As for my “pansy catch and release bit”, I don’t know where you got your 45% mortality number from but even if it was anywhere near that it’s still better than 100%. I doubt if the “torture a fish endures” on the end of my line is any harsher than any number of other things that it encounters in its environment in its lifetime. For instance, being swallowed whole and slowly suffocated and digested by a larger fish, or maybe just bit in half, or maybe just escaping with a few nice gashes only to die later. My guess is that, considering those kinds of alternatives, a little hook puncture in the jaw and a short aerobic workout would hardly seem like “torture”.