Fish Count 2009
This is a place to keep count of the fish I catch throughout the year. While normally I don’t enjoy ‘keeping score’, Many people ask me how many fish I catch. So, I thought it would be fun for a few years to try to keep count of all the fish and all the species I catch on my travels. I’ll fish anywhere I can find the fish, from pristine mountain streams to drainage and retention ponds behind office buildings. The crashing surf to roaring rivers. I’ll wade with shorts on and in my waders, I’ll fish in a flats boat or a kayak, if it floats, it’ll work. I think a day on the water is just about as good as it gets. Any water, any time, any place. Even if I don’t catch fish, I just enjoy being outside and surrounded by nature.
People always ask me ” What do you do with the fish after you catch them? ” Well, I let them go to live another day. Always. I don’t eat the fish I catch. I don’t kill them for sport and I don’t give them away. Many think that is the weirdest thing, a fisherman that doesn’t eat the fish he catches. Well, to be honest I don’t / won’t eat anything that comes from the water. It is part political and part personal preference. I refuse to support the pillaging of our natural resource, our oceans and other waters. I think the fisheries are grossly mismanaged and way over fished. These are resources that are naturally reproducing and very easily sustainable and I refuse to help kill our waters. Secondly, I just have a lot of respect for the fish and want them to live another day. I just don’t see any reason to kill a beautiful fish. American angler Lee Wulff in 1939 wrote: “Game fish are too valuable to be caught only once.”
I don’t begrudge anyone who follows the regulations and wants to keep his or her fish, it is legal and they are with-in their legal rights. As for their moral rights, well, I guess that is their own decision to make. I personally would rather let a fish go to reproduce and make more fish and to keep a healthy robust fishery, than eat one. We all here stories from the old timers, like, ‘we used to be able to catch 100 fish a day out of this river, now we can’t catch 2.’ Um, really. No kidding. Do you think your greediness and selfishness had anything to do with that? Thanks for keeping the fishery healthy for future generations. I know many people who no longer keep any fish just for these reasons.
So that is just a few of my thoughts about fishing. If you have any other questions, just ask. - PT
This could be my favorite fishing quote ever - ‘Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.’ ~Henry David Thoreau
Fish Count 2009
Brown Trout - 15
Brook Trout - 41
Rainbow Trout - 35
Largemouth Bass - 16
Smallmouth Bass
Bluegill - 21
Shell Cracker - 4
Misc. Sunfish - 67
Black Crappie - 5
Cutthroat trout - 6
Montana Whitefish - 2
