Most of you are probably too young to remember that our foothill streams used to be managed by alternating annual closures back in the 50's, 60's and into the 70's.... It didn't work with increasing resource acess and angling presusure, open waters were hammered hard leaving few fish to do the breeding in the off years.
Thanks to much reduced harvest limits and more C&R angling, the overall quality of our foothill trout fishing is actually much better now than it was in the 70's,,,,,, (though I am sure many with nostalgic viewpoints would like to debate that,,,, that is human nature as we all tend to remember "first times" very fondly !!)
C&R is a management tool, In todays world, fish populations cannot sustain an unrestricted level of harvest, hence we we need limit angling mortality. Yes there is some mortailty with C&R ,,, most studies suggest 5 - 10% hooking mortality ,,, I suspect it may be closer to 20% in a lot of fisheries if you factor in other things such as handling, water temps, depth the fish was caught at, etc. However a fish that is caught and kept has a 100% mortailty rate.
So at a 20% mortality rate, A C&R fish can be "re-cycled" amongst 5 anglers rather than just one angler in a catch and keep scenario.
I have no problem with people keeping a few fish to eat where legal and I do keep the odd pike and walleye for fresh shore lunches,,, I do have a problem though with anglers who hi-grade their catch through the day and / or become C&R anglers after they have kept their limit as they contribute to both types of angling mortality (incidental and intentional).
However, C&R anglers who while not keeping any fish continue to fish and catch obscene numbers of fish per day are "not off the hook" either. If you catch 40 fish per day you likely will have killed from 2 - to 8 fish which is equal to higher than most possession limits allow now!
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