Data and code from: Recreational fisheries selectively capture and harvest large predators

Size and species selective harvest, inevitably alters the composition of targeted populations and communities. This can potentially harm fish stocks, ecosystem functionality, and related services, as evidenced in numerous commercial fisheries. The high popularity of rod-and-reel recreational fishing, practiced by hundreds of millions globally, raises concerns about similar deteriorating effects. Despite its prevalence, the species and size selectivity of recreational fisheries remain largely unquantified due to a lack of combined catch data and fisheries-independent surveys. This study addresses this gap by using standardised monitoring data and over 60,000 digital angling catch reports from 62 distinct fisheries. The findings demonstrate a pronounced selectivity in recreational fisheries, targeting top-predators and large individuals. Catch-and-release practices reduced the overall harvest by 60 % but did not substantially alter this selectivity. The strong species- and size-specific selectivity mirror patterns observed in other fisheries, emphasising the importance of managing the potential adverse effects of recreational fisheries selective mortality and overfishing.

Methods
Scripts and data files have been utilised to compare trophic level, relative species abundance, and size distribution (European perch and pikeperch) of angling catches to monitoring data across 62 distinct fisheries (lakes) where data overlapped. 

The two datasets consist of monitoring data from the national database for standardised survey fishing with Nordic multi-mesh gillnets (National Register of Survey test‐fishing ‐ NORS, 2021) and angling data from catch reports submitted to the online fishing license sales platform iFiske AB (https://www.ifiske.se/).

Detailed information about prior data filtering can be found in the README as well as in the uploaded .R-file together with scripts for all analyses.