Fishing Ethics Quotes

They should call fishing what it really is... tricking and killing!

The depressing thing about an Englishman's traditional love of animals is the dishonesty thereof ... Get a barbed hook into the upper lip of a salmon, drag him endlessly around the water until he loses his strength, pull him to the bank, hit him on the head with a stone, and you may well become fisherman of the year. Shoot.the salmon and you'll never be asked again.

I object to fishing tournaments less for what they do to fish than what they do to fishermen.

Good fishermen know that in talking about fishing, nothing is more interesting than the truth.

Fishes do not roar; they cannot express any sound of suffering; and therefore the angler chooses to think they do not suffer, more than it is convenient for him to fancy. Now it is a poor sport that depends for its existence on the want of a voice in the sufferer, and of imagination in the sportsman.

I like to catch fish and release them. I probably haven't killed a fish that I've caught in sport fishing for 20 years. No reason to kill it. You know, just take it and release it.

Killing of animals for food is one thing, but on the other hand they do not exist simply as things to be slaughtered. This is true of fishing, too. Many men fish and leave their victims to rot and stink. But what about the fish? Has he no rights - not to be romanticized as though he were a man - but real rights?

The fun of fishing is catching 'em, not killing 'em.

Anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime; yet it puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on their meditative faculties; and yet their only excuse is a want of thought.

If our father had had his way, nobody who did not know how to fish would be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching him.

I always catch and release and don't even eat trout. I think they are so majestic. I won't eat a trout even in a restaurant. They are beautiful and so much fun, and they give me such joy to catch them that it is my pleasure to take a picture with them, give them a kiss, sign a laminated autographed picture and put it in their mouth.

For at least the last 275 years the honesty of fishermen has been somewhat questionable. It should be noted that Izaak Walton whose book published in 1653 spoke not of anglers and , but anglers OR very honest men .

Fishing tournaments seem a little like playing tennis with living balls.

Modibo Maiga, Guy Demel and Momo Diame can't understand how you go fishing and chuck them back. They say, 'Bring it in, I'll eat it.'

I simply feel that the frontier of angling is no longer either ethical or geographical. The Bible tells us to watch and listen. Something like this suggests what fishing ought to be about: using the ceremony of our sport and passion to arouse greater reverberations within ourselves.

Anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish and of forgetting that the fish has a hook in his mouth, his gullet, or his belly and that his gameness is really an extreme of panic in which he runs, leaps, and pulls to get away until he dies. It would seem to be enough advantage to the angler that the fish has the hook in his mouth rather than the angler.

It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method.

We really cannot see what equanimity there is in jerking a lacerated carp out of the water by the jaws, merely because it has no the power of making a noise; for we presume that the most philosophic of anglers would hardly delight in catching a shrieking fish.