I got invited to go fishing with some coworkers and had to say no. It's kind of a shame since I don't have any friends and it was a chance to do something social, plus the area they wanted to go is chill and out in the woods. But I've never been comfortable with fishing. It's a big part of where I grew up. Lots of people don't even eat the fish. They toss the poor things back in the water.
Maybe I could still go but just hang out on the shore.
Used to fish for food as a kid and into teens and I'm pretty numb to it.
Catch and release, even when done properly, is a bit on the edge for me though. It's not needed and when enough people do it, which there are, it fucks up food chains.
When I'm catching to eat, which is how I learned to fish, I'd kill them pretty much immediately by destroying their brain. They don't have thick skulls, since gravity isn't an issue, so one good whack in the right spot ends them quickly.
Might looks brutal though, there's blood for sure and sometimes they'll flop for awhile even without a head.
All this said, fish are basically a nervous system. Their brains are super basic and aren't exactly capable of pain, fear, and emotional trauma in the way we feel it.
I get the natural reaction to empathize and anthropomorphize everything as a caring human being, but fish are really fucking dumb and are damned to a cruel fate because the food chain of the ocean is fucking horrifying.
I love fishies even if they're dumb because I am also very dumb
Like I said, I killed them to eat when I was younger. I lived on a boat, that was how we ate.
You have no idea what you're talking about so don't insult me and tell me how I feel.
Vegans and not respecting non-traditional lifestyles name a more iconic duo.
I like veganism and the moral philosophy around it and am actively adding the concepts/actions to my life, but holy shit some vegans really piss me off.
Your feelings do not matter, you are killing animals for fun.
Do you currently live stranded on a boat?
You do not love fish, you love killing and eating fish. Very distinct.
Furthermore I spent most of my life as a young adult attempting to get a degree in marine biology in an effort to help life in the ocean.
That didn't work out because of money, but honestly go fuck yourself when you tell me what I care about.
Why would it matter how you spent your time learning?
You kill animals for fun. Clearly your education had no impact on your capacity to do animal abuse.
When you can't defend your own behavior, so you start hiding behind indigenous people. (Who actually are justified in hunting to survive.)
You don't live on a boat now, you still fish for fun, but when someone points out that killing wild animals is mutually exclusive with loving them, you lose your shit.
Consider this convo disengaged. Have a nice day :vegan-liberation-rad:
fucking judging me for being poor when I was a kid. holy shit and we're just letting this kind of stuff be on the website huh? OK real cool
This fucking whole community is full of you parasites. Pretending like you have any semblance of radical in you yet not even attempting to fucking understand people who aren't as well off.
Good fucking luck with your "leftism" you fucking hypocrite.
IMPOVERISHED! Do you know what that means???
Of course not, you're some shitty fucking kid with no life experience judging people who have lived differently than you. Congrats on the money you got from your family and the ability to choose your diet growing up.
I didn't fucking have that you absolute nerd.
I don't even fucking fish anymore. what the fuck even is this comment. just so much judgement and assumptions about me. This is some of the most toxic shit I've seen on a forum in general, much less here.
oh that's right. you targeted me the other day too. were you just waiting for this or what? you have all these conclusions about me ready here, when I've said and done none of these things.
You just need to Google "fish feel pain" to see that the science is against you on this issue.
Edit: it's cool if you're past this time in your life. Fuck knows I've had enough bullshit in my past that I'm not proud of.
It's not. They are able to learn, yes so are a lot of things, but the type of pain and fear that humans have is not really there.
Either way I'm done with this. I recounted my experience sustenance fishing as a kid and said that fishing for sport was bad. I still got called an animal abuser, so kindly fuck off.
edit: I'm being a dick here from the other comment chain. This is fine and worth noting, it's also why I don't like catch and release.
It's all good, you made a good point and I bit your head off.
I'm aware of the studies about fish reacting to negative stimulus and learning about them. It's a bit different, but yeah, it's one of the reasons I'm saying sport fishing is bad
It's cool. I think struggle sessions do shit to our brains. We're in pounce mode. And no one wants to be told off.
Yeah I logged off for a bit and just got on to check on it a few minutes ago lol, saw your thing and thought it was a continuation and showed my ass. my bad comrade
Sorry about the defensive answer, but yeah, I'm really not up for it anymore.
Maybe I could still go but just hang out on the shore.
hell yeah, because at the end of the day he wasn't inviting you with the purpose of actually catching fish, he was inviting you to chill. depending on how chud he is, you could maybe just say you're vegetarian but you'd still be happy to come along? thats what i've done, and then i just take my sketchbook and chill on the lakeside. the vibe is the same.
Reading this I thought you were vegan, the whole idea of fishing is just unnecessary cruelty like dairy farming or egg farming.
Bait any other animal to bite a hook and then fuck with it for ten minutes, just to release it and you'd be arrested.
Also dogs. Although to be honest I'm not sure about the degree of choice dogs have over that as often it seems like a biological reaction that entirely skips their brain
i enjoyed fishing as a kid mostly just to eat the fish
i spear fished a couple times too, that was fun
though we werent exactly rich so it was more just to supplement our diets cheaply. we had a pretty big garden too. instead of fertilizer (too expensive sometimes) we'd grind up leftovers and bones and throw them out into the dirt. sucks that you cant use human poop for fertilizer smh
sucks that you cant use human poop for fertilizer smh
You can if you
pasteurizecompost itimagine wanting to pasteurize your own poop no thanks lmfao
ill let some government agency figure that shit out (literally)
I should've said compost rather than pasteurize, although a compost pile or waste treatment plant can get hot enough to kill most harmful pathogens. Still, processed sewage shouldn't be used for food crops, especially for vegetables or fruits that will be eaten raw.
https://modernfarmer.com/2014/07/stink-human-poop-fertilizer/
I don't think fishing on the whole is extraordinarily cruel. For human cruelty it's extremely ordinary.
Letting fish slowly asphyxiate to death sucks though, it's true. However there are methods to quickly euthanize caught fish (see: Iki Jime).
As far as catch-and-release goes, I actually don't think that's very cruel. With a few exceptions (like manta rays) fish brains are incredibly small and shitty and I do not believe that any psychological trauma a fish experiences from being hooked and released is comparable to that of humans or many other tetrapod vertebrates.
My gut instinct is all of it's cruel in comparison to something like a fish farm (if we're going to be eating them) since it's still fucking around with animals in their own habitat without good cause, even if they're not traumatized or if they're killed humanely
I'd counterargue that fish farming is both environmentally deleterious and provides a lesser quality of life for the animals.
You're probably right too. I don't know then. I like fish and feel bad when they're killed :(
Fishing is great fun, and yes, that includes catch and release fishing.
I'm more and more getting the impression that this site is full of shut-in city kids who've never even seen a tree irl.
Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but jesus fuck. Good luck building a communist movement by telling people that doing anything other than eating beans and shitposting on twitter in your concrete-box apartement is a deadly sin.
I'm so crippled by social anxiety that I can barely make it to the grocery store without having a massive panic attack even on a good day. I can't keep a job for more than a year, I'm a fucking alcoholic, and I'm alienated from my own family. Going fishing on the local lake or the fjord is one of the few things that keeps me alive. But sure, I'm really fucking ableist.
Way to completely miss the point.
ive always felt like actually catching anything is pretty much beside the point for most people who do it, like its a pretext for chilling out in beautiful places by the water with friends and maybe beers and having just enough of an "activity" that nobody feels they need to fill the awkward silences. and i guess the cruelty to animals part is key mostly to make it macho and no homo (been listening to the great citations needed episode about the relationship between dominating animals and fragile masculinity in western culture recently)
ive never fished (except when i was a kid) because of the cruelty but i definitely see where a large part of the appeal of the activity as a whole comes from, if you could remove the actual fish from the equation
edit: could you just go along and "forget" to put bait on your hook? they probably wouldnt notice
You mean sremoveding, or was it a really dumb fish?
edit: nȁgg is a slur? I can't find any information googling this.
nag
Edit: It’s n a g g. Gonna guess that’s to catch variations on the n word with the i censored
and i guess the cruelty to animals part is key mostly to make it macho and no homo
I fished a lot as a kid and it has its own weird visceral thrill despite being mostly boring
Progression of increasingly excited Vince McMahons:
When you see the bobber move
When it's definitely a fish biting
When it's definitely a BIG fish biting
When you pull on the rod and feel the weight of the fish
Catch and release is torturing fish for fun.
If you're gonna eat the fish (and you immediately sever its neck or whatever instead of letting it asphyxiate), I don't really have a problem with it. Better fate than being slowly dissolved in another fish's stomach acids.
Catch and release is torturing fish for fun.
Very bad Rachel Maddow joke
When Rachel Maddow goes fishing - she does catch and release.
Punchline
RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA
Catching and eating the fish is also just for fun, unless you live in a situation where you are sustenance hunting.
People choosing not to eat food that isn't fish, just so they can go out and kill an animal is cruelty. More so than catch and release, which is also cruelty.
Just go and drink beer. Fishing is boring as hell and sucks. Just hang out and drink. That’s all it’s an excuse to do for most people.
sitting on a boat or by the water is very pleasant but the addition of animal torture/killing is a real buzzkill
I think fishing at an early age helped me situate my worldviews in its own way. I was the sort of kid who hated baiting the worm on the hook - why am I making this thing squirm just to drown it? Why am I gouging a fish's mouth trying to get the hook out? Nothing like spending ages unhooking a dying fish just to watch it slowly sink back into the depths to traumatize a 7 year old and set them on the path of radical empathy.
In recent years I've gotten back into fishing. I don't eat seafood at all - 20% of that is morals, fully 80% is I don't like the taste - but it's relaxing to just sit and cast, and exciting to get something on the line. The grim fact is I love the aesthetics of it: whole-baked fish in newspaper, 40s magazine ads of dudes pulling up brook tout, the materials of fly tying, Hemingway in Pamplona chilling a bottle of red wine in the river. You could catch a real trophy with my brainworms as bait.
I debarb all my hooks, I change my treble hooks to singles, I don't use bait, I release ASAP and won't take trophy pics, I won't fish in the fall when they're fattening up for winter. I'm an awful fisherman and rarely catch anything, which helps. Like others have said the actual fishing is incidental, and chilling by the water is a successful day. But I entirely understand and will never resent anyone taking issue with the cruelty of it - I largely agree.
Why not just bring a book and/or beer to the water? Honestly that just sounds so much appealing to me.
