If they feel pain why do they pull away when hooked? If you could feel pain when hooked in any part of your body you certainly wouldn’t pull in the opposite direction.
Jerry
Well Jerry I guess its a very subjective question & everyone will have their own view, the way I see it is this …Imagine if someone stabbed you with a hook while you where looking away...your automatic initial reaction would be to try and pull yourself away from the thing hooking you, however you quickly discover it hurts …allot ! …and so you try and release the pressure…and I think that’s the point your making.
...However ! ….
Now imagine that same hook starts dragging you towards an extremely awful event....you find yourself starting to get dragged into lets say deep water or fire or whatever .... the chances are your reaction now will be to start to resist and pull back despite the pain and to try and escape...because basically the pain of the hook is nothing compared to the horrific thing its pulling you towards....the lesser of two evils as it where.
Taking it to a fishes level...it gets hooked....its now being dragged towards the surface...this is really bad...what is it going to do ? ...sit there and let itself be dragged out of the water to what appears to be certain death ? Of course not ..its going to pull back !
For that reason I think its totally understandable that a fish would pull back when hooked as its panicking and trying to escape from whatever is dragging it along by a hook !
Second point...for the people who doubt it and say its not been proved fish feel pain...I say come on ! ...witness how fish can go rigid in your hand, fins erect as you unhook them and start crapping themselves. The hook is stuck in its mouth, sometimes coming right out of the top lip and so on. I don’t need to be a scientist to see that fish is experiencing panic and I am also certain its experiencing pain. I don’t believe the anatomy of a fish is SO different to that of a mammal to mean its somehow evolved to be impervious to pain…it has muscles, nerves, organs & so on ...come on !...of COURSE they feel pain ! Perhaps they have a different pain threshold to us but I am in no doubt whatsoever that fish feel it.
The thing is I think the whole notion that fish dont feel pain is just a delusion by anglers as a way to try and justify what we do. However in my opinion no one in the non angling public will EVER buy the idea that fish dont feel pain when you stick a hook in it ...so I think we should stop saying it as its : 1) Just not true ! and 2) Playing right into the hands of the antis and will be the death of angling.
In my opinion the best way to justify angling is to be up front about it...yes we cause fish distress BUT we as anglers do more for fish and water environments than 99.9% of the non angling public ever will. The bottom line is that there is more happy fish swimming about BECAUSE of anglers and if you ban angling fish will be WORSE off.
---------- Post added at 19:25 ---------- Previous post was at 19:20 ----------
Most anglers take pride in returning their catch and consider their actions thoughtfully - no emotional harm comes to a fish that has been caught and released - and that is the difference and why I have no compunction over my actions.
I have no compunction over my actions either Chav for all the reasons I mention above. The difference is I dont try and justify my actions by pretending to myself that sticking a hook in a fish & dragging it out of the water causes them "no emotional harm" as you put it....sorry but I cant agree with you on that.