The Power of the Release

You won't see dead fish pics from 361 Fishing. Believe me, there have been plenty of times I wanted to show a picture of the fish I caught mainly because the app helped me do it. But I rarely take my phone wading with me for obvious reasons and well, you'll rarely see a pic of a live fish since it's too risky to take one with everything else I'm holding at the time waist deep in water.

It's not about filling up coolers for me, never has been. We all know we could spend much less money and go to HEB and get all of the fish we want, and have nothing to clean. But we are not fishing for food, we are fishing for adventure. And frankly I'd rather eat a Halibut or salmon or some other cold water fish instead of ones common in our bays (with the exception of flounder).

When I head out to go fishing, I ask my wife "do you want to have fish tonight?" If she says yes, then I'll save one or two and leave it at that. The rest of the ones I catch live on to fight another day. And once a fish goes on the stringer, it's a dead fish to me - there's no swapping for a bigger or better one I just caught.

But there's just something super powerful about fighting a fish, landing it, removing the hook from it's mouth and releasing him back into the wild. Just holding this magnificent specimen looking in their eyes and thanking them for the good fight they just provided. I won that battle, I tricked it into attacking my lure - one that I created, and worked in a way that made it enticing.

So yeah, the releasing of a fish is a powerful good feeling. Unless it's a flounder, then no promises. :-)