Catch-and-release has become a widespread practice in Britain aimed at the preservation of dwindling stocks of salmon. Where the fish continue to return to their rivers less and less each year, it is common for anglers to continue casting their flies, booking the odd fish, but, after playing it, to release it gently always, it is stressed, by unhooking the fish while still in water (that's the ideal anyway) to cause least damage. There is, of course, another, and simpler way to see that a river has a future: to refrain from all angling for a couple of years and let nature take its course. It demands some sacrifice from the angler, but it is more likely to succeed in its purpose. Catchand-release, by the way is so much in the air that a video has been made of it, in which the angler is urged to release at least some of the fish they catch. Anglers are hardly the main cause of the decline on so many rivers in Britain. Netsmen, changed Atlantic currents are also put down as being to blame.
The Scottish Environment and Fisheries Minister has stated that in 1997 the number of salmon caught and retained by rod and line was sixteen per cent down on the previous year and the lowest since records began in 1952. The Editor of Salmon and Trout magazine seems to be in two minds about it all, or rather, he is thinking on the page for others, when he writes an editorial on the subject. Voluntary catch-and-release was one thing, it seems to him, but when it comes to a `thou shalt' basis he is uneasy. He looks at it in several ways, Quoting from a Handbook of Freshwater Fishing by an American, Lee Wulff, writing away back in 1938, he came across this: "Game fish are too valuable to be caught once." So, the reader might ask, are game fish just playthings to be handed on from one human to another? To be put through stress and strain time and again, just for human pleasure? He quotes another source "the fish you release is your gift to another angler, and the fish you caught might have been the gift of another angler to you."
Crawford Little, the magazine's editor writes: "Problem is, Wulff's words don't inspire me. I don't want to catch your salmon. And I dont't want to pass my salmon around for all the boys to enjoy. I want it to swim to the spawning redds - not fall for the next fly that swims into view." He ends "Divided by a common language? Perhaps . . ."