Switzerland to ban catch and release fishing...

[TheMightyFavog]

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_127519.asp

Catch and Release fishing will be banned in Switzerland from next year, it was revealed this week.

And anglers in the country will have to demonstrate their expertise by taking a course on humane methods of catching fish, under new legislation outlined by the Bundesrat - the Swiss Federal Parliament.

The new legislation states that fish caught should be killed immediately following their capture, with a sharp blow to the head from a blunt instrument. Under the new regulations, the use of livebait and barbed hooks is also prohibited except in certain situations.

Somebody please explain to this guy who grew up around fishing all his life why any country would pass such a stupid sounding law?

[sandnsea]

1. Fish are disappearing

And fish that are released sometimes have hooks in their mouths or are otherwise harmed so it defeats the purpose. Without clicking the link, that would be my guess.

[TheMightyFavog]

6. So what happens if the fish you hook happens to be under the size limit?

Are you obliged to break the law and kill the fish, or to break the law by releasing it?

[sandnsea]

7. No solution is perfect

unless you want it to be like here, where they've had to close salmon altogether.

[AP]

15. Say you fish for food, you might catch 5 and go home. But if you fish for sport and catch & release,

you might catch 15-20. If the mortality rate were over 50%, you could easily have twice the (negative) impact on fish supplies.

[Duke Newcombe]

2. What do you have against our finned friends, specieist!?

:sarcasm:

Duke

[Bright Eyes]

3. And Bush said humans and fish can coexist.....

[Speck Tater]

4. So let me get this straight...

They have outlawed simply torturing animals, and now you must both torture AND kill them. Sounds about right to me. But then I would only fish if I were starving and needed the food, and no other alternative sources of food were readily available.

[orleans]

5. i read somewhere that most fish that are caught and released

die.

i don't know if this is true--but it's something to consider

[dipsydoodle]

8. Not true

Were it to be so these, for example , could never have reached these sizes : http://www.carp-uk.net/carprecords.htm

[Submariner]

9. Carp are a species that can easily handle being

captured and released multiple times, like suckers and catfish. Sluggish bottom feeders.

Trout, or Salmonids in general, fight the angler so a rapid lactic acid build-up followed by release has resulted in much more mortality than originally thought.

[dipsydoodle]

10. I agree

Sports fish like trout etc are intended to be "taken" - not sure if you use that expression over there.

[Submariner]

11. "Taken" is the universal term

just like there has been too much 'taking' of the sport fish everywhere, which has resulted in the present catch and release conundrum.

[dipsydoodle]

12. I should also have said

game fish - not sports fish.......lol.

[alarimer]

14. It is true for some species but not for others.

The stress of handing can and does kill fish. Fish that come up from great depths (in the ocean) usually end up with a protruding swim bladder that makes it impossible for them to swim back down, unless it is punctured.

Spotted seatrout are much more delicate than, say, redfish here on the Gulf Coast. So they often (but by no means always) die when released. It largely depends on how they are handled. You want to handle them as little as possible. Try not to touch them; it removes the slime from their bodies which acts as a protectant against injury and disease.

[alarimer]

13. Well some think catch and release is crueler that simply catching them once.

I don't necessarily agree. As a biologist, I do not believe that fish really feel pain or process it in any way that we would. They have brains the size of a peanut so whatever pain happens is minor and transitory. BUT the stress of repeated handling or handling in a rough way CAN and does kill fish, so that might be more important to this law. Europeans have generally a very different attitude towards fishing than we do. Here, anyone can get a fishing license. You just have to go to some store that sells them, pay your fee and you are good to go. In Germany (and now Switzerland apparently) you have to take a class first.

[Squatch]

16. What a dumb, dumb, dumb law.

Can you imagine what a similar law would do on runs in this country that harbor extremely rare strains of fish. What would happen to the golden trout, the west slope cutthroat, or the rio grand cutthroat if people practiced catch and keep exclusively.

I've been a fly fisherman for most of my life. The last wild trout that I caught and kept was in 1996.