Catch and Quit

Haven't seen a post here about this yet.

Catch and quit: Three good reasons to go beyond catch and release By Lee Merrill
To say that catch and release has been important to the preservation of trout fishing is a little like saying that oxygen has been important to the process of breathing. Without catch and release, except for small remote wilderness streams, our fishery would by now have breathed its last gasp. Nothing I say here is intended as a criticism of catch and release. I simply want to propose that the time has come to go beyond catch and release to an ethic that I would call catch and quit . One of the natural but unintended consequences of catch and release is the ideal of the 20 fish day. One outdoor writer whom I greatly admire recently published an article in which a very astute angling friend of his caught and released over a hundred trout in one day.

I would like to propose three among a multitude of good reasons why such practice harms the fishery as a resource and ourselves as lovers and respecters of the natural world.

#1. The streams are crowded The angler who stays on the stream attempting to catch scores of trout crowds the waters and is guilty of interfering with the pleasure of other anglers seeking at least a modicum of solitude. One spring I met a very happy fisherman in the parking lot of one of my favorite small streams. He had caught and released 27 trout from the stretch I intended to fish. Miles up the little stream I encountered his fresh boot tracks. Had he contented himself with five or even 10 trout, my day would have been very different.

#2. Not all trout live when they are released Even though proper release helps enormously, the more fish an angler releases, the greater the possibility that some are going to die. Not all anglers are good at releasing fish. With the best of intentions, the fumble-fingered among us kill fish. Even the most casual angler has witnessed the result of clumsy release ? those large dead trout turning white and drifting slowly along the bottom.

#3: We are better than that Catch and release was born of necessity, of the truth of Lee Wulff’s dictum that a trout is too valuable a resource to be caught only once. I would like to add that trout fishermen are too precious a segment of our population to fall for a pathetic numbers game.

I visited a friend last summer who lives at the mouth of the Hoarfrost River on Great Slave Lake. My last day there we decided to skip fishing and to do the family laundry in an old wringer washing machine. We held up stringers of colorful laundry for the camera and had a wonderful day.

For my part, I didn’t have fun doing laundry because I was tired of fishing. There were trout and grayling at my friend’s doorstep, and I couldn’t get enough of them. Perhaps it was the memory of an evening at Reynold’s Pass on the Madison. As the result of some foolhardy wading, I had made it out to a shoal in the middle of the river. I caught fish after fish, losing count until a fellow on the bank called out to me. I was sure he wanted to know what I was using, but he was up to no such thing. He pointed to the sun going down behind the mountains and shouted over the rushing river.

“Hey, don’t forget to look at the sunset.” There are more than 20, more than a hundred wonderful things to do while fishing. We are all of us good enough to know what they are. We should put down our rods and do them.

Conclusion In an effort not to be tiresome, I have tried to limit myself to three reasons to catch and quit. I cannot resist quickly adding a fourth ? catch and quit would be the best thing that ever happened to the guiding profession.

Several years ago I made the dreadful mistake of attempting to be a guide. The “20 fish day” was my undoing. On one outing I spent an excruciating morning, afternoon, and evening with a client who was determined to catch every trout in the river and to leave no detail unmentioned of his worldwide fishing adventures.

Before the evening rise, I thought it would be a good idea if we had a little toddy. My client declined, wanting to stay stone cold sober in case there were any more fish to be caught. Unfortunately I drank his share of the whisky and proceeded to fall ass over teakettle into the stream. It was very quiet at the bottom of the river. When I emerged, I told my client that I would waive his fee if he would just promise not to talk on the way home.

Even in its last days, there was a lot that was wrong with meat fishing, but the idea of a reasonable limit is something that was right. As practitioners of a privileged and soulful art, we need to seize on that right part and move ahead to an ethic that will put the 20 fish day as securely in our past as those grainy antique photographs showing proud anglers holding up stringers of a hundred dead brook trout. Unless we do, we will seem as destructive and slovenly to our children as our ancestors sometimes now seem to us. (Lee Merrill is a retired Northland College English professor)

First off, I don't think I'll ever really have to worry about catching too many trout. I'm kinda a natural "catch and quit" guy because I very very seldom catch enough to justify quitting.

Second, everybody knows a few guys who talk about how they caught 30 fish/day. Luckily, I hardly ever see these guys on the river.

Third, catch and release - while certainly better than meat-hauling - still stresses and potentially damages/kills fish.

I couldn't agree more with this post. Thanks for adding it, reverence for the river definitely belongs on tgr and i wish it was more prevalent streamside.

Stop and smell the roses, great advice.

who the fuck catches 100 fish a day? or sincerely wants to catch every fish in the river?

Get over it. Fishing is a process, not a scorecard.

I dunno about 100, but I know a guy who catches upwards of 50 a day. He takes lots of pictures of them laying on snow, dirt and (dry) rocks so he can show everybody. Oh - but he's catch and release, so I'm sure he only ends up killing 10 trout per day.:rolleyes2

Yeah - personally I'd get really bored if I hooked 50 trout every time I went out. I was on a little spring creek last summer and I must have caught about 25 trout. I got sick of taking out the hook and went home. Most unmemorable day of the season.