Fishermen Cast Ire at Ruling

For years, public reaction toward man’s abuse of the animal kingdom has been growing increasingly stronger.

The big-game hunter, for example, is now looked upon by some as cruel and insensitive.

There are crusaders against cruelty to animals everywhere, from movie sets to the most remote stretches on this planet, but nobody ever seems to raise a word of protest against sportfishing.

Until now.

Horst Brinkmann, a West German civil court judge, has thrown his line into previously uncharted waters by fining the two organizers of a catch-and-release fishing contest within his jurisdiction $700 each for cruelty.

During the trial, biologists testified that the labored breathing and increased heart rate of fish that had been snared and removed from the water clearly showed that those fish were in pain.

The judge ruled that fishing was allowable only if the fish were killed quickly for useful purposes, but not to merely catch them to be weighed or otherwise judged in a contest during which they were subjected to needless suffering.

Brinkmann’s decision, as might be expected, was greeted with something less than approval at Turner’s Outdoorsman store in Van Nuys.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” Bob Kramer of Port Hueneme said. “That’s people like the damn Sierra Club and the rest of the yo-yos who feel like that. Next thing you know, you won’t be able to hunt. These people are just getting too far out of bounds. To me, fishing is strictly a game of relaxation, and I don’t need to be bothered by a bunch of ecologists.

“How did they determine these fish were in pain anyway?”

By the labored breathing, he was told.

“Sure, if you take a fish out of water, he’s going to gasp,” Kramer said. “If we put you underwater, you would gasp, too. But if you gently put the fish back in the water, he’s going to survive. It may have been a traumatic experience for him, but he’ll be smarter the next time.”

Dave Martin of Van Nuys thinks the judge’s emphasis on sportfishing was the worst aspect of the ruling.

“If that ruling were carried to the extreme, it would be terrible,” Martin said. “It would destroy the inroads we’ve made in sensibility over the last 25 to 30 years. It’s taken that long to convince people they don’t have to kill everything they catch. There are rivers and streams now where all you can do is throw them back. I’m from the East Coast and I can remember when you’d see people leaving with 200-pound bags full of fish. Nobody is going to eat that much. Now we’ve ended that kind of archaic thinking.”

Clark Atkinson of Laramie, Wyo., used an interesting analogy to express his opinion.

“It’s stupid,” he said. “If you had to kill every fish you caught, it would be like saying every boxing match had to be fought to the death. Pretty soon, you’d run out of boxers. In this case, you’d run out of fish. Sportfishing is done for the emotional rewards of the battle. Then, when you’re done, you throw the fish back and tell it to go fight somebody else.

“The judge has got his point of view and I’m sure he has his reasons. He’s obviously got an ax to grind. But fining those guys $700? I think that’s cruel and unusual.”

Fred Moss of Woodland Hills abhors hunting but views fishing in a different light.

“I don’t believe fish feel pain,” he said. “I’m not an expert and I could be dead wrong, but I don’t believe it. The hooks rust out of their mouths.

“Now my wife thinks hunting is the cruelest thing in the world. If I brought home something I killed, she wouldn’t eat it. I feel the same way. I couldn’t kill anything. But you can’t compare that to fishing. If I felt the same way about fishing, I would never fish. But I still think it’s different than hunting. It’s the difference between getting a hook in your hand or having someone shoot you in the hand. There’s pain and then there’s pain. “

Roy Gray of Woodland Hills does not adhere to the pain theory.

“I studied fisheries biology in college,” he said. “Fish don’t feel pain the way we do. They don’t have the same type of nervous system.”

Jay Allen of Woodland Hills, who said he had been fishing as long as he could remember, just shook his head at the ruling.

“The judge said it was OK to catch the fish to kill it and eat it but not to cause it pain and let it go?” he asked. “Well, by that theory, every time a dentist gets a patient in his chair, he ought to kill them. Those guys can cause plenty of pain.”

But at least they don’t leave in hooks to rust away.