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Several things...
First of all, this study was conducted way on down south where the environment is drastically different than ours, even in the dog days of August. Our waters are much more conducive (well at least the natural part) to survival of these fish which is not factored into that study.
Other studies have indicated that it the mortality of c&r fish is somewhere around 8-10%, the one coming to mind was the one by Diodati a while back.
As far as the artificials -v- bait, I don't know if I agree with the high mortality % but I might agree with the ratio of bait-v-lure caught bass. And as a subset of that, a circle hook-v-regular hook like that one that other DEMFWL fellow mentioned at the 50th Anniv. meeting a few months back when they did the circle hook/regular hook compare on bait fishing. That study showed a much lower mortality rate on circle hooked fish than with regular hooks based on the likelihood of gut hooked fish (still don't think it works well with eels)...
As far as who paid for this study? Who knows, there isn't much of the hard data mentioned to take it too seriously but it does provoke thought. And we do want to be open minded after all :P ,right? Again, it just states that it got its info from here and there, and then draws it's conclusion...
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