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I realized several years ago that I could not reconcile my love of fly fishing with the uneasiness I felt about my inability to walk through habitat without disturbing it. Even though I enjoy the outdoors and indeed I gain much from it, I'm a city dweller and I never learned how to tread softly or carefully.

I also couldn't reconcile my catch and release ethics with a growing awareness of my responsibility to do no harm. Whether or not a fish can feel pain is not the question; my administering of it with hooks, barbed when I first started fishing and then barbless later, in a selfish pursuit of entertainment, is. Hooks damage fish. It?s as simple as that. And since I wasn?t trying to feed myself, I stopped fishing.

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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