Have any of you ever made money by promoting the use of wild salmonids? Have you hoisted a wild salmon,steelhead or trout out of the water for a picture? Are you a professional guide? Do you own and operate a mega internet fishing web site?
If you answered yes to any of these then you are a user of a fragile resource. To be fair I know of a few professional guides that give to wild fisheries much more than they receive but those guides are scarce.
So you have to ask yourself in all of this just how much you really care about wild salmon and steelhead. Oh sure we can all give wild fish a lot of lip service and act all concerned on the internet but do you take it further than that? Do you only attend the Fish and Wildlife meetings that will make your business more profitable or are you there when the best interest of wild fish are at stake?
If you don't care or just act like you care then you are just an exploiter, a carpetbagger and a user.
Take the steelhead broodstock programs for instance. I've had more than one pro guide tell me about how much they cares about wild fish but they think nothing of exploiting these wild fish for profit! What is wrong with that picture?
Every one of those guides parrot the same regurgitated crap about how much they care but in reality they only care about the paying customers in their boat and how many wild fish they can hook.
I would have a hell of a lot more respect for these clowns if they told the truth and said they are only in it for the money and when that resource dwindles they will move on to another one to take advantage of.
Then we have the huge internet fishing web site owners whose site is so plastered with paid advertising banners that you can barely sift you way through them to find any useful content.
They also will lament the sorry state of our fisheries while taking money and giving nothing back! These people are vampires! Sucking off the life blood of wild fish for profit and giving back nothing in return. They, in fact have been respondsible for maxing out the rivers with thousands of new anglers.
Last but not least are the young fishing superstars. The self proclaimed "studs" plaster their arrogant images of all the fish they catch. They take wild salmon and steelhead out of the water and into their drift boat for multiple pictures that they can post on the big internet fishing forums. Will you see them do anything to actually benefit the wild fish that they so easily catch and hoist out of the water to satisfy their need to be honored by their fishing peers. I have yet to see the most ardent fishing "stars" at any function that would help wild fish.
I've come to the point, in the almost 4 years of writing this blog,where I really don't care who gets offended and angry at what I post. I am singling out those whose ego or greed is what is wrong with our fishing these days. I don't care if they are bait fishermen or fly fishermen because if the damn shoe fits then wear it or get the hell out of the way of those that truly do care.
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