The catch to catch and release is that sometimes it's the law. If I catch a spoonbill catfish and get caught with it in my cooler, well, I'd rather get caught with a dead human body in there. Spoonbills are protected in the US and it is illegal to keep one if you catch it. It must be released. The same goes for other protected fish, fish that are out of season and fish that are under or over the legal size limit.

It is true that not all fish survive after being released. A good many do though. The ones that are hooked in the guts or pulled from so deep that their internals are damaged by the pressure changes are the ones who fare the worse. It's a good practice to handle a fish as gently and as little as possible if it's going to be released.

In Minnesota it's reccoommended that you release them before you get any on ya. Lots of mercury in them there fish it seems.

Apparently, the more you eat them, the less likely you are to use good practices when fishing.

I'm really not interested in debating much farther on this point, sport fishing not being one of my "pet isssues".

If it pleases you to think that what you describe in the sentence above does not traumatize a wild fish, then by all means, contnue. I will continue to disagree, but silently.

If one doesn't think fish suffer...just buy some gold fish and take care of them. To this day I feel bad for all the gold fish which I contributed to their demise... I did become very good at taking care of them and I should write an instructional manual regarding their delicate care. The experience changed how I felt about fish and fishing in general.

My husband and daughter are actually the fishermen in the family. We used to join a group of friends for a week of camping and fishing along the Santiam River in Oregon. It was a beautiful spot and a very restful vacation.

The original organizer of the "Fishin' Trip" is a man nicknamed 'Fish." He always used barbless hooks, even though he kept his limit, because he didn't want to keep wild trout. He knew how to tell the difference between hatchery fish and indigenous fish.

I usually didn't fish because I'm not very good at it, but I loved the camping and the quiet and the beautiful evenings--the stars were so pretty and bright--and, of course, the comradery. Now I think my perfect fishing trip would be one during which I caught nothing!

Fish laws can be confusing for the non-fisherman. Ellie once caught a sturgeon. In Washington, the law says that a sturgeon must be over a certain length but should not exceed a certain length in order to be a 'keeper.' As it happened, the one she caught was within the parameters and a picture of her holding it was published in a fishing magazine, since catching a sturgeon of the right size doesn't happen very often. If it hadn't been within the parameters, she would have had to release it, by law.