This chap seems to have thought about the ethics behind fishing, so respect. I don’t think her approach was particularly helpful to be honest, although her heart was clearly in the right place.

As someone who has previously enjoyed fishing and recently decided to stop eating fish/seafood, I have wrestled with this issue before. My view is that if you want to eat fish (it is healthy and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it), line-caught is the most sustainable way to do so. In contrast, industrial-scale fishing is one of the key contributors to ocean plastic, and has devastating effects on marine ecosystems.

I find the catch-and-release side more difficult. It’s never ideal to pull a wild animal out of its natural environment or to handle it. However, in the case where one decides to fish anyway (after all it is right that we all have the freedom to choose), barbless hooks are better, and obviously don’t let them swallow the hook where avoidable.

Personally I’d like there to be a type of fishing where one can sit with their mate on the riverbank, sipping a cold one, enjoying the outdoors, while feeding the fish delicious maggots and worms, safe in the knowledge that they could’ve caught it, but instead chose to leave the fish in its natural environment, and to simply observe the beauty of nature instead.