Here’s a question for biology types.
When I’m up camping, and cleaning the fish to eat up there, I’m not quite sure what to do with the guts. I was always told growing up that you should throw the guts back into the water, to let the little fishes eat and grow up to become big fishies next year. But as fish diseases are becoming more common, I’m a little nervous about if that’s the right thing to do. Eventually the fish will probably die and get eaten anyway, so it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but am I contributing to disease spread?
When ever I catch a fish with obvious disease I throw it to the birds, so it can’t spread anything to the other fishies(and I sure as hell don’t want to eat it), but is this a good idea also, can it hurt the birds?
The places I fish are pretty small and remote in the Rockies, so it’s a pretty small and easily effected system. But I also don’t want to leave it around or bury them or put it in a trash bag or anything, since I don’t want a big smelly beacon inviting all the bears in the county over for a visit for the next couple days.
Does anybody know if there is official word on what to do?