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Recently there was a posted thread featuring pics of me holding a walleye at a location in Brantford Ontario, followed up by a witchhunt of people throwing jabs at me mindlessly with no information or facts and without me being able to defend myself due to the wait time to get admission to the site forums. Well i'm here now and I would really like a chance to defend myself. First off let me introduce myself, I am a father of four and a project manager at a gas refinery, I work most of my life away but when I'm not working I like to spend quality time with my kids. A couple times a year I like to go fishing with my kids because they love it so much. Can you blame them? I also teach my kids the regs and the laws of fishing, we measure fish and never keep more than our regulated share, and we have never poached any fish in our lives, anywhere, anytime, EVER. A week and a half prior to this picture we were fishing at this spot, Myself, my friend, my son. Walleye were still in season, that's what we were fishing for at the time. Caught a few, my friend kept his limit, we let ours go. A week and a half later we wen't back to that spot for a totally different reason, we changed our presentation, put monster minnow shads on with skirts and spinners to try and target some big pike because we had seen a picture someone had posted on fishbrain of a monster caught right in that area. Our intention was not to catch any walleye at all that day because they were no longer in season but to get a pike because we only had a week or so left to get one before that particular season ended. We did get a few pike, 3 to be exact that day, nothing spectacular, couple darts. About twenty minutes before we were about to leave I hooked into what I thought was a much better pike, it had some fight, after getting it about twenty feet from shore we realized it wasn't a pike at all, it was a good size walleye, the one you all saw in the pic, the fish was released back into the river just as the others were the week before as most of the time we just fish for the pictures and rarely eat any fish out of the grand river. That walleye in question was never intentionally baited and was released safely back into nature with the hopes that the hook up would not affect the spawning routine of the female in question. I AM NOT AN ANIMAL, I care about nature, the regs, the laws and hope that our fisheries can last many more years for my kids and their kids to enjoy. Just wanted to say, that it wasn't fair the way I was persecuted on these forums or the way that so many depicted my attitude and frame of mind towards fishing and the laws surrounding the sport I love so much. I'm sorry I caught that beautiful fish by total accident but it happens, and all I could do at that point was to put her back where she belonged, To all those people that made me out o be some kind of monster or who threatened to call the MNRF on me all can say is this, find out all the facts before lighting your torches and chasing down an innocent person. You could do irreparable damage that can't be reversed. Think how my children would have looked at this situation, you could have scarred them from wanting to go anywhere near a river o lake for the rest of their lives. Sometimes the power of social media can get the best of everybody involved but that's no excuse to place a tag on someone you have never met or have no idea about. In closing, I haven't broke any laws and will admit to no wrong doing here. I will patiently wait for pickerel season to reopen so I can enjoy a fish with my kids in the beautiful surrounding nature. Look around you people, with all that's going on in the world right now, a little positivity and brothership towards others instead of slander and ill fate is needed right now, wouldn't you agree. And to the fine gentleman who was my voice when I was waiting for my chance to talk on my behalf, God bless sir, you deserve the best things in life and your kind words were and are greatly appreciated.