It should be said that catch-and-release fishing is a fine conservation principle, but it is not a bedrock moral commandment that ennobles the catcher. I have kept no more than a dozen trout in the last 40 years; most of those were caught in an isolated lake in the Andes, where hardly anyone else fishes. It abounded with pound-and-a-half brook trout that would take on nearly every cast. Catching them was as easy as picking ripe apples off a tree. Their flesh was the vibrant coral color of salmon, and when cooked in a skillet over a wood fire, they were as delicious as food ever can be.
Still, the plain fact of the matter is, if you love catching wild fish, there is no way to sustain a fishery while keeping every fish you bring to hand.
Trout are one of the apex predators in rivers and streams. By natural law, there are far fewer of them than the insects and smaller fish that they prey upon. By the same principle, there are far fewer lions than there are impala, fewer wolves than elk, fewer alligators than bass. Top predators are an especially vulnerable natural resource and easily degraded. So if you enjoy the rise, the cast, the take, the bend of the rod and the song of the reel, catching and releasing is a wise practice.
When you hear people getting sanctimonious about it, however, it’s worth reminding yourself that at its most Darwinian level, the joy of fishing stems from the successful pursuit of food — that is to say, the killing of another.
Fishing, no less than hunting, is born of the same primal and lethal instinct. We may take atavistic pleasure in the struggle that ensues with a fish on the line, but the fish are unwilling partners in this exercise, and there is no question that they suffer. You can release a caught fish — with care to help ensure its survival — but you can’t do the same with a deer brought down with a rifle, or a grouse taken on the wing. As Lee Wulff sagely put it, in explaining catch-and-release: “Game fish are too valuable to be caught only once.”
Catching makes you happy. Releasing makes it possible for others to experience the same joy. We can be content to leave it at that.
This excerpt appears in Peter Kaminsky’s latest book, The Zen of Flyfishing, a
Workman Publishing title.
