Chrome,

I had to look for it, but my response to a similar question last year still applies:

"I think it's called resource stewardship. We could give up fishing entirely, and that might be good for the fish. But it wouldn't be good for many of us.

"I don't need to bring fish home often, but I need to fish. Fishing is one of my direct connections with the world in a very organic sense. We were hunter-gatherers long before we became cultivators. I've been told that because I'm more highly evolved than a cave man, hunting and fishing shouldn't be necessary to my existance. Maybe, but hear me out.

"Some of us are more primitive than others, in terms of retaining a compelling need to connect directly with our environment. For some lycra and gore-tex clad northwesterners, viewing Mt. Rainier from downtown Seattle gets it done. Some of us need it differently. I need to bushwhack favored haunts on favorite rivers and stride off-trail ridges in the mountains to maintain an important connection with the earth. I need to sleep under the stars of the autumn sky, breath the air filled with the scent of the woods, feel the push of the current against my waders, feel the heat from a fishing camp fire, get dirt under my fingernails, and occasionally get blood on my hands. For the past 20 years or so, that blood has usually been from hatchery fish. It's OK. It satisfies a connection that is vital to how I experience life.

"Killing wild fish might be a purer connection to what seems important. But if killing wild fish is detrimental to our interests, that is, wild fish populations are declining or cannot sustain the harvest pressures of the oh-so-too-many of us, then our interests end up being better satisfied if we can exercise our connections by taking fish that are actually surplus production. In most cases, that is hatchery steelhead and salmon."

"Perhaps some of this is what is going on for you, too."

Sincerely,

Salmo g.