We don't throw small fish back if they are fugged up.
Jim, that's a great way to do things, and as a fish biologist I agree with not wasting the resource.
The biggest issue is the "lowest common denominator" deal.
I'm sure your family would just keep injured fish. Unfortunately, there are those folks who's attitude is " I paid for a license, rod, bait, lures, gas for the boat. I'll just "injure" the 27 shorts we caught and take them home"
It's the same for the commercial folks who have to toss "bycatch". If it weren't for the few who would target "bycatch" because they might bring a better price, it likely wouldn't be an issue.
Re: the size limit thing, it's hard to get across to some people. Fishing a jetty down in SoCal once and reeled up a short halibut, 19" maybe 20". Got ready to toss it back and had multiple folks tell me I was crazy, they'd take that in a minute, etc etc. A few were from SE Asia (think this was in the late 70's) and I'm sure they saw any protein source as edible.
I think the best folks I've had to deal with were in the Pac NW. "My daddy and granddaddy used to pitchfork them salmons up on the bank. And now I have to only take one a day and record it on a card, and when I reach "x" for the season I have to stop".
Try getting it thru to them that if their ancestors had not pitchforked them up to the bank, that there weren't fishwheels and dams every 40-80 miles on the big rivers, that there wasn't logging and overgrazing in the spawning and rearing areas, that there weren't 10 different species of introduced predatory fish in the rivers along with non-native crawdads in some places, that there weren't as many leaking septic tanks along the spawning streams, or folks tossing the trash in the nearest defile so that the spring flood could wash it all down to the big river where it would never be seen again (by them at least), and maybe mostly when paps and pawpaw were around the population of the PNW was all of a million or so, total, including Injuns. Oops, I forgot hydraulic mining in some watersheds, that never hurt a stream for spawning, eh?
Some of those folks look back with glazed over eyes and say "I still think I should be able to catch as many salmon as I can. It's not like I waste 'em, we smoke and can them".
As someone else here mentioned, tossing an injured "short" back will not mean it goes to waste. Ma Nature doesn't waste much.
