Fresno Fly Fishers
For Conservation
Conservation
Chairman: JOHN
CAMERON
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Lower
Kings and the egg incubator project
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The
Fly Fishers and the Kings River conservancy held a river clean up Saturday,
November 21.
Here
Are The Pictures
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Why catch and release?
I get asked that a lot.
Why do you just “throw them back?”
What’s the point?
The point, of course, is that fly angling is for recreation, not for meat.
The corollary to that point is that trout are too valuable to simply kill
every one that is caught.
People play golf for recreation, but seldom does anyone ask why the golfer
doesn’t take a ball home to eat, so why does an angler have to take home the
trout? Most likely, the angler wants
to have something to show off.
There is a better way to show off fish than to kill every one, or even most of
them. I was with a group of non
anglers last summer, and wandered off to cast a few flies.
When I returned to the group, I reported having caught a trout, and that
it was in my pocket. That, of
course, elicited some curiosity, so I showed them my digital camera, with a
picture of the trout on it. Today,
more than half of a year later, I still have that trout that is probably still
swimming in the lake.
Here it is, a brook trout resplendent in its spawning colors:
So,
you see, the way to bring home trout to show off is to take a picture.
That way, you have it, and it is still there for other anglers.
Note the eyes on the trout, looking down. It
is looking for an escape from its uncomfortable position, proving that it is
still very much alive.
The above trout is wild, meaning that it was spawned in the lake rather than in
a hatchery. Here is another
beautiful wild trout that is still swimming free, while I show it off:
Of
course, not every trout can be or should be released.
Some of the mountain lakes have brook trout that will overpopulate if all
of them are allowed to remain in the water.
Hatchery planted “catchables” are put there for the purpose of being
caught, so taking one or two for the dinner table isn’t going to hurt
anything. Trout that are bleeding
from the gills when caught will not survive, and may as well be kept if it is
legal to do so. Healthy, wild trout,
however, in a lake or stream that is not overrun, are far too valuable of a
resource to simply set out to kill a limit of them.
How to catch and release
Imagine that you have been running
for your life, that the predator catches you totally out of breath, and then
submerses your head in a bucket of water. How
long do you think you would be able to survive under such circumstances?
Of course, you wouldn’t be able to hold your breath as long as you
could normally. The same is true of
a trout that has been struggling against a line.
By the time it is brought to hand, it is quite out of “breath”, if
that’s the proper term for a creature with gills.
The lesson to that is to keep the trout in the water as much as possible,
lifting it out only briefly for pictures or to remove the hook.
Trout are covered with a coating of protective slime that most humans find less
than pleasant, but that is important to the survival of the trout.
Handling the fish removes some of that protective slime.
Trout should be handled as little as possible, and only with wet hands.
Always dip your hand in the water before handling the fish.
Better yet, don’t take the fish out of the water at all, but pull the
hook out with pliers or forceps, touching only the fly.
If the hook is deep in the throat, the only way to safely release the fish is to
cut the line and sacrifice the fly. Pulling
it out will injure the fish, and compromise its chances of survival.
Using bait is a sure way to ensure that most fish will be hooked deeply,
and will have little chance of survival. Using
barbless hooks with no bait is the way to go.
Never squeeze or step on a fish that you intend to release, as that will cause
internal injuries. Obviously, you
should never allow a trout to flop on the ground before release either.
Another consideration is water temperature.
Trout are stressed when the water begins to warm up, because that makes
oxygen levels go down. Struggling
against a hook and line will stress them even more, making their survival less
likely. Consider other waters
or other pursuits when the water warms up.
Trout that have been played out, and are simply laying in the shallow water
trying to breath, may appear to have a pretty small chance of survival, but they
can come to life very quickly if allowed to stay in the water. If the fish is
too tired to swim upright, it can still be revived by holding its head in the
current so that water flows over the gills.
Played out trout can demonstrate a remarkable recovery, as I found out
one time while going to get a camera to “keep” a fish that had been brought
to hand and was laying on its side in shallow water.
Imagine my surprise to return to find that the fish had not only come to
life, but had the power to tow a rod and reel out into the middle of the lake!
Had it not come unhooked on its own, that rig would still be on the
bottom.
This is, of course, not the trout that towed the rod, but it is similar, and
from the same lake:
While
the trout in the picture doesn’t appear to be very lively, it is still quite
alive and strong. Again, note the
eyes looking down. It was allowed to
swim free, where it may have been caught and released several more times.
Since that picture is several years old, I’d like to think that the
trout has now grown to trophy size. Maybe
a young angler will catch it, now that it has grown, and become hooked on a
healthy, outdoor pursuit. Maybe a
new fly angler was born, simply because that trout was allowed to swim away.
Isn’t that better than a fish dinner?
John Cameron,
conservation officer