creels?

OK prefacing that I I know next to nothing about fly fishing, but a little about catching my dinner, I was reading the "How do you carry your gear?" thread and noticed that no one mentioned any way to carry all the fish they were going to catch. Is actually catching a fish one of life's happy little surprises? What do you'all do with the fish you keep? thanks, Woody

Well, I have not kept a trout in a few years, but when I do, I use a creel. I have a canvas polor creel and an old wicker. The polor creel is more comfortable and easier to use, but I prefer the wicker. Something about its looks and collecting wet grass to keep the trout cool that I just love.

I seldom keep trout(never wild ones) because there are too many other species that have MUCH better flavor.Occassionally when I want to eat stocked trout from a put and take lake near my house,I just put them on a stringer.

They all go back to be caught again another day :D

I return most of my trout to the stream, including all of the wild ones, unless it's bleeding and sure to die anyway. I will keep a couple of meals of planted fish from a stream each year, and then in the fall I'll keep about ten meals from some put-grow-and-take brook trout lakes in ther next county.

I use an old wicker creel, which is superior in every way, in my opinion, to any other way of carrying a trout. I've been using wicker creels since 1960. A really good one is hard to find, but a really good one will last a long time.