Flyfish_va post in the "Western Va Wild Trout Stream" thread had a list of citation fish from the Jackson River. I went deeper into the link because I was curious about citations from other locations for brook, brown and rainbow trout.
As I suspected most of the citations were from Cedar Creek and Cripple Creek. Both of those operations I believe are private, pay and harvest streams. Cripple Creek, which I have fished three times, is famous for throwing in huge trout the morning you get there and then you fish for them. No catch and release, you keep what you catch and when you hit your limit you are done.
I have no problem with the folks who run those operations or the people who pay to fish them. It is what it it is. Some folks go for the thrill of catching huge fish. I went because I wanted guilt- free trout for the table.
But, I have always been a little put off that VDGIF would issue citations for fish caught at those places. I have never been able to nail down my objections other than to say "it jis don't seem fittin'."
Is it just me? What do you guys think?
9ft4wt
it is what it is because of all the stocking that takes place there isn't any clear way to distinguish between wild reproducing fish and stocked trout in the fisherman's eye. I personally have no desire to fish for any stocked trout. However I encourage others to go there.
Are they legitimate citation fish?
I don't really care -- it has no relevance to my style of fishing.
I wouldn't fish there, but I certainly don't have a problem with people who do. I don't have a problem with anybody as long as they fish legal (unless they are fishing downstream and I'm fishing upstream). :)
Sounds like a promotion more than anything - get more new folks interested in going for a relatively 'easy' trophy, sell more licenses, collect more revenue, etc. I see where you're coming from though - it cheapens the 'citation' classification.
Keith:
I have thought about your point in the past, and I agree -- how do you tell the difference. In the over all scheme of things, concerning trout fishing this doesn't even cause a blink of the eye when compared to fencing out cattle from streams, stream bank stabilization or restoring creek side vegetation to create shade.
Having thought about it since I saw your post, however, I think that what galls me about this is the cheapening of trout fishing. A six-inch native brookie is a work of art. A 10-incher is a master piece and a 12-incher should be a national treasure. Why should anyone care about catching, protecting and ensuring that wild trout will exist for our grandchildren when they can be rewarded for going out and buying a trophy?
That is not the lesson young anglers should be learning. It is not about instant gratification, or about the catching. It should be about the opportunity, the effort, the challenge, the luck, the skill, the adventure and the beauty you discover.
I have no problem with people catching stocked fish or paying to land pigs. I just don't believe recognizing and rewarding them for it, is good for the conservation of trout in the long run.
9ft4wt
citation issue aside nine footer, i'm curious as to why you would go to a stocked stream for "guilt-free" meat.
personally, i dislike the taste of trout chow raised trout. i would much rather dine on a legal wild stream caught trout, it is going to be fresh and tasty..... and in doing so, i will not suffer any feelings of guilt. first and foremost, i'm a fisherman, therefore a hunter.
that said, i haven't killed a trout for the table in years (hell, it's been months since i have even been trout fishing :'( )... however i have shared the killing of saltwater species... trout, redfish, bluefish, flounder, spanish, kings, and dolphin in the past few months..... and they all were well prepared and cooked.... and tasted great!
i guess what i'm trying to convey to you is that you shouldn't feel guilty if you catch-and-kill a legal wild fish on occasion for your table fare..... pass the butter and lemon please ;D
wally, who is well aware that this kind of statement/thread has caused many a flame war across fly fishing forums for years, bwth, it's cold-n-nasty outside >:D
I love cripple creek. I've fished it a few times and it's fun. The people like to go there to catch a trophy. A lot of what gets caught there ends up at the taxidermist. I'm OK with that. The fish from there do not taste good.
Citations: I think it's just a lot easier than having a panel judge your fish's worthiness. I bet they get a lot more nosy if you're claiming some kind of record.
S
I have no problem fishing those places, the guy from Big Pine offered to let me fish it for free and do trips..But I dont think those places should count as citations.
It takes years of work and fishing to find spot and methods to catch giant fish (and a hell of a lot of luck) But paying $50 to fish a place that gets the living shit stocked out of it with giant fish and then registering those fish as a citation makes the ones we catch on our own, seem less valuable...And that pisses me off!
The Citations are just for the Angler! Don't you even have to pay for it?
I'm all for raising money from fools who need a piece of paper to prove that they have caught a large fish.
Walt:
I have no problem with you keeping a wild caught trout every now and then. I say to myself quite often on wild waters that this time if I catch a trout, I am going to keep it and eat it. i have been yearning to eat a brown from the Soho. i have never had a brown trout and I suspect a 15 -inch Soho brown would be pretty tasty. yet everytime i aim to do it, i can't bring myself to do it in the end. I probably will one of these days.
Shane: I will admit I enjoyed fishing Cripple Creek. I have no qualms about going back again. and to tell the truth, each time I kept trout from there, they were actually not bad. Course you butterfly em, soak em in beer in milk, fry em up in bacon grease, with garlic and some spices and stuffed with crabmeat, scallop and shrimp mix.....I didn't hear any of my buddies camping with me at Hurricane complain.
9ft4wt
Browns taste bad. Rainbows are great and better cooked on a stick. I dont eat trout except when I am backpacking and a brown is on the bottom of my list for tablefare.
citations look good on a guides resume.
the fee is $4.00
Speaking of cooking....Dan when are we going fishing again? It would also be nice to have Dave and Mike along to watch me catch fish. ;D
Anybody out there have a Citation? I want to see what one looks like, the only ones that I have from NC are PINK
Quote from: flyfish_va on December 10, 2008, 22:13:27 PM
citations look good on a guides resume.
the fee is $4.00
Yep, I was at a couple of those public Philpott 216 study meetings when a local fellow got up and informed eveyone that he was a guide and spent over 250 days a year on the river and had 7 citation trout certificates to prove it. He went on to tell everyone what was wrong and how to fix it, ie stock shad above the dam so they could be drawn through the turbines like in the old days - I was real impressed.
Quote from: Oldman on December 10, 2008, 20:56:21 PM
Browns taste bad. Rainbows are great and better cooked on a stick. I dont eat trout except when I am backpacking and a brown is on the bottom of my list for tablefare.
I guess it's a matter of taste Oldman - I've had brown trout twice: once from Soho on riverbank cooked by Maniac in seaweed, another time some taken from Little Red at Rainbow Island in Arkansas. Reminded me of salmon - slightly pink-orange colored as well. The rainbows were taken from Little Red also - they were off-white in color and bland compared to the browns. 'Course, the Little Red bows were probably stockers vs. the (likely?) wild bows Oldman enjoys.
Quote from: 9ft4wt on December 10, 2008, 20:06:11 PM
Walt:
I have no problem with you keeping a wild caught trout every now and then. I say to myself quite often on wild waters that this time if I catch a trout, I am going to keep it and eat it. i have been yearning to eat a brown from the Soho. i have never had a brown trout and I suspect a 15 -inch Soho brown would be pretty tasty. yet everytime i aim to do it, i can't bring myself to do it in the end. I probably will one of these days.
9ft4wt
4wt... i'm glad you don't suffer pangs for my soul if i decide to catch~n~kill a fish. tic aside....
the issue as i see it, and my belief system *has* changed over the past decade, is that no one should feel guilty about killing a fish for the table.
when i was first introduced to flyfishing back in '84, the mantra was c&r everything. this fitted well right into the c&r bass fishing motif that i adhered to at the time and i didn't really give it a second thought.
about a dozen or so years ago there was a crazy bastard named t-bone that argued that the c&r motif was a fallacy..... in some respects i have drifted over to accept some of his arguments.
it went something like this.....
humans eat meat, hence the hunt. go catch some fish for your table, quit, go home, prepare it and eat it.
all c&r invoves a certain percentage of fish mortality. some say as little as 10%, some argue to as much as 40%, i don't know the answer. what i do know is that it opens the door for organizations such as PETA to argue that fisherman are practicing animal abuse and can effectively argue for fishing bans.
to defeat that argument, kill some meat and take it home for the table..... human nature.
.................
what you need to do is ask yourself, why do i fish?
there is really only one answer that is correct concerning the human condition/nature.
all other answers are ego driven to some extent.
now, i'm not saying that you should kill every fish that you catch, if every one of us did that there probably would be no fish, hence the c&r conundrum.
what i am saying is that you (or anyone for that matter) shouldn't feel guilty about being human and accepting natural instinct.
.... i earlier said..... "that no one should feel guilty about killing a fish for the table."
many a time on a c&r stream, i *have* felt guilty. why? knowing that the fish i just released may die because of coming into contact with me due to any number of physical reasons... that also is a conundrum, well to me anyways.
ok, ok, off the block. 9', may i suggest that when you are ready to keep a fish for the table, keep one from a stream that has little or no human waste/pollution influence. dat stuff ain't good fer ya.
wally....
Walt, I have talked to biologists and read mortality studies at length to determine how I fish. Every biologist I have talked to, and every study I have read, is definite on certain aspects of hooking. A fish that is hooked in soft tissue and bleeds dies. A fish that is hooked in the gills or has the line wrapped under the gill covers dies. Therefore, I keep these fish. However, I don't get to determine what I keep this way. The fish volunteers. I do try to avoid areas where I might have to violate my own ethics. I have only fished the Davidson twice and I felt guilty both times. I fish the Smith mainly, but in Bassett and upstream. You won't see me in the Spec Regs very often and only if I'm with someone else. ( once in two years). I have absolutely no problem with anybody who fishes in a legal manner, from the pure catch and release guys, ( the vast majority of my friends)to the old men sitting on the bank throwing corn, but for myself, if I release one the biologists tell me will die, I feel like I killed it solely for my own amusement.
Ben
That's exactly the reason I don't striper fish during warm weather .
As you and I talked before , 70 % mortality rate by some biologist
is just too high . Can't stand killing for the fun of killing.
I don't feel that a fish that bleeds a small amount will die. Now the one that is gill hooked or bleeding really bad may. I may be wrong I am not a biologist or anything. Just can't see that happening. I think the handling of the fish plays more into it than anything and I don't think you have to handle them like they are eggs but still be soft. Get then in QUICK as you can and get a pic if you wanna and release the thing not rocket science.
STU
I too am always afraid of deep hooking a trout. I have been fly fishing for most of my life, but exclusively trout fishing for the last 15 years. I learned to fish wet style, and fished this way until 2007, thats when I first fished tail waters. Although tail waters can be fished wet style with good success, I wanted to learn how to fish with an indicator, as most of the strikes were very subtle. But I was always hesitant to use one, because of the fear of deep hooking a fish.
I had the mindset of of bobber fishing blue gills as a kid, and almost always deep hooking them with worm baited hooks, this was OK, as I kept all the fish caught.
But I don't keep any trout, and surely don't want to deep hook one. One of the best ways I can avoid this was to hone my hook setting skills, that is to say set quickly before the fish has a chance of swallowing the fly. This has always driven me, and I have lost many a fish setting the hook to quickly, but the upside is, I have never deep hooked a trout, it might just be luck, but I think there are elements we can control in our fishing skills to boost luck, and hook setting is a good example.
I was lucky enough to have an excellent teacher, who never liked to waist anything, and killing a fish without the intent of consumption was "in his mind" the greatest waist. He talked in great detail about hook set and why it was important. He only fished wet style, and though it was the only way to fish. It was only later that I started to dry fly fish and nymph fish, but I'll never forget the lessons learned. They are just as important for any style of fishing be it dry, wet or nymphing.
Just my ramblings.
TP
I have a citation for a white marlin that I released. I guess Maryland takes your word for it, so you should be able to citation and release. Not sure if other states or commonwealths operate the same way, but they should.
Who gives a crap anyway. I framed mine with some pictures in my bar, but that doesn't mean anything to you fellows, it's just for me.
As far as mortality is concerned, fish live in pretty tough neighborhoods. How many have you caught with weasel scars and heron punctures and one eyeball gone. I think they are tougher than we tend to give them credit for.
S
Shane, you are correct about the external damage. A healthy fish can handle external damage that is not too severe. I have seen many a fish on the Chatooga with otter or osprey scars. I am a curious person and every time I run into someting unusual I call one of my trout biologist buddies. I was told that a healthy fish can handle a lot of external stuff. It is the internal stuff that decreases their odds of survival. I keep the ones the biologists and mortality studies tell me that the odds are against their survival and release the ones that the odds are for their survival. I learned a long time ago that the majority of the biologists know their stuff and have a pride in the rivers that are under their care and are delighted to answer any questions as long as you listen with an open mind.
Trout are a matter of taste. Some like um some dont.
As far as damage to a fish no matter what kind of fish............ a LOT goes to how long one plays (or has fun to his own benifit) the fish. I saw a guy this year on the New play a 10" smallie for some 6 or 7 minutes at least. I think I POed him when I hollered "Com on guy, he aint that big".
Qoute: "I framed mine with some pictures in my bar"
Shane:
You gotta bar? How come last time I saw you, which has been far too long, I had too pay for drinks at the country club?
You been holding out on me? What kind of single malt you stock? ;D Youserve any of your home brews? ;)
I have caught citations. I don't have any citations. You are right who cares?
9ft4wt
If by single malt you mean Ushers Green Stripe or Cutty then you are in luck! All you can drink!
Let's go fishing
S
January is booked. Pick a place and a day or weekend in Feb., Mach, or mid April. Neutral ground. No Smith. No Mossy.
I apparently will have to bring the Scotch :P
9ft4wt