Angling ethics are subjective. Yes, there are laws on the books. But those statutes are applied based upon a consensus. At times, appeals to empirical data might even enter the picture. All of that to say, fishing regulations aren’t natural law. But common sense does factor in when making moral judgments.
For example: I’ve walked the line with using bait with my fly rod at a few memorable moments.
Now, there is a difference between the ethics of using bait and laws prohibiting it. I believe that in all of the following anecdotes I was well within my legal rights. My actions may not stand up to your personal scrutiny, however. Consequently, I only ask that you read these accounts with some grace. After all, I was fishing. You know how that goes.
The Lizard Hopper
My small university campus had two ponds. The smaller of the two was surrounded by cattails and contained some sizeable largemouth bass. Being in South Carolina, there were all manner of creatures in and around the water. Lizards were the most exotic. They also were prone to leaping into the water from the vegetation when a person parted the tall plants in order to cast. The result was one of the most tantalizing topwater displays imaginable. The serpentine wiggle and the pulsing waves from the frantic swimming was something no lure, let alone no fly, could replicate. And the bass loved it.
So what to do? Tying a lizard to a 1/O hook seemed inhumane. Plus, I didn’t have any bare 1/0 hooks on my person. My solution was to tie on a foam hopper, emerge from the weeds, and then splat the bug as close to the nearest lizard as possible. I’d manipulate the hopper’s path to be close to the lizard’s. And although most fish were missed, a few aggressive bass took both my sacrifice and my fly.
Dace on the Line
You’ve got to hand it to baitfish. If they can fit a fly in their mouth, they’ll make it happen. Sometimes, the fly doesn’t fit in their mouth and they still end up hooked. That is the kind of moxie that will get you far in life. That is also the kind of moxie that will get you in the gullet of a big brown trout.
Fishing an early evening hatch with a big, bushy dry fly was not yielding the desired results. The naturals were thick on the water, but the only dimples were decidedly diminutive. Polarized lenses revealed that dace were slashing away all across the creek. Still, seeing so many bugs on the water had to produce some trout. Cast after cast led to flies getting slowly submerged by fish with jaws incapable of swallowing their quarry. Until one little dace rose at just the right/wrong angle.
My first instinct was to snap the fish in to do a quick release and to dry my fly. Then I saw the desperate cartwheeling dace. I wasn’t the only one who saw it either. In the brief moment in which I was contemplating the decency of allowing this small fish to flounder, a large trout inhaled it and made my line taut. A few headshakes later, and my fly was back in the water sans dace.
Fly Plus Dragonfly
This one was 100% the animal’s fault. I don’t know if it was love, aggression, or a combination of both, but the real dragonfly landed right on top of my imitation. The resulting vibrations from the beating wings (and whatever else may have been going on) incited a big bull bluegill to engulf the whole party. Win-win-win.