Just because it says you should not eat them, does not stop people from doing it. We have Lake Sturgeon here. There are 3 paper mills upstream. A legal to keep sturgeon is at least 25 years old. The health department says don't eat big fish, old fish, fatty fish, or bottom feeders. Sturgeon are the whole list. They kill a ton of them. Then there is the faction that thinks a dead fish works better for the "Look at what I caught!" than a photo. We had a kid from up the river get a sturgeon that was in the state record zone. He drove around with it in the back of a truck for a week showing it off and then dumped it in the woods. A picture would have worked better. I guess he and that type never heard of the Al Lindner pose. I worked for the Minnesota DNR for many years and have seen pretty much every screwy thing you can imagine an angler can do. That's one of the main reasons I like being almost the only fly fisherman around here. My boss used to say all the time, "You have to remember that 99% of fisherman are good." It was a delusional comment. Truthfully if you were to say 99% were bad it would be much closer to the truth. Before we got more enforcement up here I had days where the violation rate was as high as 40%. I would bet it would be twice that high if they had no fear of being ticketed. I got to where if I didn't catch them doing something wrong I started to think I either was missing something or didn't get there fast enough. A lot of it has to do with the type of fishing they do also. Here in Minnesota the hardcore Crappie fisherman have a "Find a lake with Crappie, fish it till they are gone. Find a new lake." mentality. Most smaller lakes are good for 2 years tops from when the word gets out till you can't find a Crappie in the place. Walleye fisherman are a close second. Musky fisherman on the other hand are a catch and release group. They tend to carry that attitude over to other species. Interestingly enough, there also is a regional style to breaking laws and general bad behavior. My apologies to Wisconsin, but as an example, 90% of the time you catch somebody trolling with two rods here they are from Wisconsin. I could win money making bets on it. Then there is the bad ethics that does not break the law, and that has a regional trend as well. I can tell you with a pretty amazing accuracy where a person is from based on the lousy thing they are doing. Twin Cities people (not all but most) seem to have the idea somebody else is responsible for taking the trash from where they drop it to the trash can.
Long story short, if you are disgusted by what you are seeing, you would be nauseated by what you are not. Be happy that you fly fish, where you are among the crowd where my bosses " 99% of anglers are good." thing is actually fairly accurate.
I took so long writting this 2 people posted while I was doing it. #3 reminds me of a story a guy from a state I won't name said. He was seriously ticked off we had reduced the limit on Pike from 6 to 3 and put a protected slot of 30 to 40 inches on them. He then tells me he had come up here and kept 6 Pike one time that had a combined weight of 126 pounds. That's a 21 pound average. I asked why he would want 6 fish that big. He replied "Fertilized my garden."
