The email stood out among dozens waiting in the inbox on a Monday morning, and then a phone call came to rub it in.
They were both trout anglers, upset at one or more of the many online photographs of fish in a Sunday outdoors section story about the Brule River steelhead fishing opener.
The fish in the photo was being mishandled, they said, and probably would perish after being released. The newspaper should set a better example, both anglers argued.
And they were right.
Catch, photograph and release fishing has become so entrenched in our fishing psyche in recent years that it's almost hard to remember that keeping nearly every fish caught was once the norm in our father's and grandfather's days. Over the last 40 years the idea of fishing for fun, and releasing fish to swim another day, has spread across every aspect of the sport _ from bluegills in ponds to trout in rivers and marlin in the oceans.
But simply releasing a fish is no guarantee that it will survive, which is, after all, the point of catch and release fishing: To keep the fish in the system so it can be caught again and so it can propagate and make more fish.
In fact, a certain number of fish caught and released die simply from being handled. How big a percentage depends on two major factors: Water temperature and handling procedures. Studies show a wide range of fish deaths after being released, what fisheries biologists call hooking mortality, from less than 2 percent for quickly handled stream trout to 40 percent for some lake trout.
That's not to say catch-and-release fishing hasn't helped sustain fish populations. It's probably the biggest reason we still have catchable numbers of walleyes, musky and trout.
But as one trout enthusiast raised the issue: If one angler catches three fish and keeps all of them to eat, and another catches 40 fish and releases them all, but 10 percent die anyhow, who has killed more trout? You do the math.
The key is to reduce the mortality rates of released fish, and there are some simple keys to doing that: Land them quickly, handle as gently and as little as possible, and get them back in the water as fast as possible.
