Fly Fishing - Alaska Steelhead

jeremy

I knew that would get your attention:)

------- Marcel, I was very interested by a post I saw on Fly Fishing Only board by you. I thought it was interesting how Catch and Release IS ILLEGAL in Germany....funny how everyone sees things differently...So, in USA you can get arrested or whatever for keeping a fish and in your homeland you can get arrested for NOT keeping a fish. Smile

ChrisR · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 8:40 am Post subject:

When I lived over there I do recall it was difficult to get a license even. You have to take a very extensive coarse. Be able to recognize pollution of the waters. Know a fishes anatomy inside and out. A lot about equipment as well. There are some beautiful waters over there that I would loved to have fished though. Never did get to.

Z · Newbie Joined: Apr 15, 2005 Posts: 17

Actually, Marcel is from the Netherlands, not Germany, and the Dutch are a lot more savvy about releasing fish, especially since they usually have to travel outside of NL to catch trout.

In Europe most waters are controlled by a local fishing club. In most countries one buys an national fishing lisence and then you buy a day license for the water you want to fish. In some places - such as Slovenia - this fee goes to the local fisheries management program, which encourages wild trout management. So, for a really good water like the Sava Bohinjka river in central Slovenia I can pay 30 Euro a day for a catch and release permit, or 60 Euro a day to keep three fish. The payoff is well managed water, and you meet a lot of folks who come to fish there from all over - England, France, local Slovenes, most of whom are C&R anglers. But at the end of the day one invariably sees some the German fishermen setting up their grills to cook their catch. At such times one's international vocabulary of spicy invective can really grow.

I know some of those German streams are under heavy fishing pressure, and only exist because of put and take, but it will take a long time to get them to change their ways.

Marcel_Karssies · Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 5:02 pm Post subject:

Thank you Z for ONCE AGAIN giving Jeremy
geography lessons.
Jeremy, one of these days I am going to send you a map
So far the last time, I live in the Netherlands, Dutchman ok.
City: Enschede, Country: Netherlands Location: Latitude 52°13'12.13"N Longitude 6°53'46.24"E

In fact it is forbidden to take any fish where I live but
a ten minutes drive takes you over the border and
into another world.

Now you could regard most Germans as fish clubbers but
even there some fisherman question the rules of keeping
all fish.
As Z mentioned some visiting German anglers take their
bad habits abroad which puts them rather low on the
popularity scale.

greg · Newbie Joined: May 18, 2003 Posts: 45

There are places in the US that will not allow retuning fish do to the amount of handling and the removing of the film thet protecs them. To much handling can give them leisions and will lead to death. This isn't common practice but in selected areas its the law. Conservation of a healthy population is the point and I'm sure thats the point where you fish.

Marcel_Karssies · Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:43 am Post subject:

Nope, over the border it is the law everywhere with no exceptions.
Fishing pressure is indeed heavy in the waters I fish so after stocking catching a trout will get more difficult by the day.

The majority of the trout will not get any larger than the stocking size
which is usually 25cm, the legal limit.
Many fish are caught during the first days when the fish are put in.
The only large fish I have seen last season where the rainbow trout that
where used as stock fish at our hatchery.
The German club has decided to buy eggs instead of rearing the trout all the way.

These days our hatchery introduces eggs into the stream to raise wary fish
but due to silt in the stream bed and predation results vary.
It is too bad there is so little aquatic vegitation in the stream, some extra cover would have been nice.

Z · Newbie Joined: Apr 15, 2005 Posts: 17

Catch and release tends to be an alien concept in places where the fisheries are completely dependant on stocked fish. Local fishermen think that they have paid for the fish, so why shouldn't they keep them? I noticed that in Slovenia and France anglers tended to relase their fish more. In Italy, fish don't stand a chance of being released - Italian trout basically come out of the hatchery already stuffed with herbs and lightly floured. In East Europe, however, the trout have a chance when they are located in a remote area or in one with an active trout fishing tradition, like Croatia, Slovakia, or southern Poland. 98% of Eastern European fishermen are devoted carp fishermen. Trout - or any predatory fish - simply do not interest them.

Personally, after standing hip deep in cold water all day,, the last thing I want to eat is a trout. Hot soup is more like it. I will admit that I ate my first wild trout in a decade last summer in Finland. I was about to release it when I realized that I actually did not have any food where I was staying and wouldn't be eating for another twelve hours. It satisfied me that wild trout are not so amazingly delicious that I need to kill them on a regular basis. Tasty, but I much prefer a nice steak, or maybe a hot haddock and chips in London.

I do feel bad when I release grayling, though, because they seem to take being handled and released much worse. Small grayling fight harder and longer than small trout, and take much longer to recover when released. I no longer even try to lift the fish from the water when takling the hook out of the mouth, which is difficult because a grayling's jaw is lower than a trout's.

Marcel_Karssies · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 3:28 pm Post subject:

Yep those grayling are fragile.
My German club has bought a batch of small size grayling to stock in our little river. The big ones where sold out due to heavy demand aka cormorants.
The batch from last year most likely did not survive the pig slurry accident last year upstream altough I have heard reports that some fish
where caught 20 miles further downstream.

Any signs of birdflu in Slovenia ?
I have a trip planned to the Baltic seacoast at the end of March, appearantly dead swans with the disease have been found there.
I wonder what the impact will be.

Z · Newbie Joined: Apr 15, 2005 Posts: 17

I think Croatia showed Bird Flu in December - Hungary just reported cases, Italy has checked in with it, so I doubt that Slovenia is clean. Remember: bird flu is bad, but it still hasn't mutated into a strain that can be passed human to human, and all human victims were people who handled diseased birds. I wouldn't cancel a trip to Slovenia or anyplace short of rural Vietnam or Kurdistan because of it right now.

Other flu scares have ended up as duds - the swine flus in the US during the 1970s and late 80's, for example.
Seriously, I occaisionally read scientific web sites for bird flu information - in the greater media this is another news story and the more hype (fear! epidemic!) spread the more soap gets sold, more and sports at six-thirty!

Until the PhD chorus tells me to lock myself in the basement with a gas mask, I'll see you out on the streams. Now, as long as I keep tying flies with my present stock of hackles and marabou I should be alright.

jason-c · Newbie Joined: Apr 02, 2004 Posts: 101

There is a lake in New York I used to fish that you were only allowed to catch five fish. Keep them or not after five hooked, you were supposed to be done. They would enforce it too! When "they" were around.