Fish can not feel pain.

[ST_ShoreFisher]

(08-23-2013 03:04 PM)OldTimer Wrote:  

(08-21-2013 03:14 PM)MuskieBait Wrote:  Plus, we're different from fish. Fish may tolerate the pain to actually eat to survive...we go fishing to get skunked FOR PLEASURE!

(08-23-2013 12:37 PM)ST_ShoreFisher Wrote:  i fish myself, but do not delude myself with things like 'fish feel no pain'.

Perhaps it is fishing we delude ourselves with...........

OT

HA!

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(08-23-2013 02:48 PM)MuskieBait Wrote:  Eating things with spines does not necessarily means they do not feel pain...it just means their pain tolerance and their pain perception is different from ours...

Or it could mean what you said below, less nerves, thicker 'skin', etc.
I just find it funny that people can make blanket statements about this when researchers (who know way more about this stuff than anyone here) have such a hard time nailing this one down.

(08-23-2013 02:48 PM)MuskieBait Wrote:  It's like the difference between the bottom of your feet vs. your lips. The bottom of your feet has thicker skin layers and can tolerate heat and sharper objects much better than your lips.

Some areas of skin also have less neurons and pain receptors than others, so the reception and signaling of pain is much different than other more sensitive areas. Some people can put a needle through the first layer of their epidermis, but they can't do that for their lips.

ok, i can see your point. what i am saying is that i doubt anyone knows for sure whether or not fish feel pain, period.

(08-23-2013 02:48 PM)MuskieBait Wrote:  What I'm saying is that lip hooking a fish is different from lip hooking a person...as such, you can't assume it will register the same pain perception. Again, adaption and specialization of different part of the body by different animals allow them to do different things, and the pain perception cannot be generalized and assumed.

Like I said before...I've hooked fish 2 or 3 times on the same day before, even catching the same Rockbass 3 times on 5 consecutive casts! When a fish bites a bait, gets hooked, gets released, and then comes back to bite again, you have to question how much pain and that memory of pain the fish actually registered. If you shoot yourself in the leg, would you do it again so soon after?

Ever been icefishing and have a fish takes 2 or 3 baited lines at the same time? If a fish feels pain after getting hooked on the first line, what makes it take the second line when it should be running away from the painful experience? I'm not making any of this stuff up...I'm speaking from real experience. I've had pike took two lines, I've had lake trout took two lines.

I've had fish hooked, got off them hook, then the fish came back and took the same lure/bait again to be hooked a second time...Would you hook yourself in the lips once, pull the hook out, and then do it again?

never said i equated fish lips with human ones.

your experience is something that i've never heard of (fish continuing to get hooked after already hooked). this might be a big clue about the pain they suffer when hooked through the lips (not much pain if any at all). so I can see your point-of-view, and will now consider that a lot more than before.

I just think people like to dismiss things (fish pain, etc) as a way of sleeping better at night. Same thing applies when we hear about all the bad stuff that happens in our world; people tend to make up 'reasons' why such and such happened as a way to clear their conscience (those people always bomb each other, the mother shouldn't have let her kids near a pool unsupervised, etc). we do this even when the victims were not in any way at fault. a human instinct maybe.