I accidentally wasted about an hour of my life after reading the referenced article, searching and cross-referencing and searching again, but I never did find anything at all relating to Steelhead mortality via blunt-force trauma other than those injuries incurred while swimming through turbines (which is nothing but stupid and reckless behavior in my book). Rather than being sucked into pointless controversy I should have just mentally condensed the "study" (I have a friend that knows a guy, and he said he heard it is totally true) down to this: "Please handle fish with all consideration, and practice good catch-and-release principles as published for your knowledge like a billion friggin times already. Jeesh!".
"Oh, and if biologists use fly fishing practices, who are you to refuse our products?"
Off the record, I would like to know if the biologists continued with catching and releasing the GPS-tagged fish after they made their brilliant discovery on head injuries. Also, how many fish were involved in total in the catch/release phase and what percentage of that number were part of the "this is now a recovery mission" fatally concussed, bludgeoned, cracked, cocoanut shell-split, clonked, bopped and boinked victims. And did they eat them after the autopsy?
E
eace:
