The famous nocturnal Hex hatch of the Midwest (and a few other lucky locations) stirs to the surface mythically large brown trout that only touch streamers for the rest of the year.
But pain, as we know it, and the suffering that accompanies it are sensations and emotions of higher animals with more highly developed brains (sometimes, but not always, including humans).
I thought I had learned when to keep my mouth shut, but I guess I'll just have to learn that lesson all over again. Damn.
Projecting Emotions Through Anthropomorphism
I will also grant that when we are so dogmatic about releasing fish that we continue to do it to the detriment of threatened native species (like releasing alien brook trout in native bull trout waters, rainbows in greenback cutthroat waters, or smallmouth bass in threatened brook trout streams) we do no service to the species or the resource.
Fish fight the line and pressure from it in a noble effort to escape restraint, not because of pain they are suffering. You have only to observe their response when that pressure is released to recognize this--if the hook were causing pain they would surely continue to struggle.
PETA is a group who's basic ideals I support but who's actual methods are so ass-backward, that they pretty much it impossible to support them in any way.
unless the animal is a mosquito, in which case all bets are off.
If you feel this way aren't you perpetuating that feeling by continuing to fish?
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I will say that if a way to "connect" with fish is discovered that does not involve hook & line, my angling days might well be over. But, for the time being I suppose I'll have to settle on methods that are inherintley quite rudimentary, even at they're highest level.