I cannot help but agree more with what Hammad has just written. The
problem is that sporting history teaches us one big thing which is
what we’ve always ignored. It is a hard fact that all sports were
originated to provide pleasure to the Aristrocrats. Therefore, law
governing each were also developed to their likings.
The argument of using live bait vs. artificial lure has extended
beyond proportions as it all started with my initial mail where I
suggested that perhaps using local insects could also give better
results.
Lets set aside the laws governing Trout fishing or for that matter
any type of fishing in Pakistan. For a simple fact that I think laws
in our country were a wheel that was invented by the Brits and we
think of it as still a perfect fit for us under all circumstances. We
also have to remember that in this country breaking law and getting
away with it is as easy as a walk in the park. Therefore, for people
like us we have look at other aspect like Morality, Value etc..
Fishing for me provide quality time and I highly value it for the
simple sake of being in a better environment angling with my friends,
which only anglers like us can probably appreciate. Therefore, when I
am fishing I have to bifurcate between what is morally right and
what’s not.

For me I have to say that misusing an opportunity of a great fishing
day is something I will not want to do at the expense of such a great
tasting fish like Trout. But at the same token, if I wanna take half
dozen trout back to my cabin/hotel/tent and enjoy eating them. I
would do it everytime. Becuase in my heart I am, what I am and will
try to ensure I dont indulge in activities that seriously hampers any
living species and Trout being no exception.

On the contrary, has anybody ever seen a truck load of Barracuda
leaving Soneri Beach and Mubarak? I have reports that each year at
the start of Barracuda breeding season group of spear-fishing lovers
are killing Barracuda by the hundreds off of Churna and this year
atleast 1500 were reportedly taken out within a span of a week.

Let’s throw our effort of this argument to save the Barracuda’s too..
I think they are an amazing fish and if this goes on like this past
year did we will not see any Barracuda left in our region. What a
pity!! If that happens???

Cheers!!

Rizwan

Moreover I agree with Mr. Hammad Qadir to some extent but the debate here is not about what we anglers are damaging in term of environment or fish which is another important issue but we are talking about the way one should catch a trout more precisely an Angler and when someone replied some bait recipes against that post; most of us agreed that trout must be caught using Spinners if not Flies.

As long as the aristocratic British elite goes, let me remind us all here that THE GAME that we all are in, is all invented and started by the same Britishers including the tackle which we use, let me ad example of cricket the game most played in our country is also invented in England and till now the rules and terms we and rest of the world use such as Hard Ball, pitch, test match or one day are all invented by them, then why can’t we follow their rules in fishing?

Anyone can understand that, generally speaking, fishing with bait is ethical, but sometimes, in some places and for certain species, it is illegal and considered as unethical or unsporting. In other words, when it comes to ethical fishing, the determining factor is clearly the situation, not the action itself. HERE I AM TOTALLY TALKING ABOUT IN GENEREL TROUT FISHING ETHICS NOT ONLY PAKISTAN.

They are using wheat flour! what else you need as easy bait? and I have seen them catching dozens of trouts in few hours and even saw three locals carrying trouts full on two donkeys which they caught in their three days stay on that lake and most of them were caught using wheat flour dough! Sportsmen, regardless of whether they fly Fish, or how they feel about fishing by bait, need to keep this idea of catching trout on fly/spinner foremost. To do otherwise hands the anti-hunters yet another in a long chain of minor victories that inevitably ends all the trout fishing, including bait fishing.

Crime may be not appropriate word here but Trout Fishing is almost everywhere done by using spinner if not fly or by bait and if we can follow Rules in Cricket what is wrong with fishing for trout? As the old saying is “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” BTW there is another word “unsporting”

Why is it ethical to fish for trout with bait, but not okay to hunt game animals with bait? Why not we just lay down some bait and wait for the birds and shoot them? Why we always shoot them while they are flying and it is against the rule to kill a bird while sitting on tree? Why it’s always necessary to kill one in wild not the stocked one? Why Mr. Watson needs to travel to Pakistan to catch trout? Why don’t he catch their huge stocked triploid trout that they have in their so called trout fishers which in fact are all domesticated fish bowls. The answer of all these questions lays down in following the rules of GAME and trout is prime game fish.

Good Fishing
Ali Saeed

I do understand that local fisheries department may ban a certain
fishing method due to reasons of conservation etc and one must abide by the local rules however, I do not fully grasp why catching trout with live bait is a crime against the spirit of trout fishing. Why catching trout with a spinner (which normally has a treble hook) or a fly is sporting whereas catching the same fish on a live bait is unethical rather criminal. If it is for the reason of conservation of small fish / insects etc which are normally used as live bait than I fully agree with you but it must then apply to all types of
fishing and not only trout fishing.

I do know that old aristocratic British elite have been terming use of live bait against the spirit of sportfishing but the environment there was different from our country. Live bait (small bait fish,worms, moths etc) were available in abundance near trout waters in England and what a commoner could easily catch with a simple hand line and live bait fish/worm, the aristocrat could not with his most expensive fly gear and hours of casting. Hence there was an element of over fishing as well as class segregation involved in it. (please look into the genesis of terms like game fishing and coarse fishing).

In our case, the situation is different. After having caught hundreds of trout I can say that live bait fishing is not all that easy in Pakistani Northern Areas. The only live bait that is going to survive for a reasonable time in icy cold waters is small snow carp or trout. Even the spider like water insects found under the stones in nulluhs/lakes do not survive for a long time when hooked.

So its not all that easy to collect live bait in our northern areas whereas its far too easy to carry a fly/spinning rod and a large assortment of flies/spinners/other artificial lures. 95 % of the trout that I have caught was either on spinners or on flies not because I considered using live bait a crime but because live baits were not easily available at many places and it was far too convenient for me to use the artificial lures. On the contrary,
spinners/plugs, which mostly have treble hooks, injure the fish much more than a fly or a live bait on a single hook and should therefore be used sparingly if we want to conserve trout.

So in my view, there is no denying the fact that fly fishing is the most challenging and pleasing of all the trout fishing methods however, there is nothing holy about it and live bait fishing may be the easiest of all the trout fishing methods (provided live bait is readily available) but there is nothing criminal about it.They are just different fish catching techniques which different anglers would prefer at different times.Some anglers may develop expertise
or liking for a certain method but that should not make the other methods criminal unless they are illegal or unethical.
Taking home more trout than the bag limit is surely criminal and unethical. We all know that the bag limit in Northern Areas is six trout per day per license. On our lucky day when we catch more than six trout, how many of us release the fish in excess of bag limit?

Not many that I know. Well this is criminal and not float fishing for lunkers with a live snow carp on the hook which sometimes may be more challenging than even fly fishing, specially during summers

when there are lot of flies around.

Best wishes and regards
Hammad Qadir

I am not really into Trout fishing. I once caught three small
Rainbows on the spinner,at Gabrial, Swat, in August, 1985.

I agree with your contention on conserving ‘Nature’, whilst enjoying
it, but unfortunately in our country the people are ignorant and the
Govt. regulators are thoroughly corrupt! That is why NGOs and groups
like PGFA are trying to make whatever little contribution, they can.

I still fish, but I am mainly into lakes and sometimes the sea, off
the coast, in Baluchistan. If you would like to join me for lake
fishing near Islamabad, drop me a line, when next in Pakistan.

Take care,

Anglerman.
onecyapak@gmail.com

You completely misunderstood my statement. When I write on this forum being a member of PGFA and mention the word fishing, I understand that it will be understood as Sport Fishing and not the various methods of killing fish which you have described.

I believe all those methods you referred to are adopted for commercial fishing, having no element of enjoyment in it.
Munir

With due respect, please do not generalize. You are making a motherhood statement that justifies catching fish through fine nets, depth charges, during breeding season, through alien organic baits, through mass hook deployments (link / lassa) and all those other criminal ways of catching fish which has already destroyed most of our game fish.

Trust me there is plenty of crime being committed in the name of enjoying fishing!

Kashif Khan

Ali Mufti

Ahmed Billal

I have been reading with some amusement the exchanges on trout fishing practices on the PGFA recently. I say ‘with amusement’ because I had always thought the debate on how one should go about catching trout and the high-minded discourse, sometimes bordering on snobbery, which accompanies it were peculiarly English traits, reflecting the social divide between the ‘coarse’ fisherman and the ’sporting’ fly fisherman in this country. It seems that along with our famed freshwater trout, so too has the old divide on how to catch them made the long journey to Pakistan.

The ’sporting’ mentality, which i will say straight away is the only one I approve of, initially involves making it as hard as possible for oneself to catch fish, that is by immitating nature and using only the fly. From that basis one can only begin to improve one’s chances of catching fish by understanding how the fish operates, by seeing the way the river eddies and flows and where the fish like to take, by patiently watching the fly hatch and understanding which flies the fish are taking. One wrong move in the river or one mistake in presenting the fly will scare the fish. In short, one has to become a part of nature and of the river ecosystem. The pleasure of immersing oneself in God’s creation in such a way is what has enthused so many writers on the subject and the level of pleasure derived from it is such that I have never minded returning home from a fishing trip without a single fish to show. Indeed, many people are so satisfied with the pleasure of catching the fish that they fell no need to keep it, and return it to the river unharmed.

It is this understanding that makes the ’sporting’ angler. After all, why not just lay a net accross the river or, as I have seen it done in Afghanistan, fire a rocket launcher into a lake, if one’s aim is merely to catch fish? The same understanding has been a blessing for the river ecosystems of my country, where riparian owners have devoted their entire lives to protecting such fragile ecosystems as the chalk stream and greatly improved the chances of future generations being able to enjoy the same pleasures as they have had.

With regards to fly fishing for trout in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, I haven’t a clue as to how to fish for them. I hope I may find out by trial and error when I visit next month. The sparsity of information regarding methods and locations on the internet and the opportunity of casting over fish that may never before have seen a fly makes the whole excursion quite intrepid. I am sure that in a climate of such extremes there will be negligible amounts of fly visible on the rivers and lakes, so I will probably try my luck using nymphs and other wet flies. Whatever the outcome, I look forward again to visiting your beautiful country and enjoying the warm hospitality of the people of the Northern Areas.

Best wishes to all,
James Watson.

It’s interesting to read mix reviews on trout fishing with
live/artificial bait.

In retrospect, I feel the word ‘Crime’ perhaps is not the most
suitable word to be used specially for tourist anglers.

Whereas locals and adjoining area people close to Naran valley &
Gilgit fish plenty during march/april & October/November where they
even use nets catching small and big fishes by dozen of Kg’s. I think
the word ‘CRIME’ can be appropriately used in such circumstances.

Tourist angler, specially people of our region meaning Punjab &
Karachi are first of all are not adept in trout fishing and secondly
they go their for such a limited time they can bare harm a fraction
of a percent of what goes on otherwise. On the contrary, people like
us spread the word of ‘Happy Fishing’ all over the world.

Bottom line is if it prohibited by the Govt. then live bait fishing
is illegal. Otherwise, we can debate on the implication of this on
and on & ..

Cheers!!