While I was away in Florida some collegues of mine where busy working on a project in French Guiana. (South America)

Look what they found at the shores of the Marowijne river.



What a waste of those Tarpons.

I agree, just wanted to show that the Tarpon does not
have the gamefish status all over the place.

In one place it is regarded as the holy grail of saltwater (fly)fishing
while in other places it is just food.
When I came across the picture at work I found it curious since it
is said that Tarpon taste like rotten meat.

Disgusting Picture Marcel but I think it is important that we see this to appreciate how bad the situation could be outside the US . I really doubt the local fisherman do this because they or their customers are starving. More than likely they sell the Tarpon in local markets. The people buy it for cultural reasons rather than for it's nutritional value. They spoon the meat out into balls and deep fat fry it . The same crap goes on in Hawaii with bonefish. They gill net them right off the beach. They cut off the head and tail and after ripening in the frig for several days they squeeze the meat out into a paste for fish cakes. There has been concerted efforts to stop this practice by the hook and line fisheman but again this cultural bs comes up and the politicians are scared to enact laws to stop this. You wouldn't think that stuff goes on like this in a US state. I wish there was something like an international fishing police force that would stop this.

Fish balls seem to be popular all over the world. Back here our local fishingclub issued new regulations that forbid the taking of any fish from our local waters.

Reason for that was the influx of Russian Immegrants from neighbouring Germany who cleared out the local waters. They would grind all fish to pieces regardless of size for fried fishballs. Besides that they damaged property and often reacted violent to license checks by our club officials.
Now the Police and Wildlife officers are extra alert when they see those people around.

Regulations would help but only if enforced. The officials reponsible for enforcement just have no manpower or budgets to do this properly.
I guess the latter is a problem in a lot of places.

hey marcel, what were you tellng me about that place in germany where you have to keep the fish you catch?

Well, according to federal German law it is illegal to practise catch and release. The only time you can release fish is when it is undersize.
On some waters you can catch lets say your two fish limit and than you have to quit fishing and leave. Such waters are not attractive to us visiting anglers. Imagine driving several hours to a remote fishing location abroad. You fish ten minutes and then you have to quit, I don't think so!

Back here in the Netherlands it is common practise among most anglers to return all fish. So when we fish in Germany we are faced with a dilemma. When some official or member of the public catches us while we are returning size fish we could face legal trouble (hefty fines, even court).

Before we return fish we look around us to spot people who might get us in to trouble. In the rare event that we are watched and catch a fish, let's say a trout we have to clubber it to the eternal hunting fields. It is also mandatory in Germany to have a priest, and a landing net with you.

In my opinion the fact that all size fish have to be killed is the main cause that the river we fish in (just over the border) only has trout that are stockie size. Whenever fish are stocked it does not take long before they are cleared out of the river. So a lot of rivers have small fish or few fish. One method to obtain large trout in a river is by setting a minimum and a maximum slot size. I know one place where they have set a very tight min-max. size and you can catch and release very large fish there.

There are some other ways to circumvent legal issues by saying that you want to catch a different fish species than you just caught or that you fish for a different fish species you just caught.