Graham Marsden
Editor Emeritus
This is a dedicated thread for discussing article: The Catch-and-Release Obsession
Something's gone slightly wrong with the article, and I've asked Graham to sort it out; but I'm glad you could make sense of it anyway.
Good article Mark.
Could one of the reasons that catch and release is frowned upon be that we have become more "sanitised" and that people don't associate food with live animals in the way we used to.
I still live in the village where I grew up. When I was a lad, many, many years ago, there were eight working farms and two slaughter houses in the village plus three or four what could be classed as smallholdings. As youngsters we saw life with animals in the raw. It was commonplace to watch beast being slaughtered and butchered and to play on the farms.
Today there are no working farms or smallholdings and one slaughterhouse still at the local butchers. There is no chance of kids hanging around that one anymore.
Most of the meat and fish bought these days will be from supermarkets.
I think the "obsession" came about from clubs originally, but was reinforced by carpers. Pet names for fish followed...
Here`s one Londoner who don`t .Definately a controversial topic for many anglers and for many reasons.
Londoners still fish for eels for consumption for there beloved Jellied Eels.