Mastering one's fears can be more challenging than one thinks.

[LythSalicaria]

I taught my nephew that "adage" before he started school....boys rule, girls drool...is that the one you were recalling??

Yup, that's the one I was referencing - though you got the genders mixed up.

Good practice, always releasing the big fish. I don't think its fair for them to end up mounted on someone's wall. When I used to fish, they were either released or they were eaten. When my half brother and his family were living with us, he used to take his sons out fishing a lot. Once his oldest son caught the biggest largemouth bass I've ever seen - bloody thing was 15 pounds. They brought it home, put it in a Rubbermaid tub full of water and it stayed there until it died. Completely wasted. My father was furious, and I straight up cried. I seem to recall that they moved away shortly after that - I often think that incident had something to do with it.

I detest trophy hunting as well - if you're going to go out into the woods and shoot something, you had better plan on making use of every part of it.

 

[cold blood]

My brother did that in high school, he caught a 7 lb bass, which is a monster up here in WI and killed it to mount it....it sat in the freezer till it got damaged and was thrown out....I was a bit perturbed to say the least. I've never been a fan of skin mounts, especially now that reproductions have improved.

I have a tiger musky (cross between musky and pike) on my wall that's just a little mid 40 incher. It was only kept because it couldn't be revived after a long fish in the summer (it ate a gill being reeled in on light tackle). It is a hybrid though that's not capable of reproduction anyway. This was back in 1989.

 

[awiec]

My brother did that in high school, he caught a 7 lb bass, which is a monster up here in WI and killed it to mount it....it sat in the freezer till it got damaged and was thrown out....I was a bit perturbed to say the least. I've never been a fan of skin mounts, especially now that reproductions have improved.

I have a tiger musky (cross between musky and pike) on my wall that's just a little mid 40 incher. It was only kept because it couldn't be revived after a long fish in the summer (it ate a gill being reeled in on light tackle). It is a hybrid though that's not capable of reproduction anyway. This was back in 1989.

While I've seen some excellent skin mounts, they do wear out and it's quite hard to repair them. I find the fiberglass mounts much preferable and they are longer lasting and I can still eat the fish.

 

[cold blood]

While I've seen some excellent skin mounts, they do wear out and it's quite hard to repair them. I find the fiberglass mounts much preferable and they are longer lasting and I can still eat the fish.

The whole point of a reproduction is that the fish gets to be released to live and breed. Big fish are a poor choice for the dinner table...not only are the far more valuable in the water (a legal musky for instance holds a monetary replacement value to the lake of close to 20k), but larger fish, especially predatory fish, are significantly less healthy to eat.

 

[LythSalicaria]

While I've seen some excellent skin mounts, they do wear out and it's quite hard to repair them. I find the fiberglass mounts much preferable and they are longer lasting and I can still eat the fish.

Yeah you don't want to eat any fish that's big enough to warrant mounting on a wall - toxins from the water get absorbed into their flesh, particularly mercury. I'm trying to find studies on the subject to link you to but I'm having problems getting access to the ones most relevant. Heaven forbid a layman wants to educate him or herself.

 

[cold blood]

Yeah you don't want to eat any fish that's big enough to warrant mounting on a wall - toxins from the water get absorbed into their flesh, particularly mercury. I'm trying to find studies on the subject to link you to but I'm having problems getting access to the ones most relevant. Heaven forbid a layman wants to educate him or herself.

True, a fish's body will absorb toxins and store them in their fat. They have no recourse to reduce toxins, so they just continue to slowly increase as the fish grows. Couple that with the fact that the bigger the fish is, the bigger its prey often is, meaning that larger fish are taking larger amounts of toxins per feeding. Also the bigger the fish, the more the fat is spread throughout the flesh as opposed to just being held in the obvious areas like the belly like you see with smaller specimens. This is especially obvious with pike, which have very lean white flesh when young, but as they grow their flesh yellows a bit (about the 26-30" mark), which is an indication of higher fat content...as is reddish flesh, like you see in salmon, trout and even catfish.

Fish eating advisories now include every lake, river and pond as pollution has a presence pretty much no matter where the water body is located....yeah some are worse than others, but none are really immune from toxins any more. You need an aquaculture system to accomplish that nowadays (its actually where I get most of the fish I eat as I have a friend that runs this with yellow perch).

 

[awiec]

Yeah you don't want to eat any fish that's big enough to warrant mounting on a wall - toxins from the water get absorbed into their flesh, particularly mercury. I'm trying to find studies on the subject to link you to but I'm having problems getting access to the ones most relevant. Heaven forbid a layman wants to educate him or herself.

I am aware of that, I was just saying that I could eat it if I wanted to but larger fish are better off in the lake to produce more young that I can eat. If I were to say, catch a swordfish for the first time, sure I would like a fiberglass replica of it but I would have the option of eating it, while a skin mount takes time out of properly preserving the fish to be eaten in a timely manner.