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One oily-rain night, while pondering way too
heavily on what to eat for dinner, a buddy called me with a plaintive
plea to help him unhook a Great Horned Owl that attacked his giant
topwater plug. Kind of surprising given my imploding entombing that
frequently infects me during the weekend, I grabbed pliers, scissors, a
towel, and foul-weather gear and rolled over to the scene of the crime.
No question of whether I should attempt to free the bird, no recoil, no
shying away from the potentially nasty scene occurred - I just went.
So I arrived there 'bout 20 minutes after the call, found my buddy, and
then he and I, in the urban darkness of the Port of Sacramento, scoured
the bank for the poor bird. We found her, foot impaled by the lure, her
hanging upside down from a bush, looking really tired and forlorn. I
tossed the towel over her head, grabbed her legs, then addressed the
wound - pretty bloody, for sure, but the ease with which I was able to
remove the hook suggested it looked worse than it was. After freeing
the lure and clearing the line, I righted her, still under the towel,
walked her up to a flat, open field, then quickly removed the towel and
reintroduced her to freedom. She immediately flew away but alighted
about 100 feet away from us. She'd thrashed a lot in the brush before I
rescued her, and we'd feared she'd damaged her wings in the process.
However, her wings seemed to fold back neatly, suggesting that her
short flight was more due to exhaustion rather than injury. She did hop
a little bit, favoring the injured foot - no surprise, since it likely
hurt after having a 2/0 hook shoved into it. She then lifted up and
flew again to a thicket, where she perched and chilled and, we hoped,
regained her energy and began the healing process so she could once
again be a successful hunter of the night.
My friend, good guy that he is, felt fucking
awful, hence his call not only to me but also the cops and his mom. It
absolutely was not his desire to catch and harm that bird. While his
goal was to catch fish, he would've preferred to not harm the aquatic
vertebrates, too, or to at least minimize the harm while regaling in
the glory of a well-caught fish.
In a jaunt up to Folsom for post-spawn
spots, man, I fucking crushed bass that'd pinned a big threadfin shad
school in a narrow, shallow cove. While spotted bass were the dominant
species, a few bigs were mixed in with the more streamlined model, so I
kept catching the spots, wading through 'em until getting three
biggies, reaffirming a pattern I discovered at Rancho Seco during
summer when bigs busting threadfin annihilated the little Sammy to the
near exclusion of other lures. Once I did reach that mark - the third
largemouth - and acquired a good shot for the Pornfolio, I just kept
casting - and catching - both species, despite now having plenty of
proof that I had the pattern down, a pattern I'd already established in
other waterways and years, a pattern for both species. I was like an
automaton, a robot, albeit a robot reveling in the success. It was real
fuckin' easy getting the spots and bigs to crush the Sammy, and I guess
it'd been so long that I'd had such easy, explosive action that I had
quite the empty cup to fill before I felt I was satiated. There hadn't
been a damn time on a personal trip in the previous several months
before Folsom where I didn't work my ass off for a few great fish -
native cypriniforms, the main target, are quite the fuckin' stubborn,
difficult quarry. Shit, even when on the Delta, I'd yet to be gifted
with ideal conditions - I'd earned every single damn centrarchid I'd
nailed out there. I guess, too, since it'd been, God, over two years
since I'd thought about and targeted spotties, I really needed a lot
more fish than normal to feel intimate with the species again. And
intimate I got - many, many times, I caught myself talking to the fish.
I do have to say that except for two spots I killed, the third topwater
big, and one beautiful bull 'gill, all fish - and there were a LOT -
were fought very quickly, never removed from the water, were only
caught on artificial lures, and were unhooked delicately (i.e., I
employed sound catch-and-release practices), rendering the continued
catching seemingly harmless...save one of the last spots. That one
spotted bass, unlike the dozens of others, woofed down the Sammy a bit
too much, causing the hook to pierce a gill arch that subsequently
gushed blood. Regardless that I played the fish quickly, never exposed
to her to air, and had her dash out of my hands after unhooking, the
profuse bleeding was a sign that I just released her to die.
Shockingly, on a Thursday day off, I
managed to wrangle myself out of bed before 4 AM, zoom off in the cover
of pre-dawn darkness to Cache Creek, and immerse myself via the rod in
its flashy, roily, warm waters ostensibly for hardhead but happy with
whatever species she chose to gift me. She gave me half a fuckin'
dozen: the requisite hardhead, a mirror of a foot-and-a-half squaw, a
big ol' hitch, a big sucker, a ~21" channel (unwanted on the
light-power gear), two thick ol' white cats, and a reminder of
temperance. The cypriniforms were absolutely exhilarating, all
stunning, all reaffirming previous experiences. The minnows, consistent
with every other fucking time I caught 'em, all chewed my well-drifted
baits with the sun off the water - the hitch, the hardhead, the squaws,
all backing up experiences I've had during summer on Putah, on the
North Fork American, and on Cache itself. The sucker was the last of
the four to drown my float, sun on the water but still early in the
post-dawn morning, similar to Putah in previous years. Also consistent
with light sensitivity - despite probably three, four additional hours
of drifting baits in the right type of habitat in the searing sun, a
good-sized cypriniform never again adorned my hook. The cats broke the
drought by burying my float in deeper water, but as far as
non-adipose-finned fishes, only baby squaws bothered my baits during
the day's apex.
I fished the entire day with a
worm chunk impaled by a tiny barbless baitholder hook, a rig that,
especially when hung under a float, nearly always yields a lip-hooking
and, if taken too deeply and needs to be cut, very likely poses little
risk to the fish. Of the four big cypriniforms, the three cats, myriad
little smallies and small squaws, in only one fish - a yearling squaw,
the last fish I caught - was I not able to get the hook out cleanly.
The poor guy likely got the point in a gill arch since he was bleeding
moderately after I removed the hook, albeit he stayed upright and swam
out of my hand on his own power. Tellingly, at that scene chiseled into
a rock was a petroglyph of a bow-and-arrow hunter backed by what I
assumed was his wife and overlooked by an eclipsed sun. Was it a bona
fide carving by a long-gone human from a culture that lived in
assimilation with Nature rather than in domination, or was it from some
drunk fuckin' white dude pecking at the stone to fool suckers like me?
The latter isn't unreasonable since I was only a mile or so, albeit a
tough mile, from a two-lane highway. Regardless who bashed it out, I
felt that finding that image coincident with a bleeding little squaw
signaled that that was enough - I put the rod down.
Most conscientious fishermen, decent
guys and gals that want the glory of conquering and possessing a slice
of Nature's wild, believe that playing catch-and-release, when
conducted well, is harmless. But that's just a pipe dream, a ruse, as
the above examples illustrate. Every time we decide to pick up a rod
and fling something with a hook in it, we also implicitly choose to
maim and possibly kill regardless our intentions. I damn well might've
released a soon-to-be-dead spotted bass that is now gone, forever
unavailable to me when I really may need the meat, let alone being able
to contribute to the population by spawning again. The chance of that
little pikeminnow surviving the gill-arch puncture, reaching adult
size, and then becoming a worthy subject for a predatory pursuit is
pretty fucking unlikely. And the owl - fuck, man, it's not unreasonable
to imagine the hook wound becoming infected and subsequently killing
the bird. Bottom line is that mortality and/or injury rates always
exist when catching and then releasing fish (e.g., Meka 2004, Taylor et
al. 2001, Nelson 1998), even if the method is with a barbless fly on
heavy line and the fish is never removed from the water. I recall a
conversation with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists who
lifted gear restrictions on steelhead because bait guys would catch two
a day, kill 'em, then leave, while fly/lure guys would catch up to 40
fish a day, release 'em, and end up killing more than the gut-hooking
bait guys because the survival rate of lure/fly-caught-and-released
fish was 80 percent. If enough catch-and-release occurs with a
population, even very low mortality rates can have a substantial
population-level effect, as estimated with East Coast striped bass
(Tiedemann and Danylchuk 2012). Additionally, as in my friend's case,
an unexpected casualty may occur. Thus for those who care about fishery
health and Nature's health, a sensible limit to caught-and-released
fish must exist, some number for that atavistic impulse to be sated
while minimizing probability of death and injury.
One approach for garnering a number that would signify skilled fishing
prowess would be to see how well a fisherman's catch compared to the
proportion of catchable fish - in other words, those fish willing to
eat (or in the case of non-eating river salmon, those willing to
attack). For example, if five of 10 largemouth bass inhabiting a
rockpile in spring during morning are willing to eat crawdads, and a
guy catches those five biggies with a crawdad-imitating lure, then that
guy is the ultimate example of prowess - he actualized the potential
maximum catch. However, knowing the requisite numbers to gauge a
fisherman's catch is nearly impossible. In the above example, the
following numbers would have to be known: the population number of fish
in the habitat; the number of fish willing to eat/attack in the
habitat, which is a function of water temperature and gut fullness, the
calculation of the latter of which is itself a serious impracticality;
stress levels, the higher of which will decrease the proportion of
willing-to-attack fish; and no doubt many others. Result? This
assessment's beyond impractical.
A second approach would be to see how a guy's
catch rate compared with that of average fishermen, but this method
blows, too. First, published hook-and-line catch rates, garnered by
creel surveys and nearly solely for sport-fish species, are virtually
unknown - I think I've run across two in California, one for kings and
one for sturgeon. Data for most species and situations are simply
unavailable for contrast. Second, catch rates are often based on an
unrepresentative population of fishermen that don't appropriately
compare to many other line-dunkers, especially those that chase fish in
a stripped-down guise. Is it fair to say that three striped bass some
boat guy staring at his fish-finder jigged up by following some other
fish-finder-following butthole is reflective of more predatory prowess
than a bank guy restricted to far less area banging two nice fish while
stalking a shallow tidal feeder creek? I've little doubt that my catch
rate for kings on the lower American is lower than the average
fishermen while I absolutely understand the species better - the
disparity in catch rate is because the typical lower American guy is
fucking snagging his fish, not tempting 'em to attack. Third, the core
relationship in fishing consists of two parties - fish and fisher - and
it seems inconsistent to bring a third party - other fishermen - into
what is otherwise a binary interaction.
A third
approach is using the ideal of a pure subsistence fisherman and his
required daily caloric intake - atavistic, purely wild, and without
another person in the equation. Assuming need for 2,000 calories a day
and about 540 of those calories needing to be fat (given protein intake
exceeds daily requirements) that would be derived solely from fish,
simple math yields number of fish needed per size class to meet daily
nutritional requirements (I'll follow fishing-tackle conventions for
fish size classes: light power, medium power, and heavy power). Say,
for example, the target is stream trout that're averaging about 14
inches and weighing nearly a pound (i.e., light-power fish). If the
fish are field-dressed (i.e., meat yield is just a little less than
whole-fish weight) and fat per fish is about 130 calories, then a
stud'd need to catch five 14-inch trout to meet his daily fat needs.
When the light-power fish are smaller, such as bluegills or crappies,
half a dozen fish seems a reasonable choice. If the prey is a
medium-power fish that averages about four pounds, such as striped bass
and channel catfish, that're best filleted (i.e., meat yield is roughly
40 percent of whole-fish weight) and have about 100 calories of fat per
pound, then you'd need to catch at least four fish to meet and exceed
540 fat calories. In the case of heavy-power fish, sturgeon and king
salmon, it's needless to do math - one of those fish a day's more than
enough.
I have a hard time imagining a
prehistoric wild man, the ghost we emulate when out playing at fishing,
not smiling to himself in contentment at day's end when he had a
stringer of five fat 'bows glinting in the evening light, or when his
four chrome schoolie stripers on the bank contrasted with the ochre
sand and emerald tules, or when his single blushing three-foot-long
king salmon colored cold, clear river water a vivid red while bleeding
out. We should be content with the same when playing fishing.
REFERENCES
Meka, J. M. 2004. The influence of hook type, angler
experience, and fish size on injury rates and the duration of capture
in an Alaskan catch-and-release rainbow trout fishery. North American
Journal of Fisheries Management 24(4): 1309-1321.
Nelson, K. L. 1998. Catch-and-release mortality of striped
bass in the Roanoke River, North Carolina. North American Journal of
Fisheries Management 18(1): 25-30.
Taylor, R. G., J. A.
Whittington, and D. E. Haymans. 2001. Catch-and-release mortality rates
of common snook in Florida. North American Journal of Fisheries
Management 21(1): 70-75.
Tiedemann, J, and A. Danylchuk.
2012. Assessing impacts of catch and release practices on striped bass
(Morone saxatilis): implications for conservation and management.
[Online] Available:
https://www.monmouth.edu/uploadedFiles/Resources/Urban_Coast_Institute/BestPracticesStriped%20BassCatch
andReleaseReport.pdf
(An ad hoc
literature sweep on worst-case-scenario catch-and-release (deeply
hooked fish caught bait-fishing where the hook was removed) mortality
rates pretty consistently gave an average of about 1 in 5 fish caught
dying: 20%. Four multiplied by 0.2 is less than 1, and if better
catch-and-release techniques are used than the worst-case scenario,
then, on average, the chance of one of those four fish dying is real
fuckin' low.)