The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Psalm 24:1
“Great abundance of riches cannot of any man be both gathered and kept without sin.”
Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) in Day’s Collacon, compiled and arranged by Edward Parsons Day (New York: IPPO, 1884) 813.
As stewards we own nothing. God owns everything. To gather and keep for ourselves is both stealing from God and failing to use all God supplies rightly. Regardless of what society says or does, it’s wrong! It’s sin.
Sammy and I are fly fishing in Southeastern Oregon looking for various species of cutthroat and redband trout. We try to catch, film, and release them. Some time later Sammy produces videos to share the blessing of the experience.
One summer we aimed at catching 500 fish. That year we landed 541. What if we kept them all for ourselves? You might cry, “Foul!” You might say, “There’d be none for anyone else.” You’d be right!
Many of the species we target have not been stewarded well. As variety of factors leaves them nearly extinct, we treat each trout we catch as a gift from God, and we release each one as our gift to the next angler.
For a look at the kind of fly fishing we are doing for native trout, check out: Owyhee River Basin Redband Trout Fishing.