Personally, I have gotten to the point where I greatly prefer fiberglass replica mounts, and I probably wouldn't use a skin mount again in the future. Skin mounts seem a little wasteful.

But I don't know that I would completely begrudge another person taking home a single "fish of a lifetime" for a skin mount. I'm not against gently talking people out of using skin mounts if we can, but I don't know that someone who likes a skin mount is necessarily a bad person.

This might make a lot of people upset, but tournaments kill more fish each year than taxidermists do. Post-release mortality studies confirm it. And the scientific evidence proves that smallmouth don't survive tournaments as well as largemouth do.

The point is, you have to take care about passing judgement on what other people are doing with the fish they catch. As long as people are using the resource within the law, I'm going to be cautious about saying they don't have a right to take a fish home as a trophy or to eat.

bd