I thought some forum member with a numbered name is off the debate on this thread, but if you think he will spare the chance to shame and label us bottom bouncers as snaggers, you are delusional.
Flossing is not snagging by DFO's definition. It lacks the intent to target other body parts other than the mouth. Intent is everything in enforcing a rule of law. That is why DFO never ticket anybody for flossing a fish. Fishing in itself does not originate from using a hook or requiring a fish to bite. That is a narrow view some members here are trying to jam down your throat and ask you to swallow it. Fish are netted, trapped, speared etc. everywhere else, including our Canadian provinces. So why the problem here? Because some individuals with a fanatic and narrow point of view about sport fishing are trying to impose their twisted views on you.
If intent is not important, then killing some-one by self-defense will be considered murder. If intent is not important, then your exposure of your sensitive body parts in a fishing bar due to natural urge is a crime of public indecent explosure because you didn't use a washroom. Sometimes, some of us have to do this even within sight of ladies due to the specific bars. Well, because you do expose your part in a public place with ladies around, is it a crime? If you ignore the intent and say flossing is snagging, the same as using treble hooks and yanking those hooks violently to catch fish by any parts, then should we say your release of your natural urge in a public place is the same as those doing it in a public street or park?
So, should you turn yourself in after you have done the same in a public fishing bar?
Have anyone been charged for doing that while they are fishing? Should DFO officers be ticketing people for their public indecent explosure while fishing??? Do bar fishers hold their urge until they get home
Yes, I admit the fish may or may not bite when they are hooked in the mouth. Both you and I have no proof that when a Fraser fish is caught inside the mouth, it is done by flossing or by the fish biting it. You are not down there for every hookup, so how can you be so sure every fish is flossed. Fish cannot see it? Common, how do you know? The best fishing in the Cap is when it is high & yellowish, so is the Gold. My friend nailed 19 steelhead in its yellowish Canyon pools by bottom bouncing a small orange spin & glow with 2 ft leader. Why is it fish can see somewhere else in yellowish water but not the Fraser?
Even if a Fraser fish is flossed, so what? Legal. Keep it. If you think that you are justified to eat only a mouth-hooked biting fish, so be it. Do that if that suit your guilt conscience of killing the fish for meat. But there will always be people who thinks fishing is cruelty, and that everyone should be converted to a vegetarian. Will you? Why not? Doesn't a fish have a feeling and can feel pain just as much as you do even if you catch them biting? They are homing to spawn, their most noble calling, and you kill it on its way? Why should you be so justifed by whatever ethics you hold? So, where do we begin to draw the line in this messy game about ethics of fishing? If you are not careful, you will drift towards PETA's reasoning and got trapped. Isn't that a famous broadcaster recently announced that he is quitting fishing because he no longer see the justification.......?
I'll say, I am a recreational fisherman intending to hook a fish legally for fun and for dinner, just like most life-forms which like to eat a fish, no more no less. Save your narrow and extreme points about your idealogy or biased view about fishing from those of us who do not share your twisted idea, because in the eyes of other people who don't fish or who don't eat meat, you are unethical too, biting or not.
Nice points, Glog. I am begining to sense that behind all this shaming game is the ugly personal agenda of exclusionism - booting the majority of fishers off the river so they can enjoy their good old days of fishing with their buddies. Why this suspicision? Because they keep on saying wanting to protect fish stocks, but they said nothing about those Stuart sockeyes being sold, and turn around stomping on us who have rarely encountered a sockeye, not to say killing one. It is not about fish stocks. It is about personal bias which they try to jam down your throat.