I took a trip to the headwaters of the Connecticut River
recently. I naively yearn for fishing locations where I have to bushwhack my
way to the water with a machete, but I’m not alone in my love for fishing, and
the world is such an overpopulated mess that I can walk up and down well-worn
paths along both sides of any river that still has fish in it and be happy
while my idealism slowly dies.
One morning I got down to the stretch of river between Lake
Francis and Third CT Lake. It was pretty
crowded… Every one of the real fishy spots had a guy in waders standing in
it. This is not a big whoop, by the way,
those other hearty souls have every bit as much of a right to be on that river
as I do. I should have gotten my ass
over there earlier if I didn’t want to hike farther into the river system than
anybody with any sense wanted to in order to find myself a nice patch of
fish-holding sweetness that hadn’t had 50 years of daily beatings.
I got down to a nice hole that I’ve had success and failure
in before, but there was a guy there already.
As I made my feet fall softly and moved slowly among the ferns by his
pool, he hooked a fish and had it ready to net.
This is where the shit-show started and a lifetime of sadness and anger
boiled up inside me. Instead of bending
down and netting the fish while it remained in the water, he lifted it out of
the water with his line and started trying to catch a bouncing fish in the net from
mid-air like it was a toy. The fish was
wiggling like crazy and his first few attempts failed to catch the fish in the
net, but he did give the suffocating, horrified fish a good beating with his
net. Once he grabbed the fish against
his chest with a dry hand and tore the hook out of its mouth by yanking on the
tippet and he squirted the fish back into the water like you would a bar of
soap in the shower if you were seven years old and having a bit of fun.
He was a friendly enough guy. I talked to him for a little while even
though in my heart-of-hearts I kind of wanted to beat him with my net, but I
kept an eye on the water close to us while pleasantries passed between us. There was a little eddy about 5 feet away,
and sure enough, belly-up for the entire world to see, our recently deceased
trout was swirling around in there. I
pointed with my rod-tip and said, “Hey look, there’s a dead fish, I wonder what
happened.”
He said, “Whoa, he looks like a good fish too!”
I just wanted to fish, so even though my innards, on every level,
coiled like a snake, I blew it off and didn’t press the issue any further
because the river already had its corpse for one day. There was nothing I could
do to help the fish, and I figure crayfish have got to eat too, so I just hopped
from boulder to boulder downstream thinking about the great circle of life and
all of that. One thing I can do after
the fact though is contemplate a few finer points of releasing a fish that you
don’t intend to kill, bring home, and share from a generous heart.
1.
A trout that’s out of the water for more than
30-45 seconds is going to croak whether you put it back in the water or not. Scientists have studied this shit. Science is not a vast political conspiracy. This
is going to vary from species to species and between individual fish, but that’s
roughly how long you’ve got to free the hook, get the trout back underwater, and
hold it there until it swims off under its own power to go be a trout in peace. I have gotten into the habit of holding my
breath while I take a fish off the hook.
While I’m doing my best to free the terrified creature, if I feel like I
need to breathe, odds are that the fish does too, so I’ll give up if I haven’t
gotten the hook out and submerge the fish for a little while so it can regain
its strength before I try again. Oh, and
the clock started ticking while you were swinging the fish around trying to net
it in midair, you fucking retard.
2.
If you had your fun catching the fish and want
to let it live to fight another day, wet your hands before you touch it for the
love of all things holy. The slime that
coats a trout’s entire body, the one that’s a total pain to clean off when you
are preparing a fish you want to cook… it’s part and parcel of the fish’s
immune system. That slimy coating keeps
molds and other infections from taking root on the fish’s skin, considering
that it occupies a rather moist environment, and it will replenish itself if
only a small amount is wiped off. If
your net has a giant slimy spot left in it once you let the fish go because you
were squeezing the fuck out of it with a dry hand, that fish is going get sick
and die a prolonged, agonizing death that you bear responsibility for.
3.
That beautiful trout that you have decided to
benevolently release into the stream just spent the last few minutes fighting
for its life. It had no way of knowing
that you weren’t going to kill it, so it just spent every, last molecule of its
being trying to escape from the alien abduction we call catch-and-release
fishing. You were able to net it in the first place because it gave everything
it had and is near death. What you are
supposed to do is hold the fish’s tail in one hand and cradle its belly in the
other. .. Holding it right-side-up, you move it gently back and forth in the
water until it regains its strength and swims off on its own once it has
recuperated. If you are particularly
attentive, you will observe bubbles escaping from its gill-plates which means
that said gills are finally covered in water again and the fish is breathing
healthily. I don’t give a fuck if the water’s cold and it makes your hands
numb, which is going to happen because trout tend toward cold-water
environments, wait for the fish to leave on its own. If you just toss it in the water like some
piece of shit you don’t care about, it’s too tired to swim and it’s going to
drown, which will fuck your holistic idea of harmless fun into a thousand
pieces as the trout suffocates in the very environment it is meant be breathe
comfortably in.
If you fuck one of these basics up, the fish will be lucky
to survive, but if you fuck all three of them up the fish will be dead before
the next piss you take, and some stranger might happen by to know you for the
asshole you don’t think of yourself as.
I have no problem
with taking a fish, by the way, when it is done with purpose. This isn’t one of those elitist rants that
fly back and forth between fly-fishermen, power-bait people, and live-bait
sportsmen that makes by behind pucker up.
The only people on this stretch of river are fly-fisherman
per-regulation… A fisherman can keep
fish within clearly defined limits, if they so desire. When I imagine myself as
a man who is two inches long swimming across a clear pool of water, I doubt a
trout would think too hard before it swallowed me entirely so they and I are in
a karmic balance. Fair is fair, that’s the entire idea of catch-and-release, but
it’s a twist on nature’s eternal conflict because human’s can show compassion
in a way that is rare in other animals when we feel like it. If you intend to bring game home from the
out-set and survive based on the product of your hard work, I commend you; you
have struck a blow against all of the forces in society trying to control you
and mutating your food supply while they’re at it.
With all of that being said, I’m pleading to my fellows to make
a decision about what you’re going to do with your catch before you even go to
the river, choose your weapon, and land a fish. Stand by your decision like a
man. If you are going to let your fish
go once you have held it in your hands, make sure the thing’s going to survive
if you have already decided not use it to further your mortal coil. Commit.
Take responsibility. I can
guarantee if you’re cutting corners with your catch and release, you’re cutting
other corners in your world that damage everything you touch. If you’re going
to shine one shoe, shine them both. If
you’re going to make a woman pregnant, be the best father you can be even if it
wasn’t what you planned on before you started fucking. If you bring shit home from the grocery
store, eat it before it goes bad. Don’t
be lazy, wasteful, and ignorant while you turn an otherwise good world into
shit one act of carelessness at a time.
If you can button things up with whatever your quarry may be and bring reasonable
care, commitment, and compassion into the rest of your world, I’m betting
things are going to start looking better and better for you across the board. You
will be a complete person and the world will be your oyster. I’m doing it, and
if you do it too, maybe someday the first thing I see when I get back to Boston
won’t be a homeless crack-head begging for change by the highway… Think about
it.
As I'm sure you can tell, GW is passionate about his fishing. Oh yeah! He's outspoken, too. Salty as GW may be, he's right. Please take a minute and consider your technique when handling fish and other game.
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