Catch-and-release angling is an increasingly popular conservation strategy employed by anglers voluntarily or to comply with management regulations, but associated injuries, stress and behavioural impairment can cause post-release mortality or fitness impairments. Because the fate of released fish is primarily determined by angler behaviour, employing ‗best angling practices' is critical for sustainable recreational fisheries. While basic tenants of best practices are well established, anglers employ a diversity of tactics for a range of fish species, thus it is important to balance science-based best practices with the realities of dynamic angler behaviour. Here we describe how certain tools and tactics can be integrated into recreational fishing practices to marry best angling practices with the realities of angling. While the effects of angling practices vary considerably across contexts and conditions, we also outline available methods for assessing fish condition by examining physical injuries and reflexes, which enable recreational anglers to make educated real-time decisions related to angling practices, as well as when, where, and whether to release captured fish based on their probability of survival. In cases where fish are poor condition, there are recovery tactics available that can improve survival, although this is among the most understudied aspects of angling practices.

Although personality has been documented in numerous animals and characters, research into personality-dependent spatial ecology has focused on dispersal. Indeed, few authors have investigated the role of other important spatial traits such as home range, movement distance, vertical activity, and site fidelity, and it is not clear whether these behaviors are correlated with dispersal. In this study, we investigated individual differences in home range, dispersal from release, vertical activity, movement distance, and site fidelity of 44 wild burbot Lota lota over 2 years, using an acoustic telemetry array and a Bayesian mixed modeling framework. We tested whether the spatial behaviors met the following criteria for personality-dependent behavior: repeatability, cross-contextual consistency, and an absence of pseudo-repeatability associated with spatial context choice. We then tested for between-individual correlations among spatial behaviors, indicative of a behavioral syndrome. Our results documented repeatable, cross-contextually consistent, personalitydependent home range, movement, dispersal from release, and site fidelity. In contrast, behavioral differences in vertical activity were inconsistent across sampling years and may have been a product of habitat heterogeneity. Our data indicate a spatial behavioral syndrome occurred independently from dispersal from release, with behavioral types ranging from "resident" individuals with small home ranges, high site fidelity, and minimal movement to "mobile" individuals with large home ranges, high movement rates, and little site fidelity. Our findings suggest animal personality can play a key role in shaping the space use of individuals, and this diversity in spatial behaviors may be too complex to be captured by often used simple linear measures of dispersal.

No abstract

The nal publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10661-016-5228-0Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.