What is legal is not always what is ethical

                                                 Striper

A couple of nights ago I was fishing for stripers. I was using 4 inch zoom flukes on a small jighead. The fish were fussy but they were all around us. We would pick one up every five minutes or so. It was a fun night fishing. One of my last fish I caught was a schoolie. It was about 23 inches. Not a huge schoolie, but certainly fun to catch. Before I even had this fish out of the water I could see it was gushing blood. When I picked it out of the water I could see the hook from the lure was buried in the gills. The fish inhaled the fluke so far the fish had absolutely no chance of recovering. Sometimes when a fish is "gut" hooked you can cut the line and the hook will eventually rot out. This fish was hooked right in the gills, when I lifted it out of the water it looked like it was in a gory horror movie.

This is where my dilemma began. The law states I can not keep a striper under 28 inches. Therefore if I kept the striper I would be breaking the law. On the other hand this fish was basically a " dead fish swimming" the second it inhaled the hook. I did the legal thing and let it go, hoping it would magically begin to swim. It did not it rolled on the surface and then swam to the bottom. A few minutes later it surfaced ten yards away. Dead. Of course the best I could hope for is that it would be food for other fish and crab... the circle of life. However, the striper would be alive if I didn't hook it. I thought very hard about keeping it. At least the two fillets would not go to waste. When it surfaced I made a few casts with my popper and toward it, to snag it. I missed. Would I have broken the law and kept it? I'm not positive I would have. However if I would have hid it my bag and brought it home for supper, I would have felt less guilty than I do now.

I would like to point out that the law is correct. If the law was changed to " 28 inches or gut hooked" unethical fishermen would catch schoolies and purposely rip there guts out. The law is right but letting the fish go felt unethical to me.
                                                                
                                                              Trout

Yesterday I went trout fishing with Laurie. Rhode Island had there annual free fishing weekend. No license is required during this weekend. So I dragged Laurie to a pond that is stocked with golden trout for this weekend. It is also stocked with other types of trout also. Its kind of Rhode Island's way of showing off great fishing ( other states also have free fishing weekends), and it gives fishermen a chance to catch a really cool and rare fish.

I got to the pond late afternoon because of work. A ton of people were fishing for the trout. I noticed right away there were some trout on stringers that were HUGE. I am sure DEM put a lot of breeder trout in this pond for the free weekend. Some guys had limits of five fish that were monsters.

 In general terms any hatchery raised trout over 14 inches is a good fish. Some of hese fish looked to be over 20 inches. Here is my issue, but it is complicated so follow along.

1. These fish were giants. In any other pond on any other weekend these would be once a year trout. Your biggest you could ever hope for in the year. Yet guys were slaughtering them five at a time. It is legal to keep five trout, yet it would be nice if they could have been put back to be caught again. How about a five fish limit, but only one over 16inches. Or simply a three fish limit, that way 40% of potential dead trout would swim to fight another day.

2. In most waters trout are what you call " put and take" they do not survive the summer in most RI waters because of warm water and low oxygen. So it is true that these giants will die by mid June. However, I think it would be best if some could have been put back to be caught again by someone else. After all, mid June is five weeks away.

For the record, yes I was jealous that I did not catch any of these huge fish. I caught two rainbows. One about 16 inches the other 17. Those are large fish. I let them go. I'm not jealous bigger fish were caught, I am jealous that since they were kept, I don't have a shot at catching them.

                                                           Carp
Last week someone caught the new state record carp in Massachusetts.It weighed 46 pounds.  Unfortunaetely it was caught using a cross bow. Yes carp can legally be caght and killed with a bow. It is legal to do so in many states. The guy that shot it did so legally. However the carp was well known in the lake it was taken from. It had been caught at least six times ( three by the same person). That means at least four people had the chance to kill this fish for a record yet it was released. Those four people had the thrill of catching a fish in freshwater that weighed over 40 pounds.

Now the fish has been taken out of the lake. No one else will have the chance to catch this magnificant fish. Also a fish that size has the DNA to produce more fish that could potentially grow that size, the same way tall people usually produce tall children.  It was legal yet quite a shame that this fish is no longer swimming around.  You can read about the carp record, but take a second to read all the negative comments about the catch. http://www.onthewater.com/fishing/46-pound-monster-carp-landed-with-a-cross-bow/

So there it is. I wanted to keep a fish that would have been illegal to keep but was dead anyway. On the other hand I wish some of these monster fish that were alive ( all caught by legal means) would have been let go to be caught again. It seems to me that there is a big grey area within the confins of the law about what is right and what is wrong.