Keep Fish Wet believes that, as anglers, we have a responsibility to build community around the use of science-based best practices for catch-and-release and angling in the face of climate change.
To support their mission to help anglers improve the outcome for each fish they release, Keep Fish Wet is running a juicy series of raffles and an auction.
It might seem crazy, or virtue-signal(l)ing in the extreme or holier than thou of me, but I made a major fish-saving move 25 years ago next March, after I released a large (19 pounds-plus to very early 20s)) Southern Hemisphere sea-trout that had been photographed from all angles by a companion and had required a full fifteen to twenty minutes of in-river nursing by me for it to recover sufficient strength to swim away properly:- I put all of my cameras into a cupboard after that capture and have not taken a fish pic of any kind in all the years since.
I merely hook, play and land a fish now, rest it in the net that landed it (which is not lifted out of the water again until the fish has gone), maybe stretch a dressmaker’s fabric tape measure along the fish’s length when it’s in the net if the fish looks to be a possible lifetime-best biggie, then release…..
My fishing has been a lot HAPPIER as a result, though it has occasionally confused, even worried, the handful anglers who have watched me doing the above. Their problem, not mine, and certainly not the fish’s!