I don't know if y'all have seen this, but PETA is speaking out against fishing, including catch and release. They're using this video with Joaquin Phoenix to illustrate what a fish goes through when it's taken out of water:

PETA - Joaquin Phoenix

There's a site called Salt Strong, and the guy who runs it wrote an open letter to PETA. His name is Joe Simonds and he puts the smack down on this silliness:

Salt Strong - Joe Simonds rebuttal to PETA

PETA really is an organization run by ignorant people. They want us to go against nature and view eating meat as abhorrent because they feel we are above this perceived "cruelty." Well, PETA, the world is a place where things eat other things all the time. Lions eat gazelles, whales eat krill, hawks eat mice, and I enjoy having some kind of animal on my plate for pretty much every meal of the day. Nature has run things like this for millions of years, and a human organization has the arrogance to believe it is better than nature and that we can change the natural order of things all because they attach stupid sentimentality to animals that taste good. To show my defiance to this irrational way of thinking, I vow to catch and release as many bass as I can this weekend.

Lol

I'm gonna eat the bass I catch. That'll really make them and the bass section mad.

PETA is irrelevant to all but the brain-dead Liberals.

People Eating Tasty Animals

well said Garvin!

P E T A = People Eating Tasty Animals

Just Say'n

PETA has been opposing angling and harassing anglers for years.

OMG.....PETA.

So, I'm using trammel nets in a Houston subdivision lake last winter to clean out carp, buffalo, mudcat, channel cat, suckers, gar, etc. to help the lake come into compliance with USACOE regs with respect to emergent aquatic vegetation along the shorelines (the fish was rootin' it up).

My boss calls and says I gotta talk with PETA in NM about the project. I tried to tell him that these are a buncha stupid idiots with an agenda, money and no sense. But I gotta play nice. Anyway I speak with an AGGIE BIOLOGIST (which is what I am) working for them folks, and eventually work out a compromise.

I tell her my crew almost always knocks the caught fish in the head real good (euthanize) before we try and get it outta the net. She was touched with my sensitivity, but I hadda explain it was on acounta I din't want none of my guys bit by a fish and havta make a worker's comp claim.

They sent out a spy with a camera and called TPWD who sent out a warden that mistakenly tried to stop me (he later found I was operating legally).

1st story.

Your boss told you to call PETA...???
I thought PETA was a lobbying organization, not a wildlife or fisheries management organization. Why would your boss feel like y'all would have to answer to them? I'd a told them to stick it up their carp hole.

2nd story.

Was a big bass tournament in East Texas years ago. I was at a dance competition with my daughters. Buddy calls who is fishing the tournament and tells me that PETA has taken a radio add saying that they "Put enough fish tranquilizer in the lake to keep the fish from biting," and he wanted to know if that might be true.

So, I tell him, first, there ain't enough fishtrank on the planet to do an entire reservoir. Second, if there were that much trank, it'd cost millions upon millions to buy. Third, that nobody, and especially EPA is gonna allow that much of any harsh and potentially toxic substance to be put into a drinking water/irrigation reservoir. No, this can't be true, yes, it is a hoax, go fish.

These people, PETA, will lie, cheat, steal, and do all they can, legal, moral, or not, to forward their twisted agenda.

You and I think alike! Let me enlighten....

Ever heard of "The Woodlands?" If you do ANYTHING, even just look, associated with water or aquatic resources there, my touch is on it. Fish or compete in a triathalon, its all me.

How about "political correctness?" I mean, if they drain a pond to build a hospital over it, I go and "rescue for relocation" the turtles, at considerable expense. Where I live, we'd bury them and build over them, but I live in the country, not The Woodlands.

So, with that mentality, its walk on eggshells all the time. Political correctness the order of the day (GO TRUMP!) and I must be a practitioner of PC even though I abhor it.

That's The Woodlands, now take that ten times more extreme and you got one of the other places I work, Bridgeland (out 290), which is where me an' PETA were at loggerheads.

Much as I despise political correctness, I like to eat more, so I must be PC or meet my own demise. Makes me wanna puke.

PETA is one of those outfits whose agenda has nothing to do with animal rights. The "animal" part is just a vehicle for their agenda. Rather, they're in it to make themselves feel better about themselves because they have some overly-sentimental connection with things that have eyes (and they're probably struggling with feelings of guilt for wanting to eat one or two of them). It makes them feel heroic and righteous to resist the temptation to throw on a pair of ostrich skin Tony Lama's and enjoy and bag of spicy pork cracklins. Now, I have a disgust for anything I perceive to be animal cruelty, but these folks take it to the most absurd degree possible. It's the same sort of mentality that drives Zero Tolerance laws. Make EVERYTHING wrong, so we don't have to use our little brains to judge between right and wrong.
I think they should campaign to make tasty soybean treats for great white sharks so they'll leave the cute baby seals alone.
By the way, I live near the Bridgelands in the Cypress Mill area. What did you have to deal with there?

Soybean shark treats, now that may be a winner.....

When they built and filled the nearly thousand acres of lakes at Bridgeland they did so under the advisement of a passel of engineers, but somehow did not ask even one biologist his/her thoughts on the matter.

As a result the lakes were filled with rough fish from Cypress Creek that came in with the unfiltered, raw water used to fill the lakes. Then they added insult to injury with a typical subdivision stocking plan of grass carp and channel catfish (lots of carp and catfish equals no weeds). So the lakes are muddy, they can't get anything to grow on the sides, and the giverment is un happy they've not got any aquatic weeds growing along the edges as is required by law.

A lot of my work involves coming behind a group of engineers that built a living thing with no thought given to the fact it is alive. Lakes, ponds, water features, all well plumbed, engineered to the ninth degree, mostly with nasty green, or brown, or black, water, and stanky. Nobody thought to ask about keeping these things clean and healthy, so I come along and try to fix these things after the fact.

OTOH, we have found some really good crappie in some of those lakes, I mean some slabs. fish around the bases of the bridges.....

I'm sure (in my cynical mind) that the developers were less concerned about creating a real aquatic habitat that could sustain an ecosystem than selling "waterfront" plots of land for inflated prices. I've never snuck in to fish their ponds, but I've always wondered if there was a population of bass in there. Based on what you just said, I would think the answer is no... Why do these people keep on thinking that dumping destructive, invasive grass carp in our waterways is a great idea?

Their as bad as the "The Tree Huggars"...