Recreational fishing involving the capture and sometimes release of fish raises important welfare questions given growing evidence for fish pain experience.
Recreational angling involves deliberately catching fish, causing the hooking, handling, and stress that welfare evidence suggests fish experience as aversive. The welfare implications of catch-and-release fishing in particular require honest assessment: while fish are returned, they experience acute stress from capture, handling, and air exposure, and some proportion die from delayed stress-related mortality even when apparently healthy on release. Welfare improvements including barbless hooks, minimal air exposure, wet hands handling, and rapid, gentle release can substantially reduce the welfare cost of catch-and-release. Anglers who take fish for food and kill them immediately cause less total suffering than those who release stressed fish to potentially die later.