From the minnow chaser thread - An ethics lesson

TimMurphy

TimMurphy

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Dear Board,

This quote was lifted from Mike Richardson's Minnow Chaser/ mini Wooly Bugger thread, post #8 IIRC.

"Listen to Chaz apperantly he knows everything. I would tie them in size 10-16. No way a 5" brookie is fitting a size 6 hook in its mouth. Without getting the point threw its eye. If your fishing for big wild brookies only. Your kinda missing the point."

Anyone who fishes catches dink fish from time to time, some more than others.

However, seeing advice as to the proper way to tie wooly buggers in order to catch 5 inch fish disgusts me.

If the brook trout water you are fishing yields fish that are generally sub-legal in size here is where a lesson in angling ethics will come in handy. I'll make it blunt and to the point.

Deliberately fishing for 5 inch trout is not ethical, period. An ethical angler who finds his/herself repeatedly hooking sub-legal fish will always seek greener pastures, so to speak.

Catch and release can be a wonderful tool to enhance fishing opportunity. However, it has to be practiced by ethical people and not just by people who feel that as long as they are living within the rules no harm is being done.

Deliberately hooking sub-legal fish for the purpose of amusement violates the rules of ethical behavior, no matter how much care you exercise in the process.

You can argue with me if you'd like but you'll be pissing up a rope because what you are doing is indefensible.

Regards,

Tim Murphy





 
I'm not sure the OP wasn't using an element of hyperbole when mentioning 5" fish, but they will have to chime in to defend themselves. My experience has been that going up to a 10 or 12 for buggers works best on the brookie streams that I fish, but that has as much to do with the size of the stream and the size of the rod I'm fishing as it does the size of the fish. I've caught some tiny natives on bigger hooks (i.e. if I run out of smaller buggers and have to use something from my brownie box); one in particular from last winter I remember, because the bugger I was fishing was more than half as long as the fish was and I said out loud "How is that even possible?". So even going up to a size six WILL still let you catch sub-5" fish. I look at a 10 or smaller bugger more like a nymph anyway and I don't think its a fair statement to say that you shouldn't fish nymphs on brookie streams. Incidental hooking of small brookies is going to happen; I didn't gather that the OP was necessarily targeting or champion a method to optimize the catching of sub-legal fish.
 
TimMurphy wrote:

Deliberately fishing for 5 inch trout is not ethical, period.
Deliberately hooking sub-legal fish for the purpose of amusement violates the rules of ethical behavior, no matter how much care you exercise in the process.
Tim Murphy

Tim,
Dang ....looking to stir the pot today eh? :)
Okay, I'll take the bait (offered, no doubt, on a very small hook). :)

Fish size is relative. A 5" brook trout is a fully grown, sexually mature fish in many waters.

The problem with your assertion is the conception of what constitutes "legal sized." If it's unethical to target "sub legal" fish.......then, by this reasoning, it would be unethical to to cast to a foot long trout rising in a stream managed under "Trophy Trout" regs. After all, that fish is "sub-legal." And what about other fish? One cannot, in my view, select different fishes in a vacuum when making philosophical assertions. Take bluegills for example. They have no minimum size limit (to my knowledge). Is it therefore ethical to target 5" bluegills and not 5" brookies merely because one species has a minimum size? I think in many PA waters, the bluegills have a larger average size than the brookies. Personally, I have no problem catching 5" brookies or 5" bluegills. To condemn as unethical one who fishes for fish that are deemed "sub-legal" when "legal" is a largely arbitrary concept is rather unfair in my view. Certainly, one ought to consider typical fish size when choosing hook size as a matter of practicality. It's worth remembering that a 5" brookie has a much larger mouth with its eyes further from the jawline than a bluegill of the same length. Should the PFBC, in a good faith effort to protect fish of a certain size.....put regs in place to limit the size of the hook relative to the fish's morphology? It would be almost impossible to reasonably construe such a reg because of the diversity of fish size and species across PA.

There's nothing wrong with catching a 5" brookie in a stream with a 7" "legal size limit anymore than there's anything wrong with catching a 14" bass in a river with "Big Bass" regs. My thoughts for what they're worth.
 
+1 to FI. When fishing for Brookies you're rarely targeting a specific rising fish...you're casting to a likely holding spot looking for a reaction strike. No way to know how big the fish is in that lie until you catch it. IMO even "sub-legal" Brookies can be safely caught on small Buggers or streamers with no appreciable increase in danger to the fish. Keep in mind a size 14 Bugger to a 5-6 inch Brookie proportionally is about the same as a size 8 Bugger in a 10 inch (legal) trout. The allure of the wild Brookie is the beauty of the fish and where they're found. Not their size. Crush your barbs, practice C&R, and all will be well.

Tim - Respectfully, I think you're a couple inches off on this one bud.
;-)
 
Fi and swattie I agree. So basically you shouldn't even fish for Brookies? And if you catch a small fish on a stream like Clark's where there's healthy small wild trout you should just go home? What's unethical is using large flies for small fish! I can only imagine how many fish these people kill. Again unethical. Hell no one should fish at all I guess.
 
I agree with the above posts. Using Mr. Murphy's code of ethics would pretty much deem it unethical to fish many or most of the small brookie streams and the headwaters of some of the larger streams.

IMHO, it may be more unethical, in some cases, to fish for larger fish such as the breeder smallmouth bass which remain in the struggling lower Susky River. I don't think we are there yet in the Susky, but we seem to be getting closer to that point. Sad.

 
I agree with Tim to a certain extent: if you don't get a majority of fish over 7 inches, you should consider fishing a different stream, unless you size it down a bit. I could not care less if you like to chase blacknose dace on the fly, but for crying out loud, size it down!
 
This is what I got out of it...............An old guy, that favors fishing for brookies, is unethical......
 
Fishing for big fish with big flies and catching small ones only to injure them with the big flies is unethical (incidental but unethical to continue to do so)

Sizing it down so you don't hurt the little guys is where Tim asserts the ethics issue.

I don't think catching a fish or two under legal size is his point. Sizing down to catch many as to not injure them is his point. I disagree with it in being unethical I see it as responsible. I would however probably move on after a few though. Or actually go UP in hook size to keep them off the hook. If I knew there were big fish in the stream.
 
Maurice wrote:
Fishing for big fish with big flies and catching small ones only to injure them with the big flies is unethical (incidental but unethical to continue to do so)

Sizing it down so you don't hurt the little guys is where Tim asserts the ethics issue.

I don't think catching a fish or two under legal size is his point. Sizing down to catch many as to not injure them is his point. I disagree with it in being unethical I see it as responsible. I would however probably move on after a few though. Or actually go UP in hook size to keep them off the hook. If I knew there were big fish in the stream.

Tim Murphy wrote:
Deliberately hooking sub-legal fish for the purpose of amusement violates the rules of ethical behavior, no matter how much care you exercise in the process.

Mo,

I believe Tim is saying quite the opposite. Read his quote. Sizing down to catch the pee pees is exactly what he is against, at least the way I read it.

Far be it for me to get into Tim's head, though....a scary place to be. :-o
 
I think thats what I was saying....read it again. At least that is what I was trying to say.
 
To reduce this to its simplest terms, isn't the mere act of impaling a fish on a sharpened piece of steel and dragging it through the water for one's enjoyment "unethical" in the first place??? ;-)

 
I dunno, Mo. The bold text in the quote below makes it sound like it's not eithical to fish streams that only hold small fish, which btw, are many of the small brookie streams and headwaters in PA.

If the brook trout water you are fishing yields fish that are generally sub-legal in size here is where a lesson in angling ethics will come in handy. I'll make it blunt and to the point.

Deliberately fishing for 5 inch trout is not ethical, period. An ethical angler who finds his/herself repeatedly hooking sub-legal fish will always seek greener pastures, so to speak.

We (or at least "I") need Tim to clarify.
 
Thats what I said he was saying...I'm not sure what your point it. I didn't say I agree with him (although I won't spend a day trying to do it) I tried to clarify his position and mine. Unsuccessfully I suppose.
 
Okay, do you think it's unethical to fish a brook trout stream which is populated only with small fish? If so, why?
 
I said I don't think its unethical so long as you are not abusing the fish with big hooks. I also said I wouldn't bother doing so because its boring lift those little wigglers out of the water time and time again.

Little brookies are for children, just like bluegills are for children and old men. And bait too....for children and old men.
 
wgmiller wrote:
To reduce this to its simplest terms, isn't the mere act of impaling a fish on a sharpened piece of steel and dragging it through the water for one's enjoyment "unethical" in the first place??? ;-)

That's pretty much the conclusion I draw anytime debates start about whether a fish was properly landed or not, or a net was used, or it was played too long, or a fly was sized too big (or too small), or your hand wasn't wet enough while holding the fish, or the fish is touching a rock/grass/snow/space dust/whatever. A fish, searching for a prospective meal, that is displaced from its natural environment by another mammal, strictly for the sake of that mammal's enjoyment, could be construed as having been wronged, by that mammal's activities :)

Winter time is definitely setting in!

 
I was told by a very wise old fly-fisherman many years ago that "stocked fish and bait fishing are for kids and old men."

Brookies and bluegills were never mentioned.
 
Ethics is directly related to abuse of a resource or model. In fishing, if you consider the resource you are using; brookie stream with sub legal fish the question becomes are you abusing the population or repeatedly and therefor intentionally hurting fish. Likely the population can support some incidental mortality form a few sub-legal fish hooked through the eye while fishing for larger trout. Making this catch the goal of the day is what is unethical. Sizing down and not hurting the fish is "more" ethical but not my cup of tea.

Targeting bass on redds is apparently unethical because there are laws to prevent it as it can damage populations. So you can't keep them that time of year or target them directly.

As to fish handling as WG and Salmonoid say there are gonna be bumps, and bruises along the way. Recognizing these shortcomings and understanding their consequences and altering behaviors is the determining factor for whether you are engaging in a few isolated incidents or being unethical.

To say fishing as a past time is unethical because it involves parts of or can result in unethical behavior is not a fair evaluation. Its an over the top, extremist viewpoint that displays the naivety of the accuser'
 
I target 5" fish all the time.

I mean, don't get me wrong, even in the smallest streams I enjoy catching bigger fish, and do on occasion. But "big" is a matter of perspective, and you have to have a different perspective for every water.

I also enjoy going to the extreme headwaters, seeing how far up the fish go. I've fished streams beyond the point where they become intermittant (and not in a limestoner sort of way). And I do get into places where a 5" fish is respectable, and 7" is truly large.

As FI said, in these situations a 5" fish is not a youngster, it's a sexually mature fish. IMO there is no ethical problem whatsoever in targeting them.

I do agree that you shouldn't use huge streamers to do this and risk hurting the fish. 14-16 barbless dry flies work fine.
 
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