin and listening to and smelling percolating coffee while contemplating how best to cook breakfast.

I typically go for an early morning hike and wait until it warms up before attempting winter fishing. If it is too cold for me, I have bars to go to watch football or basketball. Winter trout, just like deer, can win when I am in the water or woods.

I am not really a cold weather guy but I do have a place to try my best at winter fishing and experimenting with cooking.

 

[springer1]

Agreed with what he's saying. Another thing to do is position your body to put the fish in your body's shadow when removing the hook. Otherwise they may be staring directly into the sun and incur sight damage. And I agree with the break-off risks to fish health associated with too light a tippet. Swimming around with a fly and a length of tippet is torture.

 

[silverfox]

Great article and it's a subject I've thought about a lot over the past few years. I've never been a "numbers" guy. I'm generally not a fan of "competition angling" because it really makes the sport all about the number of fish caught as a measure of "success".

For about the past 2 years, I've focused most of my personal fishing on targeting the most obscure/marginal water I can find. Water that by all rights shouldn't even have trout in it. I got over the comfort of fishing water I knew would produce a lot of fish pretty quickly. It's partly the monotony of the known and even the repetitive nature of fishing the same water. I like an adventure.

Getting into fly fishing for musky really helped solidify the mindset that it's perfectly fine to get skunked. I've caught enough trout in 30+ years of fly fishing. Today, on most of my outings, I'm happy to catch "a" fish or even move "a" fish (trout).

I've personally found that when you challenge yourself to fish far outside your comfort zone, and when you fail more often than you succeed, that when you do succeed, it makes the experience 10x more exciting.

 

[PennypackFlyer]

Very good article....I am guilty of a few of the mentions...I enjoy the tug which could indicate that I fight the fish to long, or try to catch more than someone else in order to have bragging rights....I will still get irritated when I see someone keep a fish out of water just for their 10 photo shots, or throw the fish back in from a high bank. And of course when they keep more than the limit or use a throw net.

But the worst irritation is when someone enters my domain without asking if it's ok.

I wonder what the kill rate is when they release trout from an aircraft?