jtreagan
I am becoming weary of the arrogant bigotry Oregon's regulators show toward bait fishing. I have always been a bait fisher, especially enjoying floating a worm into a hole on a small, mountain stream. Now all those streams have been cut off from bait fishing by Oregon's regulators. The only reason I can see is arrogance. They seem to think that fishing with artificials is somehow a cut above bait fishing. They've left a few streams with "exceptions" but all the nice places have been grabbed for the "upper crust" snobs. Fly and lure fishing is a perfectly valid form of the sport, but please tell me why there should there be any limitations at all on what kind of fishing you do? The catch we are allowed to keep is limited, so who cares how you go about catching your fish? All streams should be open to all forms of fishing everywhere in the state.
I'd love to hear someone else weigh in on this.
Do you have any actual data on this? A study done on striped bass in salt water showed the hook dissolution to be far slower than that, and often fatal:@jtreagan
If they were throat hooked, bleeding or gut hooked mortality was much higher, sometimes approaching 96%. In those cases if the angler cut the line and did not even attempt to remove the hook survival rate was better. Between the effect of water and the fish's body fluids the hook barb/point dissolved in a matter of days and fell out.
Great thread, as a angler I'll fish for any fish. I have discussed this issue with ODFW on many occasions and heard the same argument each time about the mortality rates of Fly vs bait. Here is my view, if the idea is to protect the Native fish then they should close the water to all forms of angling. To allow one or two types of angling and not the others is simply not right. We all pay our fees and follow the same rules on the water, it comes down to money... money and money. The fly anglers just have more pull with the law makers and they have a very strong lobby presence during the entire year. No one group should be allowed influence an agency's policy and exclude or single out another group.
This is probable going to start a fire storm....
Chuck
I would suggest this is a 'bait vs. non-bait' not a 'bait vs. fly' discussion. there are very few 'fly only' areas in the state; lots of 'no bait' areas.
fish almost never swallow a spinner, spoon, plug, or fly. but they sure will take bait in deep enough to suffer a fatal injury.