Fishing (or Angling) and AS - How Popular Is It?

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I love fishing. My father first took me when I was three years old, and I am still hooked. What I do not enjoy is causing pain to the fish. I catch-and-release everything, at least when I am by myself. I also will cut the line if the fish has swallowed the hook or is hooked in a place that is difficult to remove. I understand that keeping what I catch would likely lead to bigger fish in the ponds I go to, but I don't like the taste of most fish enough to justify killing them for my eating pleasure. I appreciate the fun and the fight they give me, and have no issue returning them to the water. I guess they deserve it.
I feel the same way about shooting. I love shooting, but I never desire to kill another living creature. Give me targets, cans, bottles and pictures of people who are making me mad!
What other people do, that's up to them.

When I was young the park my cottage was in had fishing tournaments where you would try to catch the biggest fish and you'd win prizes. We always threw the fish back and I really had fun out on the docks (we didn't have a boat) waiting for a fish to bite and the excitement of reeling it in to see how big it was. However, I was totally turned off of it when I caught a fish and the hook went right through its eye which was then dangling off its body I found it both disturbing and sad and I haven't gone fishing since.

Hey fellow WP fishers,

Nice to see the passion well and alive out here! Oh yes... I even kissed those fishies before putting them back in the lake.

Muskies are almost a threatened species, lots of strict conservation laws are in effect for them, and catching two that size within 24 hours is considered somewhat unusual.

There was another thread about fishing here at WP that I tried to search but couldn't find. It had many fishing pictures including a big lake trout probably from Canada's Far North and a small shark caught off Scotland. I was going to post my Muskies there but couldn't find it.

My parents loved fishing. I found it to be excruciatingly boring. I'd go putter around on the shoreline making waterworks in the sand.

Now I'm playing World of Warcraft, which includes fishing as a profession, and it's one of those things I do when I'm waiting for boats (one of the transport systems to get around the game world). A new derby is being added to the game in an upcoming patch. There's a wonderful website devoted to WoW fishing here:

http://www.elsanglin.org/

I do not like fishing, but when I was younger, I collected fishing reels. My prize reel is a mint condition (never used) Penn Senator 16/0 trolling reel just like the one used by Captain Quint in the movie Jaws. That reel is now an antique and has never seen service.