Your thoughts on releasing large stripers

[redlite]

Oh brother, here we go again......
To each their own....
Oustide the tournament, I let 80% of the fish I catch go (most because they're too small).....I only keep em if people(family and freinds) have asked me specifically for fish, and it is not too bad of a job to get them back to the truck.
Here is a break down on my numbers so far for this year---
So far this year I have weighed in 7 fish for the Striper cup, all but 3 were in the commercial season, so they would have been taken anyway. I have kept 8 fish for the table so far. I sold I believe it was only like 20 fish this year, so I have removed about 28 fish from the biomass since the begining of April. That isn't even a bad DAY for a boat during the comm season.I keep the big ones cause they are more yield per fish. I got a 50, and I sold it. If I ever get another, you can bet yo arse its comin home and onto my wall. Do I keep the bigs ones to feed my "ego" or some other hidden human nature? I don't think so. I don't know, but I get a greater stisfaction riding along the canal after slammin fish with empty baskets and people thinking I didn't catch anything than havin 2 fish jammed into my baskets witha flat tire.

As far as tournaments and promoting killing of fish and all that crap, a quick count of the Striper Cup thus far which is the largest and longest running tournament, with approx 5000 people fishing over 5 months, from NJ to Maine, this is the count so far:
60#-6
50#-27
40#-35
30#- 233
Total 301 fish

A vast majority of those fish were commercial fish that would have been kept anyway. So please stop crying that tournaments are so wrong, and bad, and killing ALL the fish......Horse pucky.

Like I say, to each their own, but don't frown upon others that are operating within the guidelines.