Fishing to eat fine, why anyone would choose to eat a LMB is beyond me. Fishing to take pics guilty as charged. Holding fish on a stringer for a fancy pic and then releasing at the end of the day makes me cringe. You may have the right to do but it does not make it right to do. I don't think I have ever put a fish on a stringer and had it stay in good health for longer than a hr or two. It has always been my priority to release it properly with the least amount of stress so that others can catch it too. IMO

Ok. I'm back. Went for a paddle in the new kayak. I'll give an update of that later this evening.
The end of the article which is not posted here is pretty important. I am all for people keeping fish within their legal limits. It is needed in most bodies of water to help population management. The end of the post talks about the issue being people posing with fish they have drug around in a kayak all day with the intention of getting a group shot and then letting them go. If you are going to keep them, do what you like within the law. My opinion, which is all this ever is btw, is that great harm can come to a bass stringered and pulled behind a kayak all day. Issues with gill damage, jaw damage and other things that disrupt a bass's ability to prey in the natural environment without issue concern me. It seems the shots are showing up more and more. There were three in my feed in the last week. One was the one from Lady Bird. The others were from the east coast. Everyone has a right to do whatever they like within the law. I just think that sometimes awareness needs to be raised about a potential problem to the conservation and proper treatment of fish that will be released.

Many people shared the how to hold a big fish picture/diagram and felt it important to tell everyone but people are up in arms when it is suggested that dragging fish on a leash for a day just to take a picture is talked about. I could be way off base and maybe it's nothing but it sure doesn't feel that way when I see those pics.

Don't worry about hurting my feelings. The important thing is we have the dialogue and talk it through. If I am wrong I am wrong. That's the beauty of this whole thing is that the community has open commentary.

Hope that makes sense.

I must admit i have been guilty of this. Not with bass, but i dont think that is the point. Since a lot of the fish i catch cant be easyly photographed by myself i habe stringered them till someone else can take the pic or i get to shore. I do think of the fish's wellbeing and make sure they swim off on their own power. If i had a camera that could take a wide pic i wouldnt have to keep them so long. Hope soon. Catch and release is important, especially the trophys, in any species. Good read...now im feelin all guilty and stuff. Hahaha.

Why do people think it is bad to eat LMB? I personally don't, but that is only because i never catch the numbers of eater size i would want to make it worth cleaning them. LMB is delicious, like many other species.

The fish i normally end up keeping are those with bigger limits, or larger species of schooling fish.

I agree with CP that it's a bit irresponsible to drag some fish around all day that you intend to release. It doesn't give them the best chance to grow bigger, which may be the reason you're releasing them in the first place.

My only response to this topic. I think it's that old Ford, Chevy, Dodge thing. I personally won't eat anything that has "bass" in the name except yellow bass. The others have a fishy taste to me no matter how they are prepared. Crappie, catfish (smaller eater size), bluegill (larger eater size), and yellow bass are all potential table fair!!!

Most of the fish I catch will be released as soon as possible, if I put a fish on a stringer it's going to cleaned and cooked.
So long as people stay within the laws is all you can worry about, the rest is personnel choice and opinion.
I do think that many of the water bodies we fish would be improved if more fish were harvested.
Chris, thanks for bringing up a very controversial subject and getting the conversation started.

In my opinion those that choose to drag fish around on a stringer to later take a picture, and then to release the fish so they can feel good about themselves, have obviously been influenced by the catch and release mentality.
I commend your effort to educate people on proper handling, but catch and release has been preached for years, and then when people are told on forums that it's wrong to keep bass, and that they don't taste good etc. etc. aren't we actually contributing in some ways to those people dragging these fish around and then releasing them?

I think it might be more complex than that. We don't learn all of our knowledge at one sitting. We learn addition first and then later move on to multiplication, algebra etc.

We have set the foundation of catch and release. Now it's time to build on that foundation with proper fish handling, how to prevent harm etc. No education is complete with only one lesson set on repeat.

Are we partially responsible for teaching catch and release and by causality partially responsible for this action? Sure, I can see that, but should we just let it go without attempting to correct what in my perception is a harmful behavior. I think that answer is no. You don't fix a problem by dismissing it or ignoring it.

As for table fare, I don't think bass taste bad. I don't eat many but I'm definitely not opposed to it. I don't like cleaning fish that much either. I am much more prone to keep a fish I catch in saltwater than fresh but if Jerry or Deric put me on a bunch of crappie, I'll bring a fish bag or stringer. I will guarantee you though, if I stringer it, it will get cut later and eaten shortly after. I'm not going to release a fish I've hauled around all day.

Education on fish handling can only help and since you have strong feelings about the subject, it would be an excellent topic for your blog. We all have the opportunity to learn and we all can probably do better - if some of it takes with anglers, then you have achieved success IMO. In the meantime (and I mean this respectfully as I understand your passion), labeling people with titles like poser probably does not help the cause.....although it certainly helps getting the conversation started.

Yes, the word "poser". It was meant as a play on words because you are actually "posing" for a picture but it didn't translate that way to most. It has definitely opened conversations so that is a positive.

Just because I called you one doesn't make it a bad word!!! And, yes I took the picture but then they went under the knife!!!

Lol - I took it as a term of endearment. I have a way of convincing myself of such things.

So if anyone with a stringer of fish
wants a picture just tell them no, you poser?

If they are planning on releasing those fish, yeah, that'd be bad. Those fish look like they are dead so they should be released to the grease. Pictures of stringered fish bound for grease are fine IMHO and not really what the article was about.

I see what you did there.