Why is fishing allowed?

Todays probably slightly controversial question.

For some reason, my Insta feed has started throwing up some fishing, specifically sea fishing content and it had me thinking.

When you strip it down, enticing an animal to bite on a hook, then dragging said animal around for a period of time until it is completely exhausted and has lost the strength and will to fight, then pulling it on to a boat (possibly by sticking a sharp spike in its side), then letting it suffocate slowly on said boat is pretty barbaric.

Then add in the use of live bait. So, let’s take this smaller fish that we’ve already done the above to, stick a different spike through its head, making sure it’s still alive enough to move its body, and drag it around the attract a bigger fish.

I don’t get why this is seen as pretty much normal. I suspect if there were pics and vids of abattoirs on Insta they’d be removed or at very least flagged as sensitive content. And compared to the fish, the deaths there are relatively fast and controlled.

What am I missing bar “fish aren’t furry and cute”?

Fish don’t react in a way that’s as visually relatable to us like other mammals do. So most of us don’t have any kind of natural empathetic response to seeing them hooked through the face and suffocated.

I doubt fish even really have any kind of fear or suffering emotion do they?

As for why it’s allowed, why wouldn’t it be? Unless you banned any kind of animal farming it would be a bit hypocritical to ban fishing.

I don’t fish, but I’ve seen it done and fished as a kid so can state that ‘letting it suffocate slowly on said boat’ isn’t a thing in sport/line fishing. I’ve only ever seen fish whacked over the head to put them out the moment they’re lifted on board.

Tbh this seems a deliberately inflammatory post though, so you probably know that already…

The tartar sauce lobby.

I blame Big Chips

I’d guess it all boils down to the amount of money the fishing industry generates, it claims to be the largest participation sport in the world

The tartar sauce lobby

”Big Ketchup.”

I don’t fish, but I’ve seen it done and fished as a kid so can state that ‘letting it suffocate slowly on said boat’ isn’t a thing in sport/line fishing. I’ve only ever seen fish whacked over the head to put them out the moment they’re lifted on board.

OK, ignore that part then, focus on the dragging an animal round with a hook through its face part. Or possibly the using a live animal as bait part. Assuming that we see whacking an animal with a blunt object a fair way of dispatching it.

Tbh this seems a deliberately inflammatory post though, so you probably know that already…

Not at all, though the thread title is. Just seems interesting to be the different standards by which we treat fish compared to land animals.

no interest in why or why not fishing is allowed.

but what a boring soul destroying pastime fishing is.

and every single fisherman i pass on the canal/riverside looks like they had had every ounce of joy and fun drained out of their bodies.

i would rather dine on a plate of horse pooh than become a fisherman.

It’s a traditional way of catching food. It requires skill, so now it’s also a sport. Good luck getting people to give up traditional activities. My guess is that most commercial fishing is done using nets, not hooks.

I passed a couple of fisherman on the Union canal yesterday, despite my scepticism they had actually caught something and were clearly having a great time. But that might have been as much down to the doobies and Stella. Might just be my age but I quite fancy taking up fishing and just relaxing in the great outdoors and fresh trout is delicious.

Despite shooting, fishing and eating meat myself I do ponder this stuff.

And I have to say, the Chinese etc at least have a consistent moral outlook on this issue when they’re hanging a dog up and skinning it alive for its fur like it’s a fish.

Nature is inherently full of suffering and animals have developed strategies (adrenaline) to cope with being eaten alive for a short period of time.
I think it’s part of our disconnect with nature that we consider ourselves supra-natural when it comes to our interactions with other creatures.

Even living in your house that used to be wildwood or marshland or whatever climax community it once once is inflicting suffering on the animals that can no longer exist there. So it’s a bit like climate change- commuting suicide is ultimately the only way to get the moral high ground.

If it wasn’t for that large amount of participants try to imagine what sort of a state our waterways would be in. For many years anglers have been just about the only people holding anyone to account. And as for sea fishing, rod and line has to be the ultimate means of sustainability.

I haven’t really fished in years but I’ve never known anyone to treat fish with other than the utmost respect.

Its a food/hunter thing. Which might be quite useful in a generation or so when we’ve **** over the planet some more.

And I have to say, the Chinese etc at least have a consistent moral outlook on this issue when they’re hanging a dog up and skinning it alive for its fur like it’s a fish.

”Big Ketchup.”

Sauce for that?

As for fishing,

It’s an odd one to pick on if you still eat meat. Fishing is barbaric, now if you’ll excuse me I’m just off to the New Bombay for a lamb bhuna.

I could take the moral high ground here. I don’t eat meat because, well, as you said it’s gross and barbaric. And today, unnecessary. But I understand that other people do and I have far more respect for folk who do their own hunting and prepping than for those who are squeamish about the wetwork but eat it anyway.

Hunting purely for sport I find a bit weird. Look at you, big man, killed a trout / pheasant / white rhino / chihuahua with nothing but your bare hands holding a bloody great gun. We’re very selective about this sort of stuff, if you shot Lassie in the head it’d be front page news.

The fishing argument as I understand it goes that fish don’t feel pain; how true that is I have no idea. Seems to me mostly to be an excuse for blokes to get away from their wives and sit somewhere quiet drinking Stella.

There are people who go fishing, and there are fishermen. If you need to ask the difference,  you won’t understand the answer.

Is that a bit like people who ride bikes versus cyclists?

I do a bit of flyfishing, its more of an ‘active’ means of fishing than floats, finding a rising trout, figuring what its feeding on, presenting the fly to it. So its kind of a meditative puzzle to solve, that and its quiet and i get to be in some lovely places by tarns and rivers. You’ve got to tune in on whats happening in that environment. I eat the odd one but let most go. But yeah re the suffering thing it is a bit conflicting and possibly hypocritical but….thai fish cakes….

Live bait is horrible though, agree with that

I used to fish, was a great excuse to sit by a lake or river all day doing sod all. Just watching nature. After a while of catching very little I started not bothering with the hook.

My dad used to go sea fishing with his dad in rural Ireland but that was simply for food and to vary the diet. There are a lot of reminders of how dangerous fishing the Atlantic is with memorials all along coast.

Because otherwise we wouldn’t have Mortimer and Whitehouse Go Fishing, and then what purpose does life have?

Rod licenses raised nearly £22 million which then goes back into the upkeep/enhancement of waterways, fish breeding/re-stocking, incidents on watercourses such as low oxygen levels/fish kills, enforcement, and such.

Because if you just give people fish they only eat for a day.

Didn’t the RSPCA come out against angling and get a big hit on their membership income?

I sea fish and use a priest to quickly chib the life out of anything I choose to keep for eating. I stop fishing when I have enough for the table. I don’t understand coarse or sport fishing, there doesn’t seem to be any point in outwitting a fish to massage an ego.

Bashing a cod over the head is undoubtedly cruel but so is suffocating thousands of them at a time in a huge trawl net. One is more sustainable and considerably less environmentally damaging than the other. As with most people, I also eat cow, chicken, cute little lambs, pig and duck, knowing full well that sentient animals are taken into abattoirs then stunned, gutted and skinned for human consumption. If people are uncomfortable with the harsh realities of turning animals into food, perhaps they should go vegan and espouse every other environmental impact humans have on animals. Given the massive habitat changes mankind has imposed on the planet, catching fish on rod and line is pretty far down the ‘bad things people do to animals’ list.

It depends who is doing the fishing.

Fishermen*: people who do a cold wet dangerous job so that those of us who want to eat fish can do so

Anglers: people who enjoy catching fish, whether they eat them or not

[*including fisherwomen and fisherpeople]

Totally agree with you Lunge, plus can’t abide the damage fisherists do by leaving their fishing and non-fishing rubbish around and in the water. ****s

HounsFull Member
Totally agree with you Lunge, plus can’t abide the damage fisherists do by leaving their fishing and non-fishing rubbish around and in the water. ****s

We get more rubbish and vandalism around our locks and our structures from people swimming in the river than fishermen/women ever leave behind, especially this time of year with school holidays.

Because if you just give people fish they only eat for a day.

That’s the old proverb, isn’t it. Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll sit in a boat drinking beer.

Given the massive habitat changes mankind has imposed on the planet, catching fish on rod and line is pretty far down the ‘bad things people do to animals’ list.

Whilst I agree with most everything else you just wrote, “bad things are OK because worse things exist” is a tenuous justification. I stabbed someone yesterday but it’s pretty far down the ‘taking an AK47 to a shopping mall’ list.

You go fishing because you eat fish. 🤷‍♂️ Film at 11, seems completely reasonable to me. Someone going fishing because they get off on it, that’s weird.

and use a priest to quickly chib the life out of anything I choose to keep for eating.

A priest? Do they spend the rest of the time praying for forgiveness?

and every single fisherman i pass on the canal/riverside looks like they had had every ounce of joy and fun drained out of their bodies.

I think for some the actual fishing is just an excuse to be left alone. Travelling through a landscape is a good way to get some peace / peace of mind but it’s an oddly difficult thing to just stay put somewhere and be left in peace. If you sat down in a lovely spot with an easel and a paint brush for instance pretty much everyone passing by would stop and talk to you. My girlfriend is a film maker and if she sets up a camera pretty much anywhere every third car will honk its horn. Staying in place anywhere just seems to be an invite for constant interruption.  But if someones holding a fishing rod theres an unwritten rule that you pass by them quietly, not for their benefit but so you don’t disturb the fish.

I used to work in a prison and a surprising proportion of the people in there were into angling (in between custodial sentences) for exactly that reason-  if they just sat still anywhere else trouble would come and find them but sitting on a riverbank with a stick in their hand was a chance to just be left alone for a few hours.

if you shot Lassie in the head it’d be front page news.

MAN INVENTS TIME MACHINE

Nature is inherently full of suffering and animals have developed strategies (adrenaline) to cope with being eaten alive for a short period of time.

What do you mean by “eaten alive for a short period of time”? Do you mean eaten and end up dead quickish? How would organisms evolve strategies to make being eaten less unpleasant?

and every single fisherman i pass on the canal/riverside looks like they had had every ounce of joy and fun drained out of their bodies.

Plenty of folk say this about cyclists.

How would organisms evolve strategies to make being eaten less unpleasant?

Evolution, d’uh. Those with the strategy last longer and breed more, I thought you were some sort of scientist………

😉

“enticing an animal to bite on a hook, then dragging said animal around for a period of time until it is completely exhausted and has lost the strength and will to fight, then pulling it on to a boat…”

Hmmm. But Orca chase seals around until they’re too tired to get away from the gnashing teeth, and then, mmm, delicious seal meal. You do realise that is how food works on this planet?

I occasionally fish. Either off a kayak for bass on the sea or fly fish in fast flowing rivers for trout, grayling etc Neither of these activities are remotely similar to sitting on a canal side watching a float just like Downhill mtb is different to bikepacking is different to cycling along a cycle path  with your kids. To look down on any of them is just borne of ignorance.

I would never livebait but agree even using artificial lures/flys can be seen as barbaric. However in our defence, most anglers go to great lengths to cause minimal harm to fish they are not taking for the table (barbless hooks, quick return etc) and also try to look after and manage the fishing environment. Certainly there is far less rubbish left by anglers than most other beach and river users.

Just like cycling though, there are good and bad examples.