Whilst Robson Green's camp luvieness gets on my nerves I cannot see anything wrong in showing how fish are caught and killed. Do you want it all hidden away from your oh so delicate sensibilities?
As pike are cold blooded animals spearing them causes no more distress than hooking them...they still need to be finally dispatched by a swift blow to the brain. My objection would be to them not showing the fish actually being killed, which could lead me to surmise that they actually left the pike to "drown"; and that is wrong.
As far as them catching loads of these fish...if they don't what do they eat, nip down to Teso's and buy chickens breed thousands together in cages the size of a shoe box? It is hardly worth a trip out in a plane to a frozen lake just for one fish. This feeds the whole community.
Angling is a form of hunting, even catch and release.
To my mind catching and killing a wild fish in wild surroundings, killing it and cooking it is much more moral than fishing for captive fish, breed to be caught in a pond, even if you release them a hundred times. I don't fish commercials for this reson, in the same way I don't agree with dog fighting but do support hare corsing.
Catch and release is a conservation measure and nothing to do with cruelty or otherwise.
The anti hunting and anti conservations of the League Against Cruel [sic] sports, PETA and every one else like that, will seek to ban angling for the same reasons they banned hunting with dogs. Because they are fundamentally against any relationship between man and nature. They anthropomorphism wildlife and hate freedom. We can defend angling by being good conservationists and not by claiming to be against "cruelty" to bunnies, foxes or fish.
