The catch and release fishermen have had a disproportionate number of letters proclaiming their beliefs and generally supporting the fishing initiative. Unfortunately, the legislature gave Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife a mandate to “simplify” the law book, and the department, pushed by the catch and release crowd, used their mandate to impose their initiative upon the unsuspecting sportsmen. The result was a law book so complicated and monstrous that a neophyte fisherman wouldn’t dream of fishing salmonids. (Read the laws governing the West Branch of the Penobscot.)

The trout fishing in our area is as good as it ever was, no better and no worse, but people are no longer fishing because of the fishing initiative rules. The sportsmen don’t like the two fish limit and they disparage the slot limits by calling it “the catch, kill, and release law.”

Catch and release may be fine for bass, which are after all the largest of the sunfish family, but salmonids are something else. The biology books forbid the touching of a salmonid with your bare hands since you will break the slime that protects them from infection and squeezing the fish can damage them as well. Try doing that with a squirming salmonid that is badly hooked. A major misbelief is that injured fish that die float on top. MIF&W biologist Paul Johnson has stated that the vast majority of injured salmonids go to the bottom and die. He has also stated that bleeding fish will almost certainly die. The salmonids in the rivers of Montana are being decimated by “whirling disease,” and while the jury is still out on the cause, many now feel that catch and release fishing has enabled the disease to penetrate the fish’s natural barrier due to the loss of protective slime from fish being handled.

Pemadumcook Lake has had its fishing decimated, not by fishermen, but by the stocking of lake trout and the management of the lake for some without regard to the forage fish. The result has been small anorexic fish that nobody wants to catch.

It is said that the key to success in business is location, location, and location. The same is true for wildlife, only it is habitat, habitat, and habitat. Clearcutting around brooks and ponds will damage or destroy the fishery due to a rise in water temperature. Growing big fish requires water with the right alkali content. Very few ponds in our area are capable of growing big fish, but many are capable of growing a large numbers of fish, and yet the two fish slot limit was applied to them without rhyme or reason.

There was so little perspicacity used in the fishing initiative that the result has been not better fishing but loss of fishing license sales. There are those out there who are not yet satisfied and want to curtail ice fishing as well. The department will do so at its peril. There has to be tolerance for all forms of fishing. The resource belongs to all, and should be used by all.

Ray A. Campbell is the Director of the Fin and Feather Club and lives in Millinocket.