Fishing laws in Canada and US states often protect small fish and are less restrictive with big ones. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
People who love to fish spend plenty of money on gear, license fees and even gas for their boats. It’s enough to make anglers think, maybe they’re entitled to keeping the biggest fish for trophies or the frying pan, right? Shawn Allee met a researcher who wants you to throw back your biggest catch:
Transcript
People who love to fish spend plenty of money on gear, license fees and even gas for their boats. It’s enough to make anglers think, maybe they’re entitled to keeping the biggest fish for trophies or the frying pan, right? Shawn Allee met a researcher who wants you to throw back your biggest catch:
This is the guy who wants to change how a lot of people fish.
“My name is Paul Venturelli and I study fisheries biology at the University of Toronto.”
Venturelli’s disturbed by how many fish species are on the brink of collapse – either in oceans or in fresh water.
He hopes to grow fish stocks – with this fishing advice.
Toss the big ones back.
And what’s he got to back that up?
“I’ve got about ten pages of notes here. Nah, I’m kidding. I’m kidding.”
Actually, he says the idea is pretty simple.
“A ton of big, old fish will produce more new fish than a ton of smaller, younger fish. And this is because the bigger, older fish tend to produce offspring that have a higher chance of survival.”
Venturelli studies mostly ocean-species, but he says the principal should apply to North American freshwater fish like pike and walleye, too.
But Venturelli’s got a problem spreading this idea around.
Fishing laws in Canada and a lot of US states often protect small fish and are less restrictive with big ones.
I asked one of the head guys in Illinois fisheries, Joe Ferencak, why that is.
“Essentially what you’re doing with that minimum size limit is protecting one or two year classes of reproductive age fish so they can successfully spawn or reproduce.”
Ferencak says, fisheries science has stood behind the ‘protect the small fish’ theory for decades – with some exceptions.
He says to change laws, Venturelli would need to do more studies.
Plus, Ferencak says no state would want to completely keep people from big fish – that’s just not much fun.
“We want to maintain and enhance these fisheries for the benefit of the fishing public, the angler. And it’s kind of counter-intuitive to not allow them to take these larger fish.”
Well, I figure it wouldn’t be fair to talk about big fish without talking to outdoorsmen, so I spent some time in Griffith, Indiana.
It’s about ten miles from Lake Michigan.
Fishing and hunting outlets are all around – and there’s this place.
Allee: “So what’s the establishment.”
Leap: “American Natural Resources.”
Edward Leap Senior runs American Natural Resources – it’s a taxidermy shop – with stuffed deer, fox, and fish filling every nook and cranny.
I figure Leap would rush to the defense of catching big fish, but, you know what? He doesn’t bite.
Allee: “If you get a whole bunch of fish in your boat, I mean, you want to show off the big one. Most people do, right?”
Leap: “Yes and no, though. When you get talking about the conscientious outdoorsman, no, he’s not going to be thinking this way. He’s going to say, ‘I got this fifteen pound walleye, a super-trophy fish. It took a lot of years to grow this fish, I’m going to take a picture of it and I’m going to release it.'”
And, to prove the point, he reaches back and pulls a fish trophy off the shelf.
“For the trophy part of it, we’ll do a reproduction of it that you can’t tell from the real thing. And the fish now is out there spawning, and making eggs, and continuing its species.”
Leap says more and more fishermen are having him make fake fish – or, reproductions, as he calls them.
So, from his vantage, scientists like Paul Venturelli won’t have too much trouble with the advice to ‘throw back the big ones.’
Leap says you don’t have to keep fish you catch, and in his experience, smaller fish make better eating anyway.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.