It seems like it is human nature to kill the fish that we catch. Yet, as Jacques-Yves Cousteau said, "People protect what they love."

I love to fish, catch fish (especially large ones) and eat fish, and yet I release about 95 percent of the fish I land.

Why? The sport for me is hunting the fish on a river, stream or pond, figuring out what fly it will eat, fighting it and then releasing it. I figure if most of us do that, we will all have more and larger fish to try to fool into taking our fly, whether it’s trout, salmon, bass or stripers.

Lee Wulff, famous fly-fisherman and conservationist, said it best: "Game fish are too valuable to only be caught once." He also said, "The finest gift you can give to any fisherman is to put a good fish back, and who knows if the fish you caught isn't someone else's gift to you."

If you are going to release a fish, here are a few tips: fight the fish hard and quickly, not to exhaustion, and use gear and leaders that are appropriate for the size of the fish you are targeting; use barbless hooks (they are just as good if you keep a tight line); if you handle the fish, wet your hands first and keep the fish in the water to release it; if you do use a net, try one of the new silicone ones; to revive the fish, do so with an ‘S’ motion that constantly moves water from nose to tail over its gills ( that's how it breaths) until it swims away.

If you want to take a photo of your special big one to prove to friends and family that you really did not get skunked, limit the time that fish is out of the water (and not getting any oxygen). A recent scientific study indicated that only 28 percent of fish survived if they were out of the water for more than one minute.

Maine has many great fisheries, so help protect and preserve them for your sons and daughters and future generations.

Related story:

• Brook trout by Don Abbott

Roy Hitchings is a member of the Georges River chapter of Trout Unlimited, georgesrivertu.org.

The Georges River chapter of Trout Unlimited is a local chapter of a national nonprofit organization whose mission is "to conserve, protect and restore North America's coldwater fisheries and their watersheds. Trout Unlimited has 147,000 members across the country. This is the second in a series of articles written by members of GRTU.