I don't think they'd get a Wingham membership !

[Andy_1984]

Gozzer, the topic as usual has swayed away from the video in the first post to a more general "why does it matter how you treat them since your sticking a hook in their gobs so whats wrong with giving them a boot kind of mentality"

 

ive asked once or twice what good it does trying to do your best to get them back using a bit of care during the whole process and havnt had an answer but get a load of bs about if you care about them then why fish for them.

 

Its getting f'kin stupid.

[Andy_1984]

p.s. phone. We being "anglers"

[Steve Walker]

I'm quite sure that a proportion do, Phone. Often anglers see dead fish after a competition and assume that it's from being kept in a net, and I wonder whether they would just have died out of sight and out of mind if they had been released immediately. However, the reason I am sceptical about figures so high is that many of our fisheries are so intensively fished that they just could not tolerate that level of mortality. Also, "known" fish are recaptured too many times for it to be likely that they are at 10% or 20% risk of snuffing it each time.

 

If, for instance, the last Wingham fish-in had killed 8-16 sizeable fish, I think it's unlikely that at least some of them would not have turned up in the margins over the next day or two.

 

On the other hand, I sometimes used to fish a small stillwater trout fishery where water temperatures were often marginal for trout by late spring. They allowed a "sporting" ticket option, take the first two and release the next three, or release five, and I can well believe that at that time of the year a significant proportion of those fish released would go belly-up. The economics of the place didn't have a problem with that, though, it was stocked with farmed fish and I suspect that very few would make it through high summer alive anyway.

[gozzer]

Tigger,

 

Perhaps you need to use Google Scholar also. You only wish it was "total poppy-cock". (One study that amazed me - "in summer months the Themes has 56,000,000 fish - in winter 8,000,000". Fish can replace themselves at an astonishing rate.

 

Steve,

 

For brevity, what number is acceptable? I concede different "studies" show different results. One can get mired in detail if you so choose (juveniles under 1 year for example). The fact remains - fish that "swim away" do so to die.

 

You seem easily 'amazed' Phone. The figures you state for the Thames, although I might dispute the actual numbers, I can believe the very rough estimate of percentage difference between seasons. In summer the fish have just spawned, and with each female fish capable of producing between thousands, and hundreds of thousands of eggs, then even allowing for non hatching, and initial predation, then the stock level will be very high. A few months pass and the on going predation, plus the loss of weak fish unable to survive the colder temperatures, and the population will drop dramatically. All this of course will vary according to species, weather, available food, and type, length of summer etc. So to put a definitive number on it like your statement, can only be a very rough 'guesstimate', because the population will vary greatly from year to year.

 

Having a quick scan through the paper in Steves link, I can see many differences between the fish, fishing methods, and conditions in the study, and those in the UK. I also think that the data would be different if it was done today, but included the influx of carp into the US.

 

John.

[kirisute]

re Phones figures:

our carp lake, is quite extensively stocked and fairly heavily fished.

I think I have found 1 carp dead this year so far!

last year im not sure I found 1 single dead fish!

 

our "bream" lake on the other hand had 4 or 5 bream floating about at the end of last year...but is hardly ever fished and certainly not heavily fished!

 

I cant imagine that 18% death rate of hooked fish is likely on most waters. to me that number seems incredibly high. I caught 10 carp the other night and with an 18% mortality rate one of them should have gone belly up!

and 10 carp out of that lake is a roughly "normal" catch for a day/afternoon.

given 5 -6 people fishing it per day (usually a lot more) the population in the lake certainly couldn't handle the pressure.

[chesters1]

found 3 myself today ,one obviously died in the winter and lay on the bottom until it warmed up ,trouble is i am only seeing a snapshot ,ten could die in a fight and the heron an otter ,maybe a mink or crow could remove the evidence by the next days snapshot.

generaly a match and theres a corresponding rise in fatalities.

strangely though the masses of rudd we once had have declined but no bodies to explain it.

 

not carp silver fish i hasten to add ,theoretically we have no carp nor pike but there are carp but not big enough or prolific enough to atrract carp anglers as such

 

richard walker did state carp decline in health and lose some weight after being caught but i have seen no real evidence of this on papwe but ofcourse in those days high protien bait was pretty unusual it tended to be bread cheese or more natural bait to eat in between being caught so perhaps they would decline a bit.

 

i have also wondered how fish caught innthe winter recover enough body weight to survive the winter after wasting energy being caught?

 

we now know (or are told) hedgehogs need to weigh xxx to survive the winter peehaps theres a bottom weight fish need to be to survive (as in size related) perhaps those nice roach foreys in the wintwr do more harm than we think?

 

andy just because you dont like the answers it doesnt meen your right and everyone else is wrong ,nor because you think something is so evwryone should think it ,you do what you like ,put your 2"rudd on a unhooking mat the size od a double airbed ,do what you want .

those that want to will those that dont wont ,those that do something against a rule will eventually get caught.

 

and if you really really respected and cared for fish you wouldnt fish for them ,whats so hard to understand !the fish in the vid were treated differently to some would like ,get over it

Edited June 3, 2015 by chesters1

[Steve Walker]

Fish don't have the same issues as hedgehogs and other mammals and birds because when the ambient temperature goes down, their energy expenditure also goes down. With creatures which have to burn energy just to maintain body temperature, the opposite is true. It's slightly more complicated in hibernating animals, because they don't maintain their normal body temperature during hibernation. Minimum energy use for a hibernating hedgehog is about 5C. Above that, and their body temperature increases, raising the speed of their metabolism and burning more energy. Below that, they start burning fat to keep their temperature steady.

 

More of an issue with fish in running water, because they don't have the option of keeping still and not expending any energy fighting the current - one of the reasons why river fish will continue to feed when it gets really cold and stillwater fish are hard to catch. Even so, I doubt many if them are borderline enough on energy that being caught once will cause them to starve.

[chesters1]

Fish don't have the same issues as hedgehogs and other mammals and birds because when the ambient temperature goes down, their energy expenditure also goes down. With creatures which have to burn energy just to maintain body temperature, the opposite is true. It's slightly more complicated in hibernating animals, because they don't maintain their normal body temperature during hibernation. Minimum energy use for a hibernating hedgehog is about 5C. Above that, and their body temperature increases, raising the speed of their metabolism and burning more energy. Below that, they start burning fat to keep their temperature steady.

 

More of an issue with fish in running water, because they don't have the option of keeping still and not expending any energy fighting the current - one of the reasons why river fish will continue to feed when it gets really cold and stillwater fish are hard to catch. Even so, I doubt many if them are borderline enough on energy that being caught once will cause them to starve.

never thought about it that way ..the difficult bit would be the ability to attain enough body mass to breed i suppose ,if the fish has become underweight over the winter getting caught a few times once the water warms up they have to feed more to catch up with the ones that slumbered untouched.

as you say rivers are different and feeding more important just to keep the strenght to hold position ,i presume (as i have never caught one) carp in rivers fight harder than pond ones of equal size ,although experience showed me wildies in ponds would be realy good sport if they were in rivers

 

not sure about trout though i have caught them in rivers and ponds and whilst the river ones "appear" to fight harder it could merely be using the river currents missing in ponds to help?

Edited June 3, 2015 by chesters1

[Andy_1984]

An unhooking matt for 2" rudd dont be silly they go on trebles.

 

Btw im not saying im right and everyones wrong just bad handling like whats seen should not be acceptable. You will find it hard to find any anglers that think it is acceptable(or just dont care) apart from the few usual suspects on here who "dont really care either way what people get up to" yet feel the need to dig me out on my views of it. Now thats funny

[Phone]

All,

 

Same old agenda (as noted by Andy) - UK vs the world.

 

BTW - those are not "Phone's" figures. Few in the UK will find angler related fish kills of much significance or consequence.

 

Steve,

 

Without me looking what % of dead fish there are that do not surface (for untold reasons). Don't most hooked fish die a slow death and become targets for predators. Isn't bladder hooking an issue in the UK?

 

Phone

 

If you are a successful angler you kill fish - how hard is that to accept?