lastofthebreed
Senior Member
As I suspect many of you did, I grew up fishing small rivers and farm ponds. Fishing was fun but it was also a means of putting protein on the table. If you caught a fish, the species didn't matter much, you kept it, cleaned it and carried it home for Mom to cook for supper.
As I matured, and money became less of a problem, I still fished. Now it was more about the sport than the eating. Boats came and went, rods and reels became more expensive and better. Electronics came along (remember the first Humminbird flasher?) and became even more sophisticated. Fishing is now more akin to hunting than it is to fishing. None of the advances in gear and electronics are a bad thing, progress happens.
In the last few years, I have gravitated to fishing for landlocked Stripers and hybrids. I gotta confess, I really dig the feel of a large Striper at the other end of my line. I still keep a few hybrids for eating, good filets from those 3-5 pound fish! I try to release all the Stripers I catch unharmed.
Now to the point of this post.
Last week I was trying out a new technique for catching Stripers down deep in the water column. About 9PM, I hooked and boated a nice fish. 16.8 pounds on my digital scales. I had him out of the water for no more than 3 minutes and was confident he would survive. I could not get that fish to revive and swim away and I tried for a good 15 minutes. The death of that fish left me with a bad taste in my mouth and put a damper on the rest of the evening.
Nothing to add except I'm sorry that fish died and I will not stop fishing because of this incident, but it did leave me with a bad feeling that lingers still.
As I matured, and money became less of a problem, I still fished. Now it was more about the sport than the eating. Boats came and went, rods and reels became more expensive and better. Electronics came along (remember the first Humminbird flasher?) and became even more sophisticated. Fishing is now more akin to hunting than it is to fishing. None of the advances in gear and electronics are a bad thing, progress happens.
In the last few years, I have gravitated to fishing for landlocked Stripers and hybrids. I gotta confess, I really dig the feel of a large Striper at the other end of my line. I still keep a few hybrids for eating, good filets from those 3-5 pound fish! I try to release all the Stripers I catch unharmed.
Now to the point of this post.
Last week I was trying out a new technique for catching Stripers down deep in the water column. About 9PM, I hooked and boated a nice fish. 16.8 pounds on my digital scales. I had him out of the water for no more than 3 minutes and was confident he would survive. I could not get that fish to revive and swim away and I tried for a good 15 minutes. The death of that fish left me with a bad taste in my mouth and put a damper on the rest of the evening.
Nothing to add except I'm sorry that fish died and I will not stop fishing because of this incident, but it did leave me with a bad feeling that lingers still.
