SCIENCE AND C&R
Per-
Your points are well taken. My post was not designed to upset anyone but to make people at least stop and think how they conduct themselves on the river in pursuit of their sport.
Just for historical perspective, I was trained as a fishery biologist. My responsibilities over the years included trapping fish, drugging fish, cutting off a fin or two. All for science.
Back in the late seventies while pretending I was a fishing bum up in British Columbia I caught lots of fish on flies. From some of them I took scale samples and stuck spaghetti tags in their backs. Why? I was trained to do these things and when asked for my assistance by several friends of mine who were fish techs on the Skeena and its tribs, I could not refuse them.
Just for the record I did not particularly enjoy injecting orange plastic strips into the meat of their beautiful backs. But then again, it was in pursuit of science, nicht wahr?
I justified that sort of fish abuse because of my training. I was trained to believe that collecting good solid scientific data is the foundation of sound fisheries management. At the time there were also radio tags stuffed down their gullets which were used to determine fish movements in the river systems. I left that to the experts.
But wrapping a tape measure around the belly of every fish one catches while pursuing one's sport? Please. I've seen ten pound fish flopping in the mud just so some guy could get his numbers right so he could perform his devastatingly accurate math calculations back at the lodge.
"It's ten pounds", I said to one of them, tapping him gently on the shoulder. "No, way!", said he. "For damn sure it'll go twelve!".
His face, spattered with mud, had a messianic twist to it that was downright scary.
If the fish is that big or that memorable and your intent is purely sport, why not lay your rod down next to the fish and measure the rod later after you've turned the fish loose?
The "girth"? It was designed to carry milt and roe up to the spawning gravel. The slime that covers that girth was meant to be left intact on the scales so as to guard against fungus and scratches from rocks. And to protect that precious cargo inside for the miraculous journey home.