Treat all fishes equally.

[Giuga10]

I came across this story on Roughfish.com. It was written by a user named Cory ( I believe he is also the admin...). Nevertheless this story really got me thinking and I thought I'd share it with you guys. It relates really well with the Gobies that we have in Ontario and the endless discussion people have towards them.

I do not take any credit for this. This is not my material.


Release Those Roughfish!
By Corey on Tue, 04/17/2012 - 17:57
Stories

At work today, a coworker came up and told me they'd seen me on the Minnesota Bound TV show, but her husband had mentioned that what we were doing was illegal. He told her "If you catch one of those roughfish, you're supposed to kill it and leave it on the bank."

I spent the rest of the day feeling a little bit depressed. Apparently, our work is not yet complete.

Needless to say, I politely explained that any fish you don't intend to eat should be released unharmed, but it got me to thinking - on her side of the wall (in the Wildlife Department) there are also game animals (hunted for food) and non-game animals (like loons and chickadees). But people don't go around saying that any non-game bird should be killed and left to rot. Why are non-game fishes treated so differently? There's this class of animals - native animals - that people feel don't deserve to live. They can be shot and netted and speared in unlimited numbers, wasted, thrown in the garbage - but only because they've had this label attached to them that indicates they are undesirable. And not only that, but the "roughfishes" are often fine food fishes, big and abundant, hard-fighting, and, dare I say, beautiful.

I think it has many causes, all intertwined. Here's another story:

A friend of mine on a recent fishing trip told me about catching bullheads in a small, muddy lake near his suburban house. When he reeled in a fiesty black bullhead, some teenage boys ran up and asked him if they could have the bullhead.

"Why?" he asked them. Their answer was simple.

"We want to put firecrackers in its mouth and blow it up!" they said in excitement. My friend was amazed.

"Why would you do something like that?" he asked.

"Because - it's a bullhead." The fish was released and the kids got a short lecture, but that was it.

Now we can ignore the age of these boys and just look at it from the purely human standpoint. There's a certain segment of our culture that just enjoys killing and causing pain. We call those people sadists. But there's a tiny little bit of sadism in everybody, and the "roughfish" designation, and the mythical "kill 'em all" policy gives people an excuse to be sadistic with no repurcussions. It's an excuse to kill things with no strings attached - there's this built in reason, that this type of fish is inherently bad and somehow need to be killed. People who do this can act like sadists without feeling bad about it. Those boys (hopefully) would never try to blow up their neighbor's dog or their pet hamster, but with a roughfish, they can get away with it.

The second part is this idea, discussed recently in the forums, that fish and wildlife populations can be "improved" by selectively removing undesirable elements. The "armchair biologist" who catches a species they weren't hoping for thinks that if they kill those fish, then there will be "more room" for their desired species. Research doesn't bear this out, but it makes sense on a very visceral level. Like a garden or a farmer's field - if you want it to produce as much as possible, you pull out the weeds and leave the desirable plants. The problem is that fish aren't plants, and aquatic ecosystems aren't gardens or fields. If you were raising fish in a closed pond and feeding them, then you certainly would want to remove any undesirable fish from the pond. But wild waters are completely different. Each species has its own niche, and every species interacts with every other species differently at each stage of its life. Golden shiners might eat the eggs of spawning pike, but adult pike eat the shiners. Bass might eat the pike fry, but yearling pike might eat fingerling bass. Suckers and trout might both feed on aquatic insects, but small trout eat sucker eggs and large trout feed on both small suckers and fingerling trout. Suckers might eat nymphs, but they also dislodge clinging nymphs for trout to feed on. The carrying capacity of an ecosystem, and its stability, depends both on it habitat and its diversity of species. A stream with suckers and trout in it might produce 100 pounds of trout per mile, but 400 pounds of suckers. Take out all the suckers, and it might only produce 10 pounds of trout. In short, the idea of freeing up "space" in the ecosystem is an oversimplification - and removing a link from the chain could have the opposite effect from what is intended. The problem is that the limited ecosystem idea seems like "common sense".

Unfortunately, there isn't much we can do about these first two things. We can't cure people of their inherent sadism, and we can't change the fact that the limited ecosystem idea seems like common sense. The third problem, though, we can do something about. I'm talking, of course, about ignorance and misinformation.

The justifications I've heard hundreds of times over just boggles the mind.

"Bowfin should be killed because they eat walleye eggs."

"Suckers should be killed because they pollute the water."

"I'd like to release that redhorse, but it's illegal to put them back."

"Gar eat up all of the bass."

"Buffalo are bad for the lake."

For this problem of ignorance, we can certainly do something. All we have to do is speak up. More and more people get the message every day. If someone repeats one of these old-wives-tales, tell them they're wrong. It's hard, sometimes, but in the long run, our message is going to get out there. It already is becoming more and more common to meet people with an enlightened attitude toward these so-called "rough" fishes when out fishing. With any kind of luck, this will only increase.


Tight lines and good fishing!


Corey Allen Geving

Hope you enjoyed the read,
Giuga10

[MichaelAngelo]

Great read, thanks for sharing! Let's hope that by sharing this little article that we can raise awareness about the importance of non-game fish.

[onwind]

In my opinion, Gobies are not welcomed because they're predators to North American ecosystem. the ecosystem in North America was balanced before gobies are introduced in. now the prolific of gobies breaks the balance of previous ecosystem. so what people want to do is just to bring back the balance here used to have. it's not just because they're not gamefish.
Of course the opinion of sadism is worth considering.

[Giuga10]

(10-23-2012 09:59 PM)onwind Wrote:  In my opinion, Gobies are not welcomed because they're predators to North American ecosystem. the ecosystem in North America was balanced before gobies are introduced in. now the prolific of gobies breaks the balance of previous ecosystem. so what people want to do is just to bring back the balance here used to have. it's not just because they're not gamefish.
Of course the opinion of sadism is worth considering.

Yes they are predators but to a certain point. The Gobies have also helped our fisheries by providing an abundance of food for bigger fish, especially Largemouth Bass.

There was a study that was conducted and it proved that since Gobies have been introduced the average size of Largemouth Bass reached close to 5 pounds.... That's a big Bass.

Yes the Gobies eat the eggs of fish and put a damper on the reproduction but not enough to treat it like an epidemic and the Gobies have not all been a bad thing.

Giuga10

[onwind]

The problem is not whether gobies do good or bad to the ecosystem. The safest way is to bring the ecosystem back to what it used to be for thousands years.

[MuskieBait]

(10-23-2012 09:59 PM)onwind Wrote:  In my opinion, Gobies are not welcomed because they're predators to North American ecosystem. the ecosystem in North America was balanced before gobies are introduced in. now the prolific of gobies breaks the balance of previous ecosystem. so what people want to do is just to bring back the balance here used to have. it's not just because they're not gamefish.
Of course the opinion of sadism is worth considering.

If that's the argument, then brown trout, rainbow trout, chinook salmon and coho salmon should be out of all Ontario streams and lakes since these threw off the balance of the native brook trout and Atlantic salmon streams. They are not native and they compete directly with brook trout, native minnow, darters and sucker species for food and habitat in the streams. They also prey on native brook trout fry and parr, darters, minnows and suckers. What I want is to remove all Pacific salmon species and restock the lake with Atlantic salmon where they truly belong, but we know that the commercial sportfishing industry and the general fishing crowds will not allow it.

Why not bring the ecosystem back to the way it was thousands of year ago? Do these salmonid belong in Ontario? The simple answer is NO Why argue that the bias is not on the gamefish then? Just 10 years back, people were crying about all the carp everywhere. Now that carp has gained some respected status a a worthy gamefish, these complains are heard less and less.

Then you have people complaining about native species such as longnose gar, bowfin and even pike with their predatory nature. Some even go out to shoot these fish by bowfishing. You have people complaining about native sucker species (white sucker and the other 6 redhorse suckers plus northern hogsucker) on trout streams believing that these "roughfish" eats all the trout eggs. That is further from the truth. The hate on some "undesirable" species runs deep and this hate often has little grounds.

Another way of looking at the round goby problem is that these annoying invasive is actually endangered in their native range. By their introduction into the Great Lakes, we had in actuality ensured the survival of this species halfway around the world. It's not so bad after all.

Plus, all the complaining about round goby...look at the wonderful smallmouth fishery that boomed after the zebra mussel and round goby got into Lake Erie and Lake Simcoe. These bass just love to gorge on gobies. Bay of Quinte is starting to see the same effect.

The only bad thing is that there is evidence round goby prey upon Lake Sturgeon eggs on Lake St. Clair. Oh my beloved sturgeon...

They are well established now...killing the dozen that you catch is like swatting a dozen mosquitoes in June on a Northern Ontario swamp. You are not going to make enough impact at all!

[OldTimer]

Ask yourself this question:

If there were a magic button when pressed would result in the Round Goby disappearing forever in North America............ would you press it?

[Giuga10]

(10-24-2012 04:38 PM)OldTimer Wrote:  Ask yourself this question:

If there were a magic button when pressed would result in the Round Goby disappearing forever in North America............ would you press it?

I've got to say I wouldn't.

Just my opinion,
Giuga10

[MuskieBait]

(10-24-2012 04:38 PM)OldTimer Wrote:  Ask yourself this question:

If there were a magic button when pressed would result in the Round Goby disappearing forever in North America............ would you press it?

I would, but I would also press the same button for Chinook Salmon, Coho Salmon, Pink Salmon, Steelhead, Brown Trout, Carp, Pike for their invasion in some traditional Muskie waters (like the Haliburton and Kawartha areas), and even Black Crappie invasion into some of the Kawartha lakes. That ought to pi$$ off quite a few people, huh?

[MichaelAngelo]

(10-28-2012 06:45 PM)MuskieBait Wrote:  That ought to pi$$ off quite a few people, huh?

LOL

indeed it would... charter boats chasing 30 lb chinooks...

good thing this is a shore fishing forum