All Fish Are Equal

Every now and then, I find pictures on the Internet where people are abusing/disrespecting their unwanted fish species or a fish below target/specimen size. I find this attitude disturbing. 

A fish, no matter its size or species, is still a fish. A fisherman should ALWAYS respect their catches, no matter what they catch. 

I always treat the fish I catch with the same procedure (of course I don't use unhooking mats for 20 gram roach, you silly). Fish welfare is a priority, even when I catch a small gudgeon while barbel fishing or a 600 gram ide while targeting carp.

Naturally, I oppose using livebaits. I don't know how many pike anglers would like me to hook a 10 kg pike from it's mouth and back ... just to "have a big bait". It is not just disrespectful and inhumane thing to do for the fish, but it is more like being in the stone age of fishing culture. It doesn't matter whether the live fish struggling in the hook is a 10 kg pike or a 100 g perch - it's still a barbaric thing to do. (Don't even get me started on the ethics of C&R predator fishing with livebaits. There is absolutely no point there.)

A true modern fisherman has a strong respect for every fish. All fish are equal.

Bream might be a nuisance fish while carp fishing. How we treat the unwanted catches define us as fishermen.

Big Fish Still Get Slaughtered...

Hi all!

This post will be quite grim, and I already warn my readers abroad:This post has a link to a big dead carp... Yet again, Finns have been skillful enough to fill lakes with all-killing gill nets. They are commonly using them to catch "trophy fish". This makes no sense at all - a fish caught with a gill net requires no skill at all. It just kills everything that swims in it. Even our Saimaa ringed seal.

That's enough of the almost-extinct endemic seal species - and on with the ramblings about carp. So a carp that was claimed to be the biggest fish in Finland was caught and killed. To the catchers excuse, he wasn't actually trying to catch a carp. To make things worse, the biggest tench in Finland was ALSO caught a few weeks ago with a gill net. This tench was caught and killed intentionally. Just to claim the record. What a sporty way of catching record fish! Yay!

Big fish are really important to the ecosystem in numerous ways. It is really important to release them every time it's possible. 

A nice common carp going back to do what he/she does best (that is being a big fish).

Ps. The carp in the magazine was claimed to be "closer to 50kg than 20 kg..." Yeah - right.