Little J No More

Wulff-Man wrote:
thedude1534 wrote:
I'm not too sure of your definition of a yuppie, but I figure what you mean is someone who fishes with a large wallet, no ears, and a big mouth.
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....with a rod in one hand and a cell phone in the other while loudly discussing their latest big sale.
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Where have you been Wulff-Mann? These guys now have bluetooth, so the cell phone can stay on their belt while they talk. :lol:
 
Wulff-Man wrote:
FD, you said that you didn't think anyone was advocating removal of C&R regs. I was quoting Trubski. That's what he said in his original post, which as far as I'm concerned means he is advocating removal of C&R regs. Sorry for the confusion, I should have been clearer about what I was saying.
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Wulff -

You're right, I did write that, and I should have been clearer. I am definitely not advocating changing the regulations on the LittleJ. I don't like them, and I think we lose something with them, but on the other hand I have no good alternative to suggest. I'll just go fish somewhere else - that isn't so crowded :)
 
trubski wrote:
I'll just go fish somewhere else - that isn't so crowded :)
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I hear the Franky ain't half bad....
 
Good debate.

I find it fascinating how different the general ethic is so different in the two "bloodsports" I do regularily....fly fishing for trout and hunting deer.

This past year, their was an organization (The World Hunting Federation) who wanted to have competative "catch and release" hunting by shooting deer with tranquilizer darts and keeping score of their rack sizes. This was resoundingly declared unethical by the hunting community becasue it inflicted pain and caused stress on the animal with no purpose except entertainment. In hunting, inflicting pain on animals without harvest for food, hides, etc is generally considered unethical.

I then contrast this with my C and R fly-fishing......I inflict pain and degrade trout habitat for nothing but my own jollies.

Needless to say, it all makes me very conflicted.
 
Well its a good idea you are going to stop fishing the lil j .. After the recent release form the tyrone water and sewer plant . The amount of ammonia , and or other bio chem has killed the marcro and fisheries for a good stretch . Dont believe ask the DEP and the case that is presently pending. Also THE FISH KILL PICS ARE POSTED ALL OVER THE NET. I live on the the j , and I wont step a foot in it .. I fish spring creek which is over 30 minutes away ... Either way have fun buying new waders and fly line after the chemo destroys them ....
 
This past year, their was an organization (The World Hunting Federation) who wanted to have competative "catch and release" hunting by shooting deer with tranquilizer darts and keeping score of their rack sizes. This was resoundingly declared unethical by the hunting community becasue it inflicted pain and caused stress on the animal with no purpose except entertainment. In hunting, inflicting pain on animals without harvest for food, hides, etc is generally considered unethical.

I then contrast this with my C and R fly-fishing......I inflict pain and degrade trout habitat for nothing but my own jollies.

Needless to say, it all makes me very conflicted.
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I heard about that, and I had all kinds of problems with it. Tranquilizing large animals without harming them is a risky, uncertain business but because of the Discovery Channel most people don't realize that. But I was also bothered by sheer commercialism of the idea. The last thing we need is to turn hunting into another televised gladiator sport, with prize money and endorsements and a competition circuit. I'm afraid it is already too late for fishing (at least bass).

But you make an interesting point. I hunt also, and I guess I see hunting and fishing as part of the same spectrum. I know - it's anachronistic, nostalgic and belongs to a world that no longer exists - I'm just trying to keep a little of it. In Meditations On Hunting Ortega y Gassett wrote, "One does not hunt in order to kill. On the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted." For me, the same is true of fishing, even if it is only a once a year ritual. There are many, many flyfishers who don't hunt, though, and don't see it that way. They are probably more modern and more realistic than I am.

Have you ever tried (I'll bet we all share this one) to explain CR to your wife? Women don't get it, they're born killers. If you're going to fish, then why the hell aren't you bringing something home to eat? I think they have a point, even if they do need some conservation eddication.
 
lol you got me there. my wife doesnt get it. kinda funny you bring that up.....she makes fun of me all the time! :-D
 
Just to set the record straight, it's not the logic of killing a wild trout or two once in a while to eat if you enjoy them that I couldn't understand. It was the "have to kill one once in awhile" and the idea that it's our "obligation" to kill trout that perplexed me. As far as culling the herd goes, Matt, I'm happy for you that you have herds of wild trout where you fish. In my neck of the woods they've long since been whittled down to a handful here and there. In addition to the intense angling pressure they receive, they have many natural predators to keep them culled down as ian_brown pointed out. Water snakes, Great Blue Herons by the dozens,(one Heron can eat 8 to 10 legal size trout per day), Kingfishers, mink, and Otters which the State felt obliged to let loose several years ago ( which can wipe out an entire stream section in nothing flat ), just to name a few. What I really don't understand is that these predators get far more protection than the trout. I think Wulff-Man said it about as well as it could be said in his post on the subject.
 
Man has been a natural predator of trout for thosands of years, also.
 
I guess I should explain the whole "cull the herd comment". My thought process on this has always been that if you kill a trout that was dumb enough to take a fly then you leave that niche open for a slightly smarter trout who will then pass on his genetics, thus ensuring that the fittest offspring will be the ones reproducing. I know it's pretty far out and tough to get a handle on, but that's my theory. Some british science officer wrote a book about it some ways back but I'm sure he was a kook. :-?

Boyer
 
trubski wrote:
In Meditations On Hunting Ortega y Gassett wrote, "One does not hunt in order to kill. On the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted."
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I think I now see where you are coming from. If what he said were true, it wouldn't be called hunting. OK, he is entitled to his opinion, and so are you, ... and I am entitled to mine as well. Hunting and fishing mean different things to different people. My opinion is that he wrote that kind of philosophical horsecrap to make money.
 
MattBoyer wrote:
I guess I should explain the whole "cull the herd comment". My thought process on this has always been that if you kill a trout that was dumb enough to take a fly then you leave that niche open for a slightly smarter trout who will then pass on his genetics, thus ensuring that the fittest offspring will be the ones reproducing. I know it's pretty far out and tough to get a handle on, but that's my theory. Some british science officer wrote a book about it some ways back but I'm sure he was a kook. :-?

Boyer
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Yea, and I read somewhere that the average IQ of goats is about 6. I'm betting all trout are somewhere below that. You are darn right it is hard to get a handle on. So is a fart. :lol:
 
RRR wrote:
Just to set the record straight, it's not the logic of killing a wild trout or two once in a while to eat if you enjoy them that I couldn't understand. It was the "have to kill one once in awhile" and the idea that it's our "obligation" to kill trout that perplexed me.
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That one had me perplexed too, but it now appears that they are reading this crap.
 
I have a hard time grasping the logic on the objections to the “catch and release” hunting thing, too. Isn’t there a lot of pain and stress inflicted on the animal when the object is to kill it? I mean, not every shot, whether with bow or gun, is an instant kill. Sometimes the animal is just wounded, and can wander around wounded for awhile before it dies, either at the hands of the hunter who tracks it down, or a slow death if the hunter can’t track it down. Even if it’s a good shot, the animal may be in a lot of pain and stress for a short time before it dies. I can’t see that this is so much better than being tranquilized. Give me a choice between a tranquilizer and an arrow through the chest, and I’ll take the tranquilizer, thank you very much!

Now I’m not a hunter, and I don’t mean to irritate any of you hunters. I’m not saying that you are wrong to inflict pain and stress by hunting. I’m just saying that I don’t understand the ethic that says it’s so wrong to tranquilize animals instead of killing them. I can see the distaste for making it a circus atmosphere competition, though.
 
P.S. I just re-read Ohio's post, and I can kind of see the conflict with inflicting pain/stress just for the sport, and not for the food. But really, even if you eat the animal, the whole reason for the hunt is for the sport, whether you eat the animal or not, at least for probably 95% of the hunters. I mean, almost no one today needs the animal to feed themselves. It's all for sport, and your enjoyment of the sport. You're just kidding yourselves if you try to make it out to be anything else. If that bothers you, you shouldn't do it.
 
Re: "Culling the herd." A guy was telling me that his family owns a big tract of woodland with a brook trout stream running through it. He asked what was the best way to increase the size of the brookies. He complained that there aren't any big ones in the stream. He said, "We keep as many as we can catch, but no matter how many we keep they don't get any bigger."

And he was absolutely serious about this. Needless to say, his culling theory didn't work out in practice.

There is no basis for the culling idea at all. Unexploited trout populations are self-regulating. They don't over-populate for a simple reason. Trout are cannibals. They eat their young. That's why their populations stay in balance with their environment. So they are culling themselves. But the culling is done from the small fish. The big fish remain.

When humans "cull " populations, it's just the opposite. Anglers keep the adult trout and leave the little ones behind. So they are "culling" the large trout from the population. The result is just what you would expect: small trout.

Deer are not cannibals, so their population is not self-regulating. Their population is regulated by predators (including humans) and by disease and starvation. That's not the case with trout.

Regrading the harvest and eating of some trout to "keep it real." I know people who keep a small number, generally about 2 per year, of wild trout, just to "keep it real", to stay in touch with the tradition or whatever you want to call it.

And I respect that idea. But in all these discussions you always have to consider the impact on the populations. If every angler in PA kept 2 legal size brook trout PER YEAR, not per day, how many legal brook trout would remain? I don't have the numbers, but it may be that there aren't that many legal size brook trout in the entire state.

So all you blood sport philosophers, take up bluegill fishing. You can take a modest number and eat them without hammering the population. They taste good.
 
As a Catch-and-Release Bluegill angler, I am disturbed that anyone would encourage others to kill these fish. If every angler killed their daily limit of 50 bluegill, there wouldn't be any remaining to entertain me in my C & R pursuits.
 
Wulff-Man wrote:
I have a hard time grasping the logic on the objections to the “catch and release” hunting thing, too. Isn’t there a lot of pain and stress inflicted on the animal when the object is to kill it? I mean, not every shot, whether with bow or gun, is an instant kill. Sometimes the animal is just wounded, and can wander around wounded for awhile before it dies, either at the hands of the hunter who tracks it down, or a slow death if the hunter can’t track it down. Even if it’s a good shot, the animal may be in a lot of pain and stress for a short time before it dies. I can’t see that this is so much better than being tranquilized. Give me a choice between a tranquilizer and an arrow through the chest, and I’ll take the tranquilizer, thank you very much!

Now I’m not a hunter, and I don’t mean to irritate any of you hunters. I’m not saying that you are wrong to inflict pain and stress by hunting. I’m just saying that I don’t understand the ethic that says it’s so wrong to tranquilize animals instead of killing them. I can see the distaste for making it a circus atmosphere competition, though.
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Well, the distaste of making it a circus is enough reason for me to be against what was proposed. What the heck were they smoking, errr, I mean thinking.

first let me state again that i am not apposed to non-lethal hunting, but I am most definitely apposed to shooting deer with tranquilizers just for sport.

There are many problems with tranquilizing the deer. There is an enormous amount of stress, and the animals often die. Also, I don't know of any tranquilizers that are extremely fast acting and safe to use. Deer can run 40 mph! Are these guys really supposed to stick a dart in these deer, and then track the animal for a couple miles, with no blood trail? without using a helicopter? What if they don't find the animal? How long will the dart stay in the deer. I'm certainly not apposed to non-lethal hunting. It can be done with a camera. They could design special cameras that impose crosshairs on the photo of the animal. They could even use video cameras, and score based on the duration and quality of the video. I think hunting as a competitive sport is very distasteful, but if it has to be done, leave the drugs out of it.

Of course shooting a deer with an arrow or bullet is stressful to the animal, but the intent of shooting it with lethal methods is to kill that animal, and hopefully eat it. And another thing. Right now, the only reasonably effective way of managing the deer herd is through hunting.
 
JackM wrote:
As a Catch-and-Release Bluegill angler, I am disturbed that anyone would encourage others to kill these fish. If every angler killed their daily limit of 50 bluegill, there wouldn't be any remaining to entertain me in my C & R pursuits.
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That's pretty funny Jack.
 
Wulff-Man wrote:
P.S. I just re-read Ohio's post, and I can kind of see the conflict with inflicting pain/stress just for the sport, and not for the food. But really, even if you eat the animal, the whole reason for the hunt is for the sport, whether you eat the animal or not, at least for probably 95% of the hunters. I mean, almost no one today needs the animal to feed themselves. It's all for sport, and your enjoyment of the sport. You're just kidding yourselves if you try to make it out to be anything else. If that bothers you, you shouldn't do it.
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P.S. Very true. I hunt mainly for the sport, but to hunt [color=0000CC]only[/color] for the sport is wasteful in my opinion. I am selective of what i hunt. I wouldn't hunt for deer if I didn't like venison. I could legally shoot more than I do, but i only kill what I can use. Groundhogs are another story. Vultures have to eat, too.
 
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