Not long ago, I got one of those irresistible invitations fishermen sometimes receive. A friend of mine belongs to a private trout club that owns a good-sized mountain lake in Colorado, and he called to ask if I wanted to come up and help him kill some brook trout.
The club had recently changed its management strategy for the lake with an eye toward trophy brook trout fishing. They had dumped thousands (or was it millions?) of fathead minnows in as a food source and they now wanted to thin the existing brook trout population down to the point where the remaining fish could take full advantage of the new, presumably faster growth rate.
According to the consulting biologist, the young trout would benefit from the new food source more than the old ones. Consequently it was the bigger fish that should be caught out.
It couldn't have been more perfect. I'm one of those who believe that wild brookies are the best tasting of all the trouts, and here was an ironclad, fisheries management-based excuse to kill and eat some.
In case you're not a fly fisherman, I should point out that you do need an excuse, although how elaborate it has to be is a matter of personal perspective.
By now, most fly fishers are advocates of catch-and-release fishing, an idea that started to take hold in a big way in, let's say, the 1960s. The logic of it seems like an inescapably elegant solution to the problem of increasing numbers of anglers fishing a decreasing number of good trout streams:
If you catch and kill a fish, it's gone and the river you caught it from is that much poorer, or, to put it another way, the quality of the fishing you treasure is that much worse.
But if, on the other hand, you catch and release the same fish, you're victorious, but the fish is still out there, ready to spawn and grow and be caught again. You've left the fishing as good as you found it.
A handful of people doing this won't make much difference, but if everyone does it, you can end up with something resembling a wild, pristine trout river, even though a lot of people fish there.
* * * * *
Under the right conditions, catch-and-release regulations can work wonders. According to most of the fisheries biologists I've talked to, the right conditions include a wild, self-sustaining (though not necessarily native) population of fish, a good natural food supply, clean water, adequate stream flows year round and fishermen who obey the rules.
There was a time when getting rank-and-file anglers to release their trout - let alone convincing wildlife managers to establish the regulations in the first place - was a serious chore, so, naturally, there were those who gave in to the classic temptation and became sanctimonious.
You know about sanctimony - if you don't entirely agree with me, you're the devil's work. Sorry, no room for discussion. The cause was right, but many of the true believers became insufferable.
Maybe it's just the people I fish with, but I think I've seen that attitude soften a little in recent years. My friends and I still spend a lot of time on catch-and-release areas because the fishing is usually at least better than average, and we often release trout even in places where the law doesn't require it.
But we also like to keep some now and then on waters where that's legal and when it otherwise seems right.
It's legal in quality waters with reduced or "slot" limits where, for instance, you can keep two fish 16 inches or longer. But when you take a trout of that size from a good stream, you can't help thinking that if you put it back it will grow to 18 inches by next year and maybe 21 inches by the season after that. I can't say if that's generosity or greed, but such logic is compelling.
It's clearly right to keep fish caught in streams where hatchery-raised trout have been stocked by the state. Here the fish probably won't survive the winter anyway, and fisheries managers determine the success of their stocking programs in terms of their "return to creel rates."
The more fish that are caught and killed, the better. The problem here is that, compared with a wild trout, a stocker tastes like dog food.
* * * * *
The fishing at the trout club was quite good. I'd eaten some of these trout in the past, so I knew they were wonderful - fattened on insects and freshwater shrimp, firm from the cold, clean water.
And they were beautiful in their bright, fall spawning colors. We kept the ones that were a foot long or more and ended up with limits.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd kept a limit of trout. Usually, when I keep any at all, it's four or two instead of the legal eight in my state, or just one if it's nice and big. In the old days that I'm just mature enough to remember, if you came in with two fish and said you'd released all the rest, they'd assume you were lying. Now they're more likely to admire your restraint.
John Gierach writes for The New York Times. This essay is copyright 1992 by The New York Times.
On Releasing Those Trout