"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...

What is the direct cause and effect. Is it the fight, is it the
stress of handling, is it.......

You and I both know how to handle fish the right way. There's another factor
we probably can't exercise a lot of control over. This is from "The Founding
Fish", by John McPhee. The book's about shad. He's a fisherman, and sounds a
lot like you. There's a chapter about catch & release, and he gives fair
treatment to all sides of the discussion.


Anglers who release fish are not releasing the same fish they hooked.
"Prolonged playing of fish, particularly when they are returned to the water
subsequently, is to be depricated," Gathorne Midway wrote in 1977, reporting
to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on the
findings of a Panel of Enquiry into Shooting and Angling. "When teleost fish
are severely stressed and exercised to exhaustion, they make extensive use
of their 'white' muscle system," he said. "This differs from the red
skeletal muscle of higher vertebrates, in that it is anaerobic and, although
very efficient in the short term, when exhausted contains a great
accumulation of lactic acid during the elimination of which the muscle
system remains in prolonged fatigue. A completely exhausted fish will thus
be almost unable to move for several hours after capture. During this time
it will be at risk to attack by predators or injury from its inanimate
environment." Medway holds a doctorate in zoology.