Catch & Release fishing is doing harm

Well here it is, the answer to the question, not that I will stop fishing but it's been published.

Hot off the Press

CATCH AND RELEASE FISHING MAKES IT HARDER FOR FISH TO EAT

https://www.newsweek.com/mouth-injuries-hoo...ard-eat-1163203

Catch-and-release fishing might actually be doing more harm than good

https://bgr.com/2018/10/10/catch-and-releas...-fishing-study/

Thanks for the post Minnkota.

I had to laugh at the lead in on the second article where it states,
“ a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology suggests that the simple act of catching a fish may be enough to doom it to death, even if it is promptly returned to the water after being de-hooked.”

What the actual article cited actually said was,

“the actual impact on the survival of hook-injured fish was not followed”.

I love the left wing agenda in the article where they insert DOOM as the suggested outcome. The article did not suggest that death would be the outcome of catch and release. Wouldn’t more study be needed for this to even be suggested?

The article absolutely does discuss “Fish with hook injuries are less reliable feeders, which might put their overall survival prospects at risk.”

“Fishing injuries in nature are likely to depress feeding performance of fish after they have been released,” (doesn’t say for how long)

So we as fisherman know this. We have seen fish stung that did not want to commit to eating for awhile. We have also caught thousands of fish that have mouth wounds from catch and release and these fish are feeding again and healthy.

Articles like this that list “DOOM and Death” with no evidence are just the Left wing PETA pushers pushing their feelings down our throat with shocking headlines and statements that have no evidence to support such a potential claim.

Funny how catch and release has been proven to improve fish stock levels and assist in breeding adult fish not being eaten.

How about this study that actually follow mortality of catch and release fish.

https://adventure.howstuffworks.com/outdoor...nd-release2.htm

Yea. The articles are definitely left wing and should be taken with "a lot of gains of salt."

A lot of their comments seem to make bolt statements, then are not back up and the word "Doom" is pretty funny.

Dont really believe any of this. I could see if there is a big hole in the fishes mouth from a hook effecting their suction and making feeding more difficult.

I was never a fan of fishing for fish you have no intent of eating. It's one thing to release fish out of season, of wrong size or accidental by catch. It's different if you're catching them purely for entertainment and have no intent at all to eat them. Just seems wrong to me but to each their own.

I wouldn't rope, drag in, take a picture of and release a deer. That would be cruel. I'd have no problem to kill one that I intended to eat though. Same with fish. I love fishing but will not engage in pure catch and release - just doesn't seem ethical to me. I don't mind if others do it, it's just not for me.

I don't need studies to know that fish get damaged and/or stressed by being caught and released. It's pretty obvious to anyone who fishes.

First of all, whoever reads their news from that site is a fool. Second of all, everyone knows catching and releasing fish doesn't do them any good and third of all, I am willing to be that the majority of damage cause to fish from the hook is all caused during the landing and handling of a fish before it gets back to the water.

All they did was study how fish eat before and after being hooked and caught. Maybe these fish just decided to be more careful with what they are eating since the last thing they at was a hook!

Lefty PETA nonsense.

Catch and release is torture. What is the fun of hurting a living thing for recreation

Let me ask this question.
You go out fishing. Catch your limit in 30 min.
Do you go home or continue fishing.
Keep everything you catch in a small lake and you and the masses will decimate the population.
Many anglers in Ontario practice catch and release and that helps our population.
There are also fish that the Ontario Fish Guide recommends you dont eat. So you catch a big fish and it says dont eat it what do you do?
Hope some of these comments are sarcastic.

Skip the article, read the study:

What i gathered is, hole in the mouth makes suction feeding less effective for the fish, (no surprise there) but not enough data to decide if that will affect survival rates.



http://jeb.biologists.org/content/221/19/jeb180935

"ABSTRACT
Fishing is a popular and lucrative sport around the world and, in some cases, may contribute to declining fish stocks. To mediate this problem and maintain fish biomass in aquatic ecosystems, catch-and-release fishing, whereby a fish is caught and immediately released, has been implemented in many countries. It is unclear whether the injuries to the mouth that are caused by the hook have an impact on feeding performance of fishes. Using high-speed video and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), we asked whether injuries around the mouth caused by fishing hooks have a negative impact on suction feeding performance (measured as maximum prey velocity) of the commonly angled marine shiner perch (Cymatogaster aggregata). We hypothesized that fish with mouth injuries would exhibit decreased feeding performance compared with controls. Ten shiner perch were caught using scientific angling and 10 were caught using a seine net. Feeding events were then recorded at 500 frames per second using a high-speed camera. Compared with the control group, maximum prey velocity was significantly lower in the injured group (P<0.01). Maximum gape, time to peak gape, maximum jaw protrusion and predator–prey distance were comparable between the control and injured groups, leading us to conclude that the injury-induced hole in the buccal cavity wall reduced the pressure gradient during mouth expansion, thereby reducing the velocity of water entering the fish's mouth. This was confirmed with our CFD modelling. Fishing injuries in nature are likely to depress feeding performance of fish after they have been released, although it is currently unclear whether this has a significant impact on survival."

Interesting read. I know theres studies on catch and release for musky (big fish with big hooks), and those studies show that muskies survive and do well after catch and release. They aren't suction feeders like this article though.

I mean this article suggests every bass tournament is bad for whatever lake they are on. Or the hundreds of people every weekend who fish recreationally and have no intent on keeping any fish to eat.

I know the articles was kind of one sided but they did write those from the results of a scientific study and people read those one sided articles and you know the rest!

To me when I fish lakes with bass tournaments I can't catch a single bass lol maybe I cant fish!

This is just a study with some results we need more of these studies but even the studies we do we never see the results! Whatever happened to the whitefish catch and release study on Simcoe? I never heard anything about this study??????

I really don't think catch and release is a big deal, if properly done. I won't keep small or large pickerel even if legal, but if it is damaged I will keep whatever size it is. I think that if all fish that were released died, we'd see lots of dead fish floating around. Think of all the small perch that are thrown back.

Let me try to answer these questions. Just a note to make clear that these are my opinion on the matter and has nothing to do with "left wing propaganda" or PETA like organizations. I actually find PETA and the like very extreme on their views of animal welfare.

Q. "You go out, catch your limit in 30 mins. Do you go home or continue fishing."
A. You should go home unless you decide to stay and target another fish species. In fact regulations are clear on this matter.

Q. "Keep everything you catch in a small lake and you and the masses will decimate the population."
A. First of all one cannot keep everything they can catch in any lake. This is why there are MNR set limits, and every angler is bound to obey them. The limits are set, and whether you agree or disagree with them, laws have the last word on this. If the limits prove to be ineffective MNR can decide to decrease them or even ban the fishing of the given species to help stocks to recover. An example of it can be seen in lake Scugog for walleye.

Statement. "Many anglers in Ontario practice catch and release and that helps our population."

Fact. Nobody can say for certain whether C&R really helps fish population. Neither can we say for certain whether the mortality rate of the released fish is really hurting the numbers. There are however some facts that we cannot ignore. First of all hurting a living creature just for "sports" or "entertainment" is unethical. Why would you do something that you wouldn't do to your pet for example. Claiming that C&R helps protect fish numbers is a self-serving statement. It only looks at the subject from angler's and sports fishing industry's perspective and totally ignores ethics and the welfare of the species.

I for one believe that C&R unnecessarly stresses and hurts fish, especially knowing (seeing) how fish is handled by most anglers, more than occasionally fish are held and lifted by the gill plates, played for too long due to insufficent lb test of the fishing line used for the "sports" of it, or to be able to catch the inactive fish, fish let to flop on mud and/or gravel, fish taken out of the water for too long for photo opportunities and bragging, fish released without sufficent resuscitation, fish that have their swim bladder blown-up because they were reeled-in way too fast from deep water, fish that swallowed the bait/hook too deep to be safely removed, fish kept in livewells for too long and then suffer the stress of being weighted-in and displayed in fishing tournements, etc..etc..etc... All these and more vs. a claim that C&R helps improve fish numbers when in actual fact there would be much less fish to be caught had the ministary and special interest groups didn't heavily stock our lakes and rivers.

Q. "There are also fish that the Ontario Fish Guide recommends you dont eat. So you catch a big fish and it says dont eat it what do you do?"
A. Release it as quickly and safely possible. There will of course be unintentional catches of a fish too big to eat or out of season. The important part is not to intentionally target them.

Fishing shouldn't be considered a sport when there are so many other sporting opportunities without hurting living creatures. Humans eat meat, that's in our nature and people fished/hunted since the down of the humanity. They didn't think of the fish as a toy back then, why now??

Icecy - You will have to show me in the regulations where it says you should go home or target another species once you reach your limit..

The 2018 Regulations Page 8 & 9 state this:

If you catch a fish after reaching the daily catch or possession limit for that species, the fish must me released back in to the water immediately.

This includes fish that may be injured during the catch.

I have had MNR officers watch people catch 4-5 rainbow trout in Leith and Port Albert, with two already in the bag - no problem as long as the fish were quickly released , he recommended not taking them out of the water to do so. No issue whatsoever in targeting the fish. He did charge people for culling Rainbows off a stringer which is a a definite no-no.

I always thought the MNR started encouraging 'catch and release" to help off-set government (their masters) cut-backs in stocking and fish hatcheries.

I have to ask this question since you brought up tournaments being bad for fish (which I agree, just not to the same extent) and suggested stocking is the only thing keeping fish numbers up.......out of all the lakes I've fished tournaments on and even in general where do they stock lakes with bass? I just don't know how that's an actual fact but I'm open to being wrong.