I’ve been really getting into fly fishing this summer. I was reminded how fun it was a year ago when Mike visited and we had a great day on upper Rattlesnake Creek, but my passion has really taken off with the acquisition of my TenkaraUSA Amago. It’s not just newbies like me, experienced hands agree that Tenkara is a fun way to fly fish. Especially on the small to tiny, backcountry streams that I find most enjoyable.

Fishing is a form of hunting, and hunting is a pursuit whose satisfaction can in my experience be rivaled by few other things. You go out into the wild, you find a critter, stalk it, kill it, and eat it. Your survival is assured, and the certainty that your skill and fortitude was responsible is not mediated by the usual things: salary, grocery store bills, rent/morgage.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/9097253?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=ffffff

As the above video shows, catch and release fishing fulfills all but the last of these requirements. Therein lies the ethical complication. The argument can be made that catch and release fishing is a cruel, bourgeois titillation, a cheap disney immitation of hunting undertaken with little regard and no recognition for the life of the fish. Many, many arguments have been made for the use of nets, barbless hooks, handling protocols, appropriate length of playing the fish (exhaust it too much and it dies, exhaust it too little and you’re more likely to harm it while handling), wetting or not wetting your hands, using hemostats v. bare hands v. pliers, etc, etc. Most have merit, but most also miss the point that putting any sort of hook in an animal, yarding it around, and dragging it out (however gently) is hugely traumatic. This seems to leave three options for ethical fishing:

1) Practice “good” catch and release with an eye towards sustaining the given fishery for future use by humans and other animals. Follow Yellowstone Park regs, for instance, so that bears and birds and otters will have plenty of ideally native trout to eat for years to come. This is based on anthropocentric interest.

2) Kill ’em and grill ’em only. Eat all the fish that you catch. Fish only to eat. This has all the benefits of local, non-industrial food, and follows a hunter-gatherer ethic whose anthropocentricity may be widely variable.

3) Don’t fish.

Some sources suggest a hybrid approach between 1 and 2, wherein most fishing is done for food, yet what fish are kept is evaluated depending on the location and the state of the resource (a very human centered term). Release big fish, keep small fish, and especially relevant in Montana, keep non-native fish. In many places in the state, this follows existing law, though many places (like the Firehole drainage in Yellowstone) some non-natives (Browns and Rainbows, in this case) are catch and release only. Critters eat non-native species, after all, and people travel long distances and spend lots of money to catch them. 

My own approach will no doubt evolve along with my own thoughts on the subject.  I certainly intend to keep fishing, because it is a very fun way to spend time.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/7995203?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=ffffff

The only issue I have with the whole pursuit is that fly fishing is a phenomenally elitist activity. Part of this is that as an avocation it has been pursued passionately and scientificly for a long time, and has the nuanced and inaccesible vocabulary to go along with it. I still think of my flies as the big green one and the little gray one. The other part is the normal secrecy endemic to all hunters, though the secrecy is (as with backcountry skiing) mostly devoted to protecting roadside stashes that are little used. Spray all you what about streams in the backcountry, they’re still not going to get fished too often.

On the other hand, fly fishing is an activity where many folks see the range of acceptable conduct in stark, black and white terms. I’ve been sassed and looked down upon plenty this year, online, in the fly shop, and on the river. Not a nice way to treat people, it’s a good reminder both to seek out obscure places to go, and for me to always give people the benefit of the doubt.

I had this last lesson brought home riding out to ride last night. On the Rattlesnake access trail I saw two guys riding along without helmets, assumed they were gomers, and attacked at a braid in the trail because I didn’t want to get stuck behind them on a rocky section coming up shortly. An asshole thing to do, and of course it turned out (as we road together on the road later) that they were both spouses of good friends. Doh (and good job looking like an ass, Dave).

Any thoughts folks have on fishing ethics would be most welcome.