Derby,
Awesome video with a great message.
Dave H,
Please, if you are going to copy and paste someone else's work, provide a reference, link or citation. That is unless you are Mark Hume.
The suggestion that the issue is strictly about conservation, is disingenuous or naive.
To suggest that the issue is entirely one of bait vs fly is also very much off topic and lends little justification for FFO as many hardware chuckers use similar size hooks to flyfishermen.
Perhaps you can copy and paste an article which delineates differences in mortality between fish captured on 1/0 single barbless spinners and 1/0 single barbless flies.
The issue is not one of conservation, but one of exclusivity. One need not permit the use of bait, barbs or trebles for conservation purposes, while permitting all other methods.
Unless of course the real issue is certain people/groups dont want other groups of people on their river.
^^^^^^
this!
I've fished both trout and steelhead all my life mostly as a fly fisherman.
Not because I thought there was some supreme hierarchical significance associated with that method or because it gave me some kind of bragging rights---it was simply because I found it an effective way to catch fish under most conditions and it wasn't as gear intensive as some of the other methods available to me. And I liked the idea of not having to rupture a disk coming back on a snag the way gear guys sometimes have to do when fishing steelhead
I started fishing one of the big Fraser tribs for steelhead in the early 80's. As a fly fishermen, I stuck out like a sore thumb---there just weren't a lot of guys doing it. The bait guys would ALWAYS be gracious to me, share their spots with them, help me out. They were basically a generous lot who didn't think I was a threat to their methods or their historical interaction with that river.
Now every year it gets thicker and thicker with "spey" guys, a good portion of them carrying attitudes around big enough to fit in a steamer trunk. In my humble opinion, the whole experience of that river seems to have gone down a rat hole with the new "spey" dynamic---they gang up in holes and try to dominate water. They give you stink-eye if they come over a bluff and find you in "their" hole. And for some of them, their idea of getting "low holed" is when a bait fisherman steps in the hole 100 yards downstream from them....it's goofiness on steroids.
I was just there a few days ago---already packed with the spey guys. A friend of mine who lives on the banks of that river said..common, let's go wet a line, MOE opened the river!
I checked out the building gong show and said no, I'm good, and packed up and went home. Not a super silex to be seen anywhere on the river. Sad.
Fact: Over the years I have killed multiple fish on flies, some when a river was strictly C&R, some on a river back in the days when you could kill. But the important point is this: I had ZERO intention of killing these fish. They died because I'd nicked a gill filament with my fly. I killed several big bucks---watched them bleed to death in back eddies. One barbless 1/0 hook and that was that.
A few years ago I wrote a detailed piece in this Forum about how I killed a 12 pound doe in that same Fraser Trib. It was back in the day when you could kill, but I had ZERO intention of killing anything that day, especially a big doe
How'd I kill it?
I'm one of those guys who likes to wear handicaps when fishing, especially after a run of good luck. I like to back off, do something a bit different, maybe something a bit more challenging. It's the only way you learn new shiat as a fisherman
So I'd hooked a few fish that day on wet flies and thought I'd put my handicaps on. I got out a 9 foot bamboo LL Bean trout rod for a No. 5 line. My Godfather had given me the rod when I was 7 years ole. Not quite the right piece of artillery for this river but it was a beauty.
I tied on a little tiny dry fly and started working from the bottom of a hole going upstream, the way a chalk stream Brit would go after a leader shy brown trout
Now fishing an upstream dry is hard enough, but I was doing it while wading on boulders slick as snot, up to my chest, stripping the line back in to achieve that ultimate "drag free" drift. This was work!! But wow, was this ever hierarchical significance on the fishing totem pole as far as difficulty was concerned.... Ya sure, you betcha!
No way I'd hook anything, I was thinking--- no way---steelhead want to see the big "V" of a riffle-hitched fly going across the top before they'd respond...
Long story short, a big doe came up off the bottom and slurped my drag-free dry fly off the top. The take was a soft sucking sound and a gentle perturbation of the water, not the explosive boil you get dragging a greased up fly across the top, but she took the fly with fierce determination.
I beached a beautiful doe. I was high as a kite. Wow, what a cool feeling---a big doe on an upstream dry! But what was this? Blood? There was blood gushing out of her gills---wtf? She'd sucked the fly in so deep it ripped across one of her branchiostegals and that was all she wrote. Wow, I'd just stomped on 10,000 potential steelhead fry with a freaking dry fly!
Don't let anyone kid you that fly fishing somehow leaves less of an impact on any given lake or river fishery. Is it somehow more difficult to catch fish with this method? No, it is not. Give me reasonable conditions and I'll show you that it can be just as effective as gear. In some conditions, I'll show you it can be WAY more effective, especially for summer and fall run steel.
Yes, the spey guys will rub "data" in your face to make it seem to the contrary but if you strip away the puffery, it's a disingenuous argument wrapped up in an ulterior motive---they are trying to create exclusive water for themselves. It's a resource grab, plain and simple. Tragedy of the Commons brined in single malt scotch....
I shudder to think of that Fraser trib going fly-only. But you can bet they're trying. They got bait this year---I do support the bait ban, mainly because the bait guys really beat up on the rainbow populations in that river while they're chasing steel. Don't ask me for data to back up this comment--I've fished that river for three decades and every season I witness it. There's a whole stretch of river where the rainbow are pretty much gone, and it's not because somehow there's less available food in that stretch--it just happens to be in the most productive area for steelhead, and that's where the fishermen have beat on them for years
But to go strictly fly ("spey??) only?
No way!!!!
I fished the Dee once in Scotland. There was a measuring stick in the river. On the stick was a red line. The deal was: when the river height was above the red line, use what ever you have in your vest---spoons, devon minnows, worms, flies--- no problem
When the river height was below the red line: NO WORMS
Sounded pretty logical to me