In the grand scheme of things flossing is just a dent in the bucket compared to the commercial fishery and native fishery. Makes no difference to me if someone flosses fish. I dont think many get the meaning of ethics. If a doctor is unethical he is doing something either against the law or is breaking a doctors code of conduct. When it comes to sport fishermen it seems the flossing debate is pretty much a 50/50 split. Because of the split their is no real "Code" among fishermen in regards to this. If it was 90/10 than yes. So since their is no true code you go to the law. The law has nothing against people flossing as long as its hooked properly. Than you have your own ethics. If you can live with the fact that you are catching fish that are not willing biters than do what you want. If your conscience gets to you when you do it than don't do it.
I have agree with you it is a dent in the bucket but because of it this is used as a leverage to keep us out of the river. I have said before the impact of the recreational angler in most cases is minimal in the whole scheme of things but we loose the argument the follwing statement when we have BB going on. If we were only bar fishing during the early part of the season, when the river is so turbid the success rate is very small. (Saying this the BB ing crowd take a lot of chinooks over the season, Scale Bar is a prime example but maybe once again it is a lot less than Ocean, F/N and commercial guys do and the recreational angler sure pours a lot more money into the economy, you would think the government would like this, especially with the HST now in effect.
Right AF
Even now with conditions fairly good for bar fishing one bar over the weekend, with a fair number of anglers on it had no success while on the other hand one BB er was into 4 chinooks.
(Not the same bar)
Talk about another topic which is unfair. I was told a angler got a 79 cm fish, 2 cm over the size limit and it cost him $150 fine while F/N had a 12 hour opening, I saw one boat unload 38 chinooks into a tote with fish approaching 30 pounds, is this unfair to the recreational angler, I would say yes.
Is there an answer to all of this I donot think so but I feel we will now continue to loose ground in opportunities for salmon in a lot of fresh water rivers. Time to take up lake fishing, head to the ocean or as some say, take up golfing.
It is easy to make lots of comments like I have, but real concrete ideas are few and far between if any at all.