I know i'm gonna get blasted for this - and I suppose I'm posting this polar-opposite view to solicit information that I might not have or understand about the issue....(I'm really not what you'd recall as an all-knowing intellectual type person...)...but...
I honestly don't get the whole ultra-light tackle thing for the sake of claiming a minimalist's approach to bagging a trophy. Please tell me your not C&R fishing apex preditors on light tackle....there's no way you can convince me the animal is properly revived before release. (I wouldn't be tailing a mako...YIKES!!)
Fly fishing orginally was a way of getting bugs out to bug eaters, the light tackle was a necessity to avoid spooking the wary stream trout, etc...
I guess that I feel that to exhaust a fish to the point that it can be landed on light equipment only risks mortallity for C&R
if not adequately revived (key point) or adds a butt-load of ammonias into the flesh of something that you intend to eat. If you're taking the fish simply for the trophy, which is fine in my book, I trust you're breaking off any fish that you immediately identify as a non-trophy rather than wearing the animal out to get your $2.00 fly back....
OK - so maybe I'm walking down "Tree-Hugger Lane" a little here, and maybe I'm a little overly sensitive about the health of a few fish, but fly-rodding in the salt has taken off in popularity like the space shuttle from it's pad, and I have seen fads, in the hands of the uneducated, (another key point) take their toll on resources before.
I don't think I'm ever going to "get" light tackle practices like the deep sea kayak activities where a trolling billfish charter hooks up, launches a yak, and some knucklehead hops on and becomes a light tackle, human interpretation of a flying gaff, but I guess in light of the sizzling popularity of ultra-light tackle fishing I'm trying deperately to see the attaction of this endeavour as something other than some macho challenge to achieve greater dominance through finess (sp?) at the expense of the resource.
Or myabe I'm just a pontificating *******?
