Foggy Mountain Meanderings: GreenFish ~ Promoting a lifestyle of sustainable fishing

I had been contemplating if I should do the latest Outdoor Blogger Network writing prompt, they have partnered up with GreenFish, I decided to go a head and attempt it. I love to fish for anything from trout to bass, well actually that's about all I fish for around here. Throw in a few catfish, bluegill, and crappie and that's about all I'm going to catch in a year. The trout get stocked for close to five months, January through May, the bass have always been in the river behind my house, and the catfish, bluegill and crappie are in the farm ponds we fish in the summer. As you can see, sustainability hasn't always been the foremost thought in my mind when it comes to fishing.

As I sat back and thought about all the things that it means to have sustainable fishing and what it takes for a fisherman (or woman) to promote a sustainable style of fishing, all these ideas started flowing in. This list had everything from picking up litter along the shore to helping the biologist collect data on the last group of stocked trout. The shocking part as I started to write down some of these ideas, I started to realize I do a lot of these things.

1.) Litter - The simplest thing of picking up garbage, this helps immensely with stopping the pollution of our waters and helps keep everything healthy and able to thrive. One of the simplest things is making sure to take out the garbage you brought in, it is always overlooked by most people.

2.) Stocked Trout - Another simple one, if you're not eating it, you're not keeping it (stocked trout). Now you may be wondering how I consider this helping, I know that I am taking fish out, but normally this is only done with the stocked trout that are put in the selected waters for this reason. Also there are a few other things that go along with this, we always make sure the trout is able to survive after being caught (if not, it looks like you're having trout for dinner), if it's a wall mounter, there's normally a pass given on the aforementioned rules, but I've yet to find any for my wall. Haha

A West Virginia Native Brookie

3.) Native Trout - This one ties back to number two. Native trout are off-limits, no it's not that we don't fish for them, it's that we want to keep fishing for them. We always try to find new native streams to fish so that we don't over fish or harm the streams.

4.) Bass, Catfish, Crappie, and Bluegills - All these are normally just caught and released since we fish mostly the same ponds and we always need to have that time to kick back, relax, and catch the next monster.

5.) Teaching - The biggest part of creating sustainable fishing and helping the hatcheries, at least in my eyes, is teaching everyone from the old timers to the next generation about conservation of our resources. And yes, I consider fish and the beautiful places these fish live as a resource. I want to help people understand they don't need to bring home a stinger full of fish to make them feel good, going back and catching those fish again in two months is just ad fun.

These are a few of the main points I think it takes to have sustainable fishing, they may not be the most earth shattering or scientific, but I'll do whatever I can to make the water ways that I fish sustainable for years to come. Oh, and to define what I believe sustainable fishing; it is as simple as making sure, people know, understand, and appreciate fishing for many generations to come.

This blog entry is my submission for the GreenFish