Writer Roderick Haig-Brown said there is no sport without tradition, ethics, and restraint. It becomes rather subjective when we realize that different cultures have differing traditions, and people make up ethics as they go. The only restraint that occurs in flossing fish is stopping after catching one's limit.

Yesterday evening I went bank fishing with some friends. One of them is pretty new to fishing, he has just fished spinners and some eggs under a float out of my boat.

We were rolling eggs along the bottom with a split shot. The newer guy had his first experience of having a fresh king bear down on a gob of eggs. I watched the whole thing happen, it was so cool! First his look of confusion, then tensing up realizing it was a fish, then me yelling "that's him man, let it rip!".

That moment is what makes the whole thing. We had hundreds of fish running through our location, and flossing would have been super easy, but all I could think about was feeling that chomp.

Soooooooo True!

Its the egg fishermen that are to blame. Keeping only hens so they can further their damage to the eco system just to get more eggs to keep more hens.

Should ban eggs and flossing. Artificial only in the name of future salmon.

Eggs are fine. Super fun to catch fish with eggs! If theyre taking wilds then its a serious issue. Although I will agree I think its pretty sick when people take fish just for the eggs.

They are different activities with their own traditions and ethics....hard to compare apples to apples.
However a hunting cheat called "ground sluicing" would be very equivalent to flossing fish.

An example of ground sluicing would be to decoy in a flock of geese and let them land.
Then the gunners open up and slaughter them in this less mobile condition.

The infamous Market Hunters were ground sluicers.
They would let loose a fusillade of large bore shotgun fire onto rafts of ducks resting on the water at night.

I guess these things called ethics are what intrigue me in the conversation.

Forgive my somewhat facetious and certainly introspective questions.

When I hear someone say "it's OK to do this, but not do that" I can't help but wonder, "but why." Whether or not they are right and/or I agree often comes down to their intent and/or how they go about articulating their position.

Ethics. What are they, how do they form, and how are (or should) the differences between ethical and unethical be articulated.

Back to the hunting - fishing comparison, people would seem to be the biggest variable between the two. People in this instance meaning the culture and traditions that have grown up around each pursuit. The people and their (our) biases are far more apples to oranges than say a fish is to waterfowl and vice versa.

From a purely subsistence based perspective, wild fish and game are merely different forms of protein inhabiting different terrain in the great outdoors.

I like this fair chase concept and think it can be well applied in each case. Who wants to take a stab at defining that

And one of the things I am trying to highlight is that there is a difference between sport and subsistence. Feeding ones self and family isn't a recreational pursuit and the satisfaction, if there is some to be had, comes from succeeding at putting food on the table.

The vast majority of folks flossing sockeye up here are doing so with that (food) being their highest priority.

Holding subsistence pursuits and recreation to the same set of ethics get back to that whole apples oranges thing.

As for trophy hunters, I struggle to find anything "ethical" about those that take lives for the sole purpose of wall decorations and bragging rights.

So... what about the people that have posted here their disdain for flossing then go to AK and floss up a limit of sockeye? It isn't for subsistence. Flexible ethics? And who gave anyone here the right to define what is ethical and what isn't? At the end of the day, all of us are dragging a live fish in by a hook in its mouth and in many cases killing it...how can someone sit back and decide one way is more ethical than the other? Hypocracy, irony and a hint of humor all rolled into one...

Aren't all laws based on someone's ethics?

I don't think asking who shapes ethics and laws is a stupid question at all. Both tend to change over time and so clearly someone is shaping this refinement process if that is indeed what is happening, though I agree that morally and ethically as a whole we seem to be sliding down a slippery slope regardless of quality of content of the law books. I would also submit that there have been plenty of unethical laws on the books throughout history as well.

One of the ways that ethics are shaped is through constructive conversations like I was hoping this one might continue to be.

I am still waiting for your preferred definition of fair chase KK. I know there are a few versions out there and even more interpretations thereof.

I am not trying to support the notion that any means are justified for a given end. I am however saying that intent may justify some means that are not ethical for all or other intents and it is with great caution I offer that. If you can't tell already, as someone who would like to think of himself as an ethical sportsman, I've struggled with this issue a lot over the years and still do.



A few questions still lingering in my mind:

1. Is flossing Alaskan sockeye for subsistence purposes ethical or unethical and more importantly, why.

2. If unethical, what is the ethical difference between harvesting unwilling fish and unwilling wildlife if fair chase standards, sustainable harvest, and humane methods are applied, again with subsistence being the intent.

3. Which is the more ethical means to harvest sockeye for personal use, flossing or dipnetting, why.

Before we get into the legal vs. illegal vacuum again, both the intent and enforcement of the way the snagging law is written in AK do not target flossing sockeye as an illegal activity, therefore by default flossing sockeye is done withing the confines of the law as applied.

Are you answering me or NorCal john?

As Coley pointed out, flossing is not illegal in AK (Sockeye) and some would argue it's not illegal in the lower 48. So you need to stop hanging your hat on the legal argument (Jerry, KK, Todd) and begin to have the ethics discussion. I sense that makes you uncomfortable which is why you keep going back to the legal question...because when it comes down to ethics you don't have anything but your personal opinion to fall back on, and who's gonna listen to that, right?

I'm gonna sign off on this discussion - there's no right or wrong, just opinion, and everyone is entitled to that. I've been on this board long enough to know none of you will change your mind and some enjoy bashing people with opinions other than your own. My final thought - I consider myself a very ethical angler, a great steward of the resource, and the best ally you will have as we continue to fight to save our fisheries. I also have flossed fish before - intentionally. If you can't wrap your head around those characteristics and actions co-existing in one person, I feel sorry for you and for the resource that suffers from the inability of fishermen to get past this petty, ego-driven BS and focus on what's important. I'm out.

When you floss/snag you catch way more fish by parts of their body than you do in the mouth. Not only that you tear up a lot of fish in the process. So dont give us that non-sense!!! At the end of the day... thats the difference! I dont and never will snag anywhere... even alaska where its legal.

You're getting deep there Coley. A lot of internet fishing forums can't handle that much thinking.

Fishing regulations are the result of interpretations of state law. State law is the product of the collective prevailing social values in morals, ethics, and social mores. Social values vary from culture to culture, and that results in some of the fish and wildlife clashes with newer immigrants who don't see anything wrong in taking as many fish or crabs or clams as they can, nor do they understand the concept of minimum size limits.

The concept of fair chase in sport fishing is usually taken to mean that a fish willingly takes a bait or lure in its mouth. That is why flossing is so often interpreted as snagging, because by technical definition, that's what it is.

Fishing for subsistence is fundamentally different than fishing for sport. Commercial fishing is a social extension of subsistence fishing in the way that farming is a social extension of personal gardening. So commercial fishing is allowed to use methods that are more efficient than those generally allowed for personal subsistence or for sport fishing. Fishing for subsistence is different in intent from sport fishing, so the rule of fair chase generally doesn't prevail in subsistence fishing. Subsistence methods of snagging, flossing, dipnetting, fish wheel, and short set gillnet are all equally ethical, if legal.

A friend of mine was a NPS ranger not far from your area some years ago. Although he and his family didn't "need" subsistence sockeye in order to survivve, the fish were abundant, and he was allowed to use a fish wheel to harvest personal use sockeye for a brief period of time as part of a community fishing effort. It was legal, and it was all about harvesting sockeye for the freezer and smoker, had nothing whatever to do with sport, and was and still is within the sideboards of sustainable fish management.

Compared to the lower 48, Alaska is pretty much a foreign country, with its own culture, ethics, and social mores. I think it is the only US state that permits and regulates "subsistence" hunting and fishing. Everywhere else those activities are regulated as recreational activities, so we have sportfishing regulations and no subsistence fishing regulations in WA state, for instance. I don't know, but suspect the same is true in CA.

The conflict, to the extent it exists, comes from trying to pound the square peg of flossing into the round hole of sportfishing regulations that abide by the concept of fair chase, and it clearly does not fit. Unlike AK, most flosseries occur in the Pacific coast states in or near hatchery blood holes, terminal fishing areas where large numbers of hatchery origin fish accumulate. The flossing technique isn't effective enough to bother with in most other locations, excepting odd numbered years when hordes of pink salmon are migrating up Puget Sound rivers.

Flossing is controversial in these areas because it is deliberate snagging, not sport fishing. Yet it occurs under the poor fitting umbrella of sport fishing. It wouldn't be difficult to ban most flossing by imposing a maximum leader length of 24" in the locations and times where and when flossing is prevalent. However, it generally wouldn't serve the fishery management interest of maximizing the harvest of hatchery salmon by banning an effective fishing technique. So it presently exists as a fish management conundrum, maximize angler days of recreation, maximize the harvest of surplus hatchery fish, and still regulate sport fishing. It might make more legal and ethical sense to regulate those areas and times as subsistence fisheries. An inherent problem is that most participants likely would not care enough to understand the difference and comply with more restrictive regulations when flossing wasn't permitted.

Fish management in this region is complex. There are no easy answers.

Next I expect you may go all philosophical and inquire about the rationalization for CNR fisheries. How are they justified by social values, morals, ethics, and mores? That's a fun one, too.

Sg

I was wondering if that question would come up and I am glad it did. This is a much debated topic, as you are certainly aware, and yes there is a huge difference between rural/village subsistence and those that "want" fish rather than "need" it to survive.

Don't get me started on the Kenai tourists that fly in, load up a bunch of coolers and fly back to Texas to leave the fish to rot in a freezer for years or give it away as party favors.

I can tell you how I apply the subsistence concept in my life and what I mean by it. Salmon is an important part of what I consider a healthy diet and the most cost effective and responsible way for me to provide that is to catch it.

In years past when king and coho runs supported harvesting the amount of salmon we want and I would argue need for our annual diet, I didn't need to harvest sockeye. More recently, with declining king and coho runs, it hasn't been possible or responsible to harvest the fish we need for personal use and so I have looked to sockeye fishing to fill in the gap.

Would we starve if we didn't have wild fish and game to subsist on, certainly not, but I would much rather put my dollars and effort into sustainable wild protein than buy something from the store with an unknown history. I believe this is both healthy and responsible and the way the "system" is meant to work, responsible, local harvest. I don't take more than we need.

The only two reasonable options for personal use harvest of sockeye are flossing and dipnetting.

Don't get me wrong. I hate every second I spend trying to floss a sockeye. Nothing about it resembles fishing as I enjoy it. Not too mention the environment of combat and less usually less than enjoyable company. I'd like few things more than to not "have" to participate in this fishery.

Agreed on your points about intent.

The problem of snagging fish other than in the mouth while attempting to floss is easily solvable through technique and tackle.

See Doc's treatise on circle hooks.

Excellent summary Salmo.

Kenai Sockeye = Glorified Pink.

I really feel like a group hug is in order.

Not sure anything substantive can be added at this point.

You can have my sockeye KK, but you'll have to come over for dinner to get it.

I flossed it, does that bother you?

And the same offer applies, gotta come to dinner to get it.