Tungsten, it is always the answer.

keep the small ones alive flaping around it attracts the others i never kill em

Real humane. (And a great thing to write on a public forum )

All fish should be dispatched ASAP after capture.

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Breathing is Overrated

If you want them to keep spasming to put vibrations out in the water, use an iki spike and learn the right spot to hit them. If you do it right, not damaging the nervous system, the fish will spasm (despite being dead) for a reasonable amount of time and put out more attractive vibrations than a live fish that kicks every now and again (conversely you could just go out and buy a flasher).

I haven't had much of a chance to test it out but I have noticed it larger fish (tuna). If you just brain spike them their tail goes nuts and will continue to beat for many minutes bruising the crap out of the fish (to stop this pros stuff mono or cable down the spinal column of the fish, destroying the spinal cord). I don't see why this would be any different for smaller fish other than the brain is much smaller and harder to hit.

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That's where I saw the leprechaun. He tells me to burn things...

Agreed, fish might not have feelings, but they feel pain. Inflicting unnecessary pain on any creature is cruel and should never be condoned.

Dispatch your catch cleanly and quickly.

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Breathing is cheating

That makes sense haha.

To be honest Paul, thats a pretty ordinary thing to post on a forum that other people outside the sport might read.

There is plenty of great information on this thread about how to humanely dispatch your fish as soon as possible. It doesn't matter about feelings, it's just right.

BTW, this is the free-for-all section which can only be viewed by members of the forum. Just incase you didn't know.

and how may i ask do you know that fish dont have feelings?...... just curious

I know, but there are no restrictions on who can become a member of the forum. Hence it is a public forum..

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Breathing is Overrated

I knew someone would reply with that, i was just stating that so people were aware of it.

Feelings and emotions are extremely complex, they need a huge number of neural connections, as well as chemicals and hormones for a creature to be able to experience them. Fish simply lack the organs capable of creating these chemcials, they therefore cannot experience emotion or feelings. That is not to say that they do not experience pain, simply that it triggers only a reflex rather than a complex emotional response as it would in a human.

There is plenty of scientific evidence to support this, not in the least that fish lack the regions of the brain present in animals such as humans and dolphins that control and experience emotion.

I am not suggesting that cruelty to fish is ok, I firmly believe that all fish should be quickly and humanely dispatched. Rather that we cannot attach human emotions to fish as they quite obviously are very different to us and do not experience things the way that we do.

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That's where I saw the leprechaun. He tells me to burn things...

from all the work and research/study in science and philosophy, how emotions come to be is still undecided.

they way you described it would be seen as a scientific approach but is still not confirmed. there are soo many beliefs of where emotions come from but as sooo many things in life, it is still unknown.

emotions are generally interlinked with the mind as with memory thought, etc. and the mind itself is still not fully understood by anyone and what belief they follow.

now dont get me wrong, im not religous in any way neither am i a mind, body, spirit type person.. i am just very skeptical about every theory that is put forward.. and i dont really want to get stuck into a philosophical debate, because 1. i dont think it is appropriate on a spearfishing forum and 2 they lead nowhere.
so yeah just wanted to give you some info..

cheers

Emotion is purely human, fish barely have the mental capacity to think outside of fixed action patterns, let alone become sad.

The problem, twitch, is that too many people try to attach human emotions to other creatures who are simply incapable of experiencing them.

It is pretty much accepted that fish feel pain. Pain is a stimuli sent to the brain when the pain receptors in the nervous system are triggered. These, however, are fairly meaningless in the context of this argument. What matters is what the brain DOES with these pain signals. In a person they lead to emotions such as fear, further compounded by the memory of the incident that can lead to stress and depression. Fishes brains are simply incapable of doing this, they will react to the pain stimuli, when the stimuli ceases it will be as if the pain had never occured.

Pain is certainly unpleasant IMO, I feel that as spearos we have an obligation to dispatch fish as quickly and humanely as possible, however I also feel that we should not be subject to guilt and the ignorant scorn of others for what we do.

I also take exception to your saying that I my oppinions are based on 'beliefs.' This insinuates that I have simply been given an idea and am taking it on face value. I assure you I have done plenty of research into the subject to satisfy me that it is strongly supported by evidence and that there are no real holes in the theory. As with everything in science, a positive can never be 'proven,' you just have to make a decision on what best fits the evidence. If you see a flaw in my reasoning, please, by all means point it out.

Anyway I think this thread has wandered a very long way from its intended course... The only other thing I should have added, when stabbing a fish, make sure you keep your hands and fingers well clear. Fairly regularly a knife will slip, although it probably wont be a serious cut, it could be enough to end your dive and quite likely infect later on.

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That's where I saw the leprechaun. He tells me to burn things...

ok.. so what im getting here is from the both of you is that emotions only apply to humans... (hehe i remember debating this in philo)

basically we came down to the conclusion that.. simply how do we know that emotions are applied to humans only when emotions themselves can still not be defined in science as a chemical, electrical impulse etc.

just thought of something off the top of my head for you to look at kurt if you can be bothered... as you were the one that said emotions are purely human.

http://dogs.about.com/cs/disableddogs/a/depression.htm