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I was watching some people fishing off the beach today. A fella pulled in a dog salmon, and proceeded to pose with it in various ways, with its mouth still flopping open and closed, while a woman with him took pictures. This included holding it out horizontal in front of him in his arms, crouching with the fish on the rocks while he actually looked as if he were petting the fish like you would stroke a cat across the back, and all kinds of examining the fish and moving it around on the ground. After a good five minutes of this, he put the fish back in the water holding it by its tail, swooshing it forward and backward as if encouraging it to come back to life and swim. Well it turns out the fish wasn't dead and it eventually did come to and flop and the fella let go the tail and the fish swam away.
Then his wife or whatever took the pole and squealing with delight she immediately had a bite. She pulled in the fish and they went through the same thing taking pics of her, with a bit more trouble because she would scream and jump backwards every time the fish flopped his body on the rocks. This time they had the fish in torment for even longer, probably ten minutes, and then I was mildly surprised to see the guy bash the fish's head with a rock -- apparently this one was a keeper; they just wanted to let it die slowly like a cat would do.
I was grossed out and creeped out both by the ignorance of human nature and to see two adult people be so weird, even if it wasn't most likely illegal what they were doing.
Doesn't catch and release mean unhook gently and immediately release?
I suppose I should report this to Fish and Game and maybe they can post some 'guidelines' in the area for people. I am dumbfounded by this.
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