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Do fish feel pain when hooked? I feel pain when I read threads like this one. I see a great deal of quite well informed and expressed opinion on this topic. It is commendable that our fishing community seeks to express itself. I certainly learn a lot and it does much to shape my personal opinion. I also observe evidence of apathy, fractured consensus, ambiguous data, (our own minister Shannon Phillips declined to follow the recommendation of our own provincial biologists in Spring 2018 [WTF?]), interpretive bias and selective fact presentation which does not reveal the complete set of cascading events and distorts the complicated interactions. For example, who actually controls Bow Flow on a day to day basis? Is it in fact TransAlta or the Province? Whom can we trust to tell us the truth? This further complicates matters. Many fine minds and intelligent people from the academy of fine ideas (Fed/ Prov government and academia) and plain old smart folks who know their rivers, their territory and can put pen to paper from Roderick Haig-Brown in BC, Tom McGuane in Montana, Andy Russell to Kevin van Tighem in AB. Just these few writers have between them more than a century’s worth of intelligent prose dedicated to educating even the most poorly educated (like me) fisherfolks on the topic of conservation. Why are we still so $£%&ed up over it? In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. This discomfort is triggered by a situation in which a person’s belief clashes with new evidence perceived by that person. When confronted with facts that contradict personal beliefs, ideals, and values, people will find a way to resolve the contradiction in order to reduce their discomfort… (I excerpted this off the web). Call it, if you will, skating on thin ice. I saw this cognitive dissonance phenomenon 90 minutes ago on the Town Pond in my foothills town. The pond is not officially open as it has not met the Town’s published criteria for safety. There is a sign prominently displayed. Yet Mothers and Fathers with supposedly beloved children are lacing up to skate and ignoring the signs. You have facts opposed by a mind-set which is creating a risk and threat to their own children. A so-called Professional Guide behaving as quoted above to the TUC Creel Survey? Not so hard when you begin to look at the complexities of the human mind. A disgrace to civilization. I see in this forum thread a link to the Bow River Trout something or other… (sigh). Just look at all the different organizations struggling to have their point of view heard. Federal, Provincial, Alberta Environment, Alberta Conservation, Bow River Trout Something or other, TUC – Calgary and Upper Bow Chapters… (isn’t it the same river?), the Guides, the fishing stores, the pathetic amateur drift boat owner guiding on a river (to un-informed clients) he doesn’t know because it looks good on youtube.com… (that started this past season in my area). It’s a higgledy-piggledy mess. It reminds me of the final scene in David Lean’s magnificent film Lawrence of Arabia. Ladies and Gentlemen we have a huge problem. We need murderous, stunning truthfulness. All topics, all areas and all the time. We need a single competent authority and a unified, informed and standardized approach. The utility of the internet is at our disposal. The solution will have to be in the form of tough love. “No skating today kids, the pond is not safe” would be music to my ears.