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

[chesters1]

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

Trouble is youve ramped it up from "thats horrible" to verging on hysteria and almost demanding the death penalty to force your point across ,now ask your mummy for some ritalin and calm down ,the bad men will go in gods black book my dead mum assures me

[Steve Walker]

Most dead fish will surface once they start to rot. Maybe with a lot of weed or a very large water they would not be detected, but I think if we were having mass casualties we would know about it. Our waters are mostly too small for it to go unnoticed.

 

I expect a lot of small fish will be picked up by pike, but in the Wingham example, there's nothing in there that's going to swallow a 5lb tench. Deep hooking is not a routine thing in the UK. It happens, particularly with perch, and I suspect kills them fairly often, but mostly people use either very sensitive tackle which shows bites easily or else self-hooking bolt rigs which almost always get the fish in the lip.

 

Do you get it a lot in the US? I get the impression that a lot of people are fairly casual anglers and use very crude tackle, huge bobbers, etc? I have noticed that a lot of Scottish fly fishermen are disparaging about the possibility of catch and release on bait, but their experience of bait fishing seems to be people with heavy gear chucking worms out under bubble floats and waiting for the trout to swallow it. Do you get a lot of that sort of thing?

[chesters1]

We had a large fish kill a few years ago ,i was removing 15 -20 a day ,the crows soon learnt to get the bodies in lillies even the ducks joined in ,all slowly went back to normal then after a month or so suddenly scores of what looked like man of war jellyfish appeared and floated about ,they were ofcourse the swim bladders popping out of the decomposing fish on the bottom and moving about with the wind.

From then on the ponds recovered been restocked several times but its not fishing as well as it did before sadly

[Andy_1984]

Death penalty ? Get a grip chesters. Im making as much a case against as you are for it, if you know what i mean. so dont give me the hysteria bullshite trying to make yourself look "above it all"

[chesters1]

Theres a case?

[Phone]

Steve,

 

Yes and Yes. There are no National regulations. Each state regulates their anglers. Casual anglers (as you describe them) out-number "serious" anglers probably 200:1 (Newt may have a comment?).

 

Even the most serious angler will not be caught using "fiddly" Euro gear. Average (maybe mean) hook size is closer to 2/0 than it is to 8. We use heavy line, by your standards, and still are able to catch fish.

 

We don't consider fish as being very smart like you do in the UK. We rely on attacking instinct (either the "****-off" or "pig feeder" approach).

 

You have NOOOOoooo idea how many fish and venues we have available. The US is certainly blessed in this respect.

 

Phone

[Steve Walker]

That's much what I imagined - just so much space.

[Tigger]

If so many fish pop their cloggs simply through being hooked then why are there so many repeat captures, some well known fish are caught a couple of times a week or even more. I know i've caught the same fish many times and often in the same session.

[Tigger]

If so many fish pop their cloggs simply through being hooked then why are there so many repeat captures, some well known fish are caught a couple of times a week or even more. I know i've caught the same fish many times and often in the same session.

[Andy_1984]

If so many fish pop their cloggs simply through being hooked then why are there so many repeat captures, some well known fish are caught a couple of times a week or even more. I know i've caught the same fish many times and often in the same session.

They were probably handled better.