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Taking fish for food?


Errrm

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If you like eating fish and you're allowed to take some trout/grayling, why not?

 

Everyone has their personal limits. I would happily knock a trout on the head to eat, but only if I caught it on the fly - I wouldn't do the same to a grayling, but I would to a pike or zander, however they were caught. There's no particular logic there, but that's what feels 'right' to me!

 

There's a stream I fish where a fly fishing club upstream stocks brownies and there is also a very healthy population of wild brownies (you can tell the difference quite easily, the stockies are much more pale whereas the wildies are really dark brown with bright red spots, beautiful). I am allowed to take 2 trout per week as long as they are at least 12". I've caught a couple that size on the fly in the coarse closed season, and a few in the open season on coarse gear, but I haven't been able to kill them. A couple of times I've had my priest hovering over their heads, but let them go instead. But I'd have absolutely no problem with anyone else taking them, and the stream can definitely affors to lose a few!

 

BTW a sharp knock above the eyes with a priest is the most humane way to dispatch a fish.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music

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If a fish goes belly up for any reason (perch or pike) the I think you have to take it home for the table otherwise it's a complete waste.

 

I'm not sure about that Neil, there's not much in nature that goes to waste.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music

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I am of the opinion that I would never eat something that I could not kill myself.

 

I guess this is a sort of conflicting way to approach this arguement but it is something that I truly believe in. If I didn't think that I could slaughter a cow or a pig then there is no way that I could buy it in a supermarket.

 

Perversely I have had friends who have sat down to eat and then when I've told them that the fish being served was caught by myself or my father would decline to do more than pick at it. If I'd not said that the fish had been caught or I'd said that it'd been bought from Sainsbury's then I know that they would have gladly eaten the lot.

 

As long as you intend to eat the fish, and your fishery can cope with losing what they have sanctioned then I see no harm in it.

 

Just because you can take fish to eat though doesn't mean that every fish you catch should be killed.

 

Years ago I was on a trout fishery where (I believe) the rule was that if you banked it you had to kill it. I saw an angler net a fabulous trout, unhook it whilst in the net and then turn his net upside down to let the fish go. When I asked my father why he'd let it go my dad said, that it was too good a fish to die so by not actually laying the fish on the ground the angler had got away with the rule. Still perplexed I asked why he'd let it go, I hadn't considered that over a certain size some fish don't taste as good, or that perhaps the fisherman lived by himself and would never have eaten this fish on his own, or that once a fish gets to a certain size the mere pleasure of catching it weighs far, far more than the eating.

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