Humane Angling

The matter of whether fish feel pain when caught by a hook has long been debated by anglers and animal rights advocates. Unfortunately for anglers, scientific studies conducted in recent years lend considerable weight to the argument that fish do feel pain in a similar way to mammals.

However if angling were banned, many small economies and businesses throughout the world would be severely affected, putting many people out of work.

For the sake therefore of the livelihoods of the many people hooked on the angling economy, and of the psychological health of both the fish and anglers involved in the sport, an alternative to the hook must be sought.

The author proposes a lifting of the ban on fishing with nets, so long as they are small and light enough to be cast with a rod and line.

The sport of angling would thereafter become one of inventing nets designed to catch only one of a particular size of fish while being easily cast as far as is common with hooks.

Competitions could then be held not for the size of fish caught, but for the ratio of fish to net size, placing a greater emphasis on ingenuity than does the design of hooks.

The apparent flaw in this proposal is that anglers will protest that half of the fun of angling is in not letting the fish get away after it has been hooked. The author however begs to differ - rather, the only frustration in angling arises when the fish manages to escape.

Furthermore, youngsters involved in angling with nets rather than hooks will hopefully carry with them into later life more the qualites of inventiveness, perfection and accuracy, than a fetish for "catching big fish" with barbed hooks.

Fishing with nets therefore, would improve the sport of angling on all counts, and also facilitate the arrival of the new thinking epoch.