Jul 16

Catch & Release, Catch & Eat, and Stewardship of Our Streams - Part One: Back to The Future

Written by Kazunori Okada - © 2024 Kazunori Okada, All rights reserved.

“Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery elements are made for wise men to contemplate and for fools to pass by without consideration.”

“As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.”

Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation

These quotes remind me of how I once was one of those fools, making countless mistakes and regrets as we all do while learning to fish. I am a self-made expat tenkaranista (テンカラニスタ): a Japanese-born tenkara angler who learned the art of this fishing style on my own on foreign soil. My instructors were the streams and native rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) of the foothills of Los Angeles. My masters were the classic texts of fishing and fish from Walton, Behnke, Ishigaki, Anderson, and the like.

Looking back, my initiation came from an uncle of mine who, once when I was a child, took my younger brother, cousin, and I, keiryu fishing - a style of Japanese trout fishing in mountain streams. The memories of this outing in a pristine mountain stream began my fascination for trout fly fishing and remain vivid in my mind even today. However, for a long time, I did not have any idea how to start doing it on my own. I felt intimidated by its steep learning curve and the prohibitive cost of gear necessary just to start. And there was no one around to show me the way or take me out back to the streams. My father passed away when I was five. My uncle who took me out for the first time was not around much because my mother did not get along with him. So, I had no choice but to let it be and sigh shikataganai (仕方がない), as we Japanese say: “what else can we do?”

Time flew by. I traveled across the Pacific and found a home in this new continent. Before I even noticed, I became a middle-aged man, chased by my busy adult life. Then one afternoon in late spring of 2013, while working on my laptop, an advertisement popped up on my web browser. It was from a company I had never heard of, tenkara USA. The moment I saw the ad, I knew this was it for me. I had to try it. A traditional Japanese minimalistic approach to fly fishing with gear made in the USA better priced than Western gear? What could be more perfect for me?

Since then, I have become a committed student of tenkara fishing, learning from a lot of trial and error. Over ten years of tenkara has taken me to many mountains and waters from west to east, teaching me a lot. Now I carry the mistakes I made and the regrets I felt as part of my wisdom. But still, some things are tricky to fathom even after figuring out how to catch fish effectively. That is how to treat the fish we catch and the environment we play in. In particular, ideas about Catch-and-Release (C&R), Catch-and-Eat (C&E) and Stewardship, and how they relate to each other. As I trekked creeks and rivers, my thoughts meandered their own terrain contemplating my practice in each of these arenas. The more I spend time in these waters, the more I realize their importance. This is an endless journey for me. There is no way I am fully convinced of my current thoughts on these matters. But I give my best attempt here to articulate what comes to my mind when I think of them, believing that a sincere sharing of honest thoughts will help us build a true community and perhaps assist those who are just starting to trek the same paths.

Catch & Release

Tenkara (テンカラ) is a type of fly fishing whose root lies in the mountains of Japan. It is relatively new in the Western world, so it is natural for its practitioners outside of Japan to respect and follow the best practices of Western fly fishing with its long history here. Fly fishing comes in varying styles. But, the idea of Catch-and-Release (C&R) is universally recognized as a good practice among all the schools today. Here I have compiled what I consider to be part of common good sense practices for those who are new to this art or who can use some reminders.

The goal of C&R is to return the fish you landed back to the water with the least harm and the best chance to survive the ordeal of having been hooked. These ideas also stem from respecting fish and the environment. The practice includes the following considerations.

Use barbless hooks to minimize the puncture wound and to ease unhooking.
Use a landing net to minimize direct handling of fish. There are varied materials used for nets. A rubber net with a large mesh is a preferred choice.
Carry a thermometer and check the water temperature before starting to fish. Do not fish when the water temperature is above 67° Fahrenheit. An elevated temperature reduces oxygen levels in the water, which suffocates fish. Follow your local regulatory authorities when they restrict fishing in afternoons, called the Hoot Owl restriction.
Try landing fish as quickly as possible. Avoid fighting and playing with fish for a long time for fun. Exhaustion can increase their mortality rate.
Keep the fish in the water when netting them. Minimize the time they are out of water.
Minimize the amount of direct handling of fish. Do not squeeze fish when handling them. Wet your hands and keep them cold before touching fish. This helps to avoid removing the scales and mucus layer on their skin. Their removal can cause skin infections and burns that could lead to their death.
Remove the hook from the mouth quickly with minimal handling. You can use forceps. When a fish is hooked deep in their mouth, do not try prying the hook out but cut the tippet line at the mouth to avoid damaging the fish. Any slight cut on their gills will kill them.
Resuscitate the landed fish by putting them in a fast current pointing its head upstream. Hold them gently. This makes the water go naturally through in their mouth to the gills. They need this to increase the oxygen level in their circulation system and lower the body temperature before they can be released safely.
Keep them in your hands until they are ready to go. Let them swim away by themselves when they move strong enough in your hands.
Many of us like to take photos of our catches. Our practice of C&R above with photo-taking is called Catch-Photo-Release (CPR). Try taking photos quickly and selectively to minimize the time the fish is out of water. For more information, I refer readers to some more online resources here.

By no means can I do all of these practices perfectly all the time. Certain situations make some of them hard to perform. For example, when fishing from high grounds, it would be hard to reach the water without damaging fragile stream beds, making quick releasing difficult. Also, the excitement of catching a nice fish can make me forget to follow these practices, and I end up spending too much time taking photos of the fish. To be honest, my constant struggle is that I tend to cut little corners here and there in the routine of doing this for fish after fish I land. I do not consider the above list of good C&R practices to be something to punish ourselves with when we fail to do any of them. Rather, they are what we should feel good about when we manage to practice them as much as we can.

In my view, what is important is to first know the best practices and next be able to adapt to varying circumstances we encounter in the wild. Our ability to adapt, I believe, comes from understanding deeply the true underlying reasons and historical background of why and how these practices for taking care of fisheries have emerged among generations of anglers. This is because, when we do things for a cause - knowing why we do them, it is hard to be confused by the many widely varying opinions or by peer pressure. I like to think of this as an analogy to traffic signals. When cars populated our streets after their invention, people started to cause many traffic accidents at road intersections. So, people invented traffic signals and created a rule for people to follow: go with green lights and stop at red lights. People follow this rule, so the number of accidents is reduced. Then they get used to blindly following the rules. Things work well until one day the power goes out. People who only know how to follow the rules realize they do not know what to do. Some freeze and are unable to move, so leave their cars, and others shout to each other about what to do or not to do. People who remember that the signals are there to reduce traffic accidents produce a workaround to alternate the order in which cars go. We do not want to be stuck like the car driver who forgets the reasons why they follow the rules when we think of C&R.

There are a couple of obvious reasons that motivate the practice of C&R. One such reason is self-serving. We should protect the fisheries so that we ourselves can continue to enjoy fishing.

This is perfectly natural. Fishing is a pastime hobby for most of us, which then must be fun for us to engage in. So, wanting to maximize our enjoyment driven by our personal greed is a part of human nature. Another reason is for the wellness of our next and future generations. Driven by our love and care for them, we wish our children and grandchildren to be able to enjoy fishing as much as we can today by protecting fisheries as best as we can. Many of us believe that C&R contributes to this effort. Truth be told though, I do not feel my actions in streams are driven purely by either of these two reasons. I am not always self-serving; I can be rather magnanimous, and content with what I have already accomplished on an outing, leaving more fish for others. At the same time, I am not always self-effacing either; I can be quite selfish, being true to what my heart really desires on occasion, chasing one more fish then again more. These personal experiences tell me that what motivates me to practice C&R must be more complex than these obvious reasons alone.

A range of influences affect my fishing philosophy. One is learning from new science-driven practices for environmental conservation to ensure the sustainability of our fisheries. Scientific research on biology and ecology has been revolutionized by the advent of genetic technologies in the past half a century. Without such tools, unbeknownst to us, we could have forever lost the genetically pure strand of California golden trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss aguabonita) that is native to Golden Trout Creek in the southern part of the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. A genetic analysis conducted in 1997 revealed that the bloodstock of the goldens kept in Cottonwood Lakes for transplanting were hybridized with planted rainbow trout due to years of transgressions. This knowledge alerted state agencies to stop transplanting the Cottonwood trout elsewhere and the pure bloodstock was recovered from Volcano Creek near Golden Trout Creek. In general, conservation actions are often motivated by our strong concerns about the status quo. Out of fears that the state of fisheries and their watersheds have already gone amiss, we feel obliged to join in every intervention, thinking they are necessary to have any chance to turn things around. This kind of fear can make us better committed to conservational practices like C&R but can also dissuade some from engaging in any such acts at all, saying what difference could my little action make after years of interference?

On the bright side, we have already seen some true success of science-backed conservations for managing the health of our fisheries and their environment. For example, recent dam removals have helped endangered species return to their historical habitats after over a century. Elwha River runs to the Pacific Northwest in the state of Washington. Its headwater located in Olympic National Park has historically served as a spawning habitat for many migratory fish such as salmon and steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus). More than a century ago, two dams were built in the lower section of the river, which drastically reduced the migratory fish in the watershed. Summer-run steelhead trout is one of steelhead’s diverse life history pathways which is particularly fragile, so much so that the dams led to their extinction. In 2011, a four-year project to remove these two dams commenced. After completion, the once-extinct summer-run steelhead trout returned to the watershed immediately after opening the passage to the headwater. Today, the biodiversity of Elwha River has bounced back strong and continues improving. Similar success stories of recent dam removals have been reported for San Clemente Dam in Carmel Creek, California.

But we should not be blind to past failures of our efforts for managing the environment whether they were well-intended or not. In 1935, the cane toad (Rhinella marina), native to South/Central America, was brought to the state of Queensland in Australia from Hawaii in the hope of protecting their sugar cane crops against cane beetles, whose larvae damage the plants’ roots. The result has been disastrous. They soon discovered that not only these toads did not help control the native cane beetles, but also the invasive species severely damaged the local ecosystem disrupting the population of many native species due to their poisonous eggs/skins and the diseases they carried. Today the toads have spread widely in northern Australia due to a lack of natural predators, increasing concerns about further environmental damage.

Another failure took place in my backyard: the high Sierra Nevada mountains in California. Over the past centuries, non-native trout have been introduced in alpine lakes in this range. This was a concerted effort of the late 19th to early 20th centuries led by both public authorities and private interest groups such as the American Acclimatization Society. They introduced trout and established self-procreating populations, providing sustenance and entertainment for a generation of recreational travelers and anglers. The lakes were formerly fishless but home to the native Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog (Rana sierrae). The frogs became easy prey of the introduced trout. Their population has declined to approximately 5% of their original size. In 2014, they were listed as an endangered species despite recent conservation efforts.

In relation to C&R practice, many fishery managers in the Western US have instituted regulatory rules to discourage C&R of non-native species such as brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), brown trout (Salmo trutta) and rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). While brown trout is a non-native species in the US soil being from Western Europe, brook and rainbow trout are native to some regions of the US but not others. Rainbows are native to Pacific coastal watersheds, brooks to northeastern watersheds. Outside of their respective homelands, each is considered an invasive species, robbing resources from the native fish. Different rules apply for a species found within or outside of its native habitat. Many western states use extra creel/daily-bag limits for invasive trout to encourage their selective removal and protect native species. For example, Idaho allows anglers to keep twenty-five brook trout daily for food on top of the general daily limit of six trout. Wyoming does the same, allowing anglers to keep sixteen extra brook trout beyond their general daily limit for some watersheds. New Mexico instated more liberal rules allowing unlimited keeping of rainbow, brown, and brook trout in their conservation areas called Red Chile Waters, instated to protect Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout (Oncorhynchus clarki virginalis) and Gila Trout (Oncorhynchus gilae) in their native habitats.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming has enforced more direct regulation to ban C&R practice by using a mandatory kill rule for the invasive species of Lamar River drainage. Another mandatory kill regulation has also been enacted in Yosemite National Park in California for the Merced River. In Switzerland and Germany, C&R is essentially illegal due to laws that disallow anglers to release all once-hooked fish unless they are undersized or protected. They reason that the act of harming them by hooking-then-releasing is inhumane. In any case, despite these polarizing opinions, it is judicious for stream anglers to keep re-examining/adjusting our reasoning and attitude to make sure our conservation practices cause the least harm to what we want to protect.

Studying the historical record also provides important insights. The root of Western fly fishing is as old as the Roman era in the second century based on early written evidence. But much of the current style of fly fishing was developed in England after the civil war around the 17th century when the Compleat Angler and other classic texts were published. Fly fishing for their native brown trout was a popular pastime of the royalists who retired from the English Civil War and spent the simple rural life as country gentlemen. As reflected in the Izaak Walton quote that opened this essay, these gentlemen anglers had the luxury of “contemplating” fishing because they were not chased by the need to earn daily wages, being free from economic worry and weary. Charles Cotton who contributed a chapter about fly fishing for trout in the Compleat Angler is a perfect example. These country gentlemen were typically well cultured, sometimes from a high societal class, and often owners of rural estates who could fish in their own land. Fast forward to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, fly fishing became more widespread among a greater number of middle-class citizens in England and other countries such as the US. This increase in popularity was fueled by enhanced access to commercial fishing gear such as factory-made lines and rods which were far cheaper and less labor intensive than what was available before, as well as eased access, due to the advent of new modes of transportations such as trains and steamboats, to remote and foreign areas for common middle-class folks to fish in.

The keen sense of social responsibility in our C&R practice is no doubt rooted in the inclinations of these forebears of Western fly fishing. We owe their philanthropic inclination and high moral fibers for our continuance of caring acts to the fish and our surroundings. But circumstances that allowed them to be benevolent should not be ignored also. They were from the class in which they did not need their catch for their own sustenance. Their consumption of the catch was only for their joy and amusement. The other side of their philanthropy is all the vices that are often associated with their class. Attitudes of traditional Western fly anglers are occasionally criticized as elitist, for example. It is important, I believe, for anglers to know that such vice shares the same historical roots with what motivated the anglers to engage in this C&R practice to begin with. The practice of C&R is the positive byproduct of this elitism.

Today, since the time of Walton’s Compleat Angler, our society has grown more complex and fragmented. We all walk on different paths when it comes to life creeds and philosophy, making a single motto that resonates with us all ever more challenging. Personally, the idea of social responsibility resonates strongly with me. It makes me feel good to think that I am doing the right thing for a sustainable future. My own pondering of these various contexts has helped me better engage in this C&R practice. And, yes, I have become a member of Trout Unlimited. But finding true clarity in my gut on this matter remains a question that I continue to wrestle with.

About the Author

Kaz Okada hails from Nagoya Japan and resides now in Los Angeles. He is an avid angler for both fresh and salt-water fishing. His fishing experience has earned him several recognitions: two California Heritage Trout Challenge awards in 2015 and 2018, the California Supreme Master Angler Award in 2018, and three IGFA Fly Trout Slam awards (Grand Slam in 2021, Super Slam in 2022, and Fantasy Slam in 2023). He enjoys introducing tenkara fishing to our youth and those with minimum fishing experience. When he is not traveling for his work, he loves to disappear into the foothills of Southern California and the remotest areas of the high Sierra mountains with his tenkara rods. A member of Pier Fishing in California and Trout Unlimited. Follow his Instagram (@kazfishing) to learn more about his current exploits. For inquiries and permissions for reuse of any part of this article, please contact him at fishninjaa@gmail.com.

Endnotes

Izaak Walton is an English author from the 17th century, whose works include the above quoted book (Walton, 1653).

Catch & Release, Catch & Eat, and Stewardship of Our Streams - Part One: Back to The Future

Written by Kazunori Okada - © 2024 Kazunori Okada, All rights reserved.

Catch & Release

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