[piemma]

Lots of pontificating on this thread.

I'm not a big Bible guy but it certainly brings to mind

"Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone."

We all are guilty of some infraction, no matter how you try to deny it, sometime, somewhere you screwed up. A fish swallowed your plug and you ripped it's gills out and it was undersized. You gut hooked a decent fish and cut the leader because "the hook will rot out in a couple of days (which has been proven to be BS).

You kept a short fish because it was "bleeding allover the place and would have died anyway".

Look, no one ever said that fishing was a moralistic pursuit. You go out to catch something. Whether you do it with the expressed intent of letting it go, you still have caused an injury to a living organism. So let's not be high and mighty about "I released this or I released that".

The fact is we are all hunters and hunters kill. It's part of the cycle. Don't feel bad about it, just respect it and don't abuse the privilege..