Do Fish Feel Pain?

[Jimbo]

My response would be that the PETA People who are on the verge of saying that “fish are people too” are correct, fish feel pain, but they leave out one vitally important fact when they encourage people not to fish, and this is the premise that each fish is an individual who makes a well thought out and conscious effort to bite the hook or lure knowing it will inflict pain. This decision may be based on several factors. First, like many humans, that particular fish might simply enjoy the rush and the pain just like a human accepting to be tattooed, branded, pierced or otherwise corporally punished. Maybe the fish has masochistic tendencies, or maybe he was dared by his [so called] friends-“Yo, Tommy Trout, I give ya five clams ta go bite that Wooley Bugger.”
Perhaps the fish is part of the roving gangs that swim around looking for nice pretty new lures to set upon by frenzied fish “wilding” in the currents, as I’m sure most of us have seen schools of bluefish do; waiting for just the right opportunity to impress his friends by savagely attacking an innocent, nubile lure passing by, then disappearing into the crowd so as not to be identified. Do all bluefish behave like this? I really doubt it. I doubt their parents know what kind of fish they really are.
Now, if gangs of predatory fish are a possibility, who is to say there’s not a whole underocean of mafiosa vertebrates extorting the chubs and killies who are just trying to eek out a living on algae and grass shrimp, and who is to say, or not, that if Sammie da SeaBass moves to a new rockpile occupied primarily by the Tautoglias, that the Godfishfather doesn’t issue an edict like, “Yo Sammie, you have shamed the Tautoglia family and all the bottom dwellers, the Scuponas, the Codleones, even the Basszinis and so now you must make amends and sleep with the humans. Take da hook, Paulie!” And of course he really has no other choice. Yet another example of a fish’s own resolution to accept the pain he would but inflict upon himself. If this weren’t the case, then all fish would be biting the first hook that came into sight and fishermen would never leave the dock nor spend countless hours in pursuit of a finned victim in the market to take a sharp barb to the lips. Fish feel pain. Some show they actually enjoy it by biting our hooks, for a variety of reasons. PETA certainly can't blame us for that!