I suppose the good news is that none of us has cracked under the pressure and sent pictures of The Family Jewels to some anonymous campus sweetheart, but that’s coming.

Looking down, I think I’ll be safe enough, given that I haven’t seen mine in a couple of decades, but the rest of you concern me.

With societal censure clinging to us outdoorsy types like a dark cloud, issues like Catch & Release, invasive species, trespass, the despoiling of the watershed with our two and four wheeled gas guzzlers, planted versus wild, and the delight we show in blowing daylight through the arse end of anything exhaling CO2, have painted a bright target on our backs.

Now all them fellows we teased in school roam the halls of science and are determined to blame us for undoing millions of years of genetic selection, how all the small fish is our doing.

After studying data going back to 1943, Kendall has discovered that the average length of a (Bristol Bay) sockeye salmon is now 14 millimeters (0.25”) shorter than it used to be. She also discovered that the number of sockeye that spent two, instead of the normal three years, out at sea before coming upstream to lay their eggs, had increased by 16%, suggesting Mother Nature was trying to make up for losses incurred due to fishing.

– via PhysOrg.com

While nets and the size of their mesh is doing the bulk of the selection, our squeezing the life out of the big fish so we can show Ma, thumping the SOB as its bigger then most, or bouncing Fatty off the rocks while the guide gets pictures 62 through 74, has to play some small part.

What took thousands or even millions of years of evolution to accomplish, has been undone in just a couple of centuries of human fishing practices.

Just a reminder that you guys suck.

It couldn’t have been me, all I ever catch is dinks …