Fish handling

[troutologist]

Here is a bit of a diatribe about a topic that I've been turning over in my mind for a while now. Fish handling by anglers when catch and release is the intention.

 

Basically, it needs to be better, each angler if catching fish to be released, owes it to the resource (and subsequent users) to be as efficent and effective in landing, unhooking and handling the fish as possible.

 

Obviously fish caught that are unusual, be it in size, new species or memorable will (and should) be subjected to photos, and/or measurements. Everyone wants to capture that special moment and rightfully so. In this process with trophy fish, still anglers need to have their ducks in a row:

 

1. landing aid, a net or cradle, this will reduce the fight time and prevent the fish from fighting to exhaustion. Fish can sit in the water while you collect youself to unhook them. This means fish aren't lying on the bottom of the boat or in the mud.

2. release tools: unpacked and ready, pliers, spreaders, cutters; reduce the time the fish is detained and usually out of the water.

3. measuring, cameras unpacked and ready, possibly even thought given to how, where etc a fish will be measured or photographed.

 

Being aware of these factors and how each reduces the stress on fish will work to reduce post-release mortality.

 

Notice I didn't mention weighing fish. There are weight calculators available, take a length and girth and plug this in, its close enough. Did you catch a potential IGFA record? Then worry about weighing it on a certified scale. The potential for damage to a fish from most scales far outweighs the benefit of telling your buddy you caught a 4lb 2oz bass. I've seen many fish dropped off of a scale multiple times only to be rehooked with the hook through tissue to weigh it....uneccessarily. I've been guilty of this. If hell bent on weighing a fish, use the net to hold it.

 

Maybe I'll take flack for this, actually I hope I do and it sparks some debate and conversation, more importantly provokes some thought....

 

You don't have to take a picture of every single fish you catch. Is this something that has become a requisite in the digital age? Weighing and photographing 20 1.5lb walleye is not neccessary. I'll wager that in the course of subjecting these 20 fish to this treatment, there are going to be a few (likely more than a few) that are dropped, squeezed, or mishandled; end result is less healthy fish.

 

I believe this mindset of documenting every fish needs to change. As inferred in another thread, this is not a 'holier than thou' attitude. I've made alot of mistakes in how I've done things. I have however taken an active interest in how I can reduce my impact on fish I've angled. Quite frankly, it would have been nice if someone had taken the time to show me how to handle fish better, though I suspect this comes as a somewhat recent topic in sport fishing.

 

You will always catch more fish, think about the consequences of overhandling them. Really why does every fish need to be catalogued? Even the ones that you take pictures of, take time to be ready to do it properly. In my opinion, taking a picture of a fish on the ground at your feet after its rolled around in mud or gravel for a while does nothing to capture the moment....it looks bushleague.

 

Not a shot at any individuals here, just something I see that seems to go part in parcel with the internet and fishing. Its the responsibility of every outdoorsman to take every step possible to protect the resources. With the myriad of factors effecting the natural environment these days, coupled with the dismal allocation of resources by Goverments to combat these issues, sportsmen, more than ever, need to be on the front lines of conservation and stewardship.

Edited September 18, 2011 by Jay Hamilton

[blue pickeral]

According to something I read, a fish which is caught and landed suffers the equivalent of a human running a 52 kilometer marathon. I try to get fish back in as quickly as possible.

 

What really bugs me is when the hosts of fishing shows scoop a fish out of the water, and stand there blah, blah, blahing, without any move to get it back where it belongs.

 

That being said, once my spouse and I were watching characters played by Mickey Rourke and Kim Bassinger in the movie "9 1/2 Weeks". The two sat in front of an open fridge while Rourke applied various food groups to Bassinger's naked body. I kept thinking to myself, "shut the fridge door...you're wasting electricity..."

[Billy Bob]

:rolleyes:

[mike rousseau]

One trick I do is keep water in your live well... If you get a pig... Put her in the tank for a couple minutes to catch her breath... The you can get ready fir pictures... Then its a quick lift... Pic... Release...

 

I find this helps...

[danc]

That's all excellent advice Jay. And like Musky Mike, I do the livewell thing not only to let the fish recover, but to get the boat turned in relation to the sun for optimum photos.

[msp]

All good points Jay.

My father recently bought a net that has a built in scale that I am looking forward to using.I personally dont like using nets because of the tangling issues. In recent years I have weighed so many fish ( I got a little scale happy )Now I can usually do a pretty good job estimating weight. To me length means nothing. A 40" pike can weigh 14 pounds or 20. I do agree with being prepered. Another tip for musky and pike fishing is to tie off the pliers and the spreaders so that they dont end up in the bottom of the lake. I learned this the hard way. Good thread guys

[Guest ThisPlaceSucks]

all good points jay! i shudder when i think of how we might have handled fish in our youth but it's all part of the education process.

there's nothing holier than thou about trying to spread ideas on how to better handle fish.

[adolson]

Maybe companies should stop manufacturing scales since they're so evil.

[mike rousseau]

Maybe companies should stop manufacturing scales since they're so evil.

 

 

There is a time and a place for pictures and scales...

 

Unless I think it's a new pb... I dont weigh my fish... Other then carp... And that is done with a special weigh sling...

 

A measurement gets me close enough to the weight to tell my story to you guys...

 

Musky always get a pic unless they were hooked bad...

 

Walleye over 25 inches get pics... I catch a lot of walleye and I don't have time to take pics of all of em... So only the pigs... That's what people wanna see anyways...

[NBR]

Good points. I'll add my pet peeve. Fishing shows that hold the fish up for the camers while they go on and on about the lure, technique, lake or anything else. Put the fish in the water you can tell us all of that while the fish starts to recuperate. In-Fisherman is particuarly guilty as are many others.

[Ralph Field]

Many fishing shows believe the entertainment factor out weighs the value of good handling practices ,and this is just a sad fact of life. I personally do not bother with pictures . I think that taking pictures of fish are usually done for the wrong reasons.

[Familyfisherman]

Excellent thread. I've only fished with any success since 2005 when I acquired a boat. Since then I've learned MANY things from some excellent fisherman...however, I've had almost no lessons on fish handling and safe realease practices. No one's fault but my own -- it just isn't a popular topic on message boards...

 

You've made some excellent points -- all true. Preparation is 75% of the battle...if you have a good idea of what you'd like to do beforehand than carrying it out is much easier.

 

Fall bass are a good example -- net, quick pic, back she goes...but the times I've attempted to weigh a fish we've dropped them numerous times, kept them out close to 2 minutes, etc -- all unnecessary, and I'm sure quite harmful -- and these are the larger fish that we all respect that much more.

 

Time to do better in this regard.

 

Thanks for posting.

[troutologist]

Thanks for the responses folks. Something that we can all continually improve on.

 

Thought I'd take a minute to highlight this and hopefully others will not have to make all the mistakes I did.

Edited September 19, 2011 by Jay Hamilton

[BillM]

That's all excellent advice Jay. And like Musky Mike, I do the livewell thing not only to let the fish recover, but to get the boat turned in relation to the sun for optimum photos.

 

We got a new net this year that's really deep. I unhook the fish and toss it back into the water while I get the camera/boat setup. All my fish except for one (gill hooked) were gone in a few seconds after release.

[LucG]

Great topic and good tips!

[smally21]

nothing worse than watching a guy take 5 minutes to get a hook out of a fishes mouth. or put his gloves on while the fish thrashes around on the deck. you have to be aggressive when you handle fish - or maybe deliberate is a better word. pick the thing up and take the hook out!

experienced fisherman can remove a hook quickly and smoothly. and they dont let every fish swallow the hook to the anus.

 

i dont photograph fish. i know what a fish looks like. and so do you. i like to catch a fish in the sense that i found it and convinced it to bite. after that i dont even care if it makes it into the boat.

 

any you dont have to keep every single thing you catch!

 

your post started like quite the sermon but i think you made some fine points. raised awareness. good job!

[LucG]

It goes a lot further than simply releasing fish. If we want to promote catch and release properly, we need to educate people on how to do so. This post is an excellent start!

[danc]

I personally do not bother with pictures . I think that taking pictures of fish are usually done for the wrong reasons.

 

For me, all I want is a photograph of a fish. What exactly are the wrong reasons about that? I don't measure or weigh them unless it's an exceptionally large fish, in which case I'll take a quick length measurement. I've never taken a girth measurement ever. Nor have I weighed a fish in the boat in the past 25 years. In this age of catch and release fishing, what's wrong with a photograph??

[adolson]

For me, all I want is a photograph of a fish. What exactly are the wrong reasons about that? I don't measure or weigh them unless it's an exceptionally large fish, in which case I'll take a quick length measurement. I've never taken a girth measurement ever. Nor have I weighed a fish in the boat in the past 25 years. In this age of catch and release fishing, what's wrong with a photograph??

Clearly, the more times a fish's eyes are exposed to camera flashes, the more likely they are to go blind, and that is bad for the fish,

 

The bottom line here is: don't do anything that may harm a fish in any way! Well, except you can trick them and then drive sharp hooks through their faces, and then drag them around a lake by said hook, that's OK. Just nothing else, otherwise you're a jerk.

[smally21]

dana - awesome. we were all missing that part. a little irony there for sure...

[mike rousseau]

Clearly, the more times a fish's eyes are exposed to camera flashes, the more likely they are to go blind, and that is bad for the fish,

 

The bottom line here is: don't do anything that may harm a fish in any way! Well, except you can trick them and then drive sharp hooks through their faces, and then drag them around a lake by said hook, that's OK. Just nothing else, otherwise you're a jerk.

 

Lol

[danc]

Clearly, the more times a fish's eyes are exposed to camera flashes, the more likely they are to go blind, and that is bad for the fish,

 

The bottom line here is: don't do anything that may harm a fish in any way! Well, except you can trick them and then drive sharp hooks through their faces, and then drag them around a lake by said hook, that's OK. Just nothing else, otherwise you're a jerk.

 

Dana. You're getting a little out of hand about this subject. This thread is about keeping a caught fish alive. Weighing a fish with a spring scale is arguably the most damaging thing that you can do to a caught fish. I just don't see the importance of hanging a fish by the gill plate, and hoping it doesn't shake and fall off of the hook a few times (which will most often happen) just to get weight from a scale that most likely won't be accurate in the first place. Sure you can weigh it in the net, or in a cradle, and attempt to subtract the net/cradle after the fact. So how accurate is your weight after that? So whats the point? I was once involved in a Brook Trout survey where you had to measure length, girth, and weight of your fish to compile data for said research. This was data compiled by some of the elite Brook Trout fishermen in the area. The weight results about same sized lenght/girth fish were way off the scale. There were smaller fish measured by length and girth that weighed more than larger fish. How can that be? It was either an innacurrate scale or a competition among data collectors to boast who caught the heaviest fish, which resulted in inaccurate data. Bottom line here is that weight means nothing today. Show us a picture of your fish and many of us here can give you an accurate weight of it, if you really need to know. For example, I'll say that the fish in your avator weighs 3 oz, give or take a few. And, for the record, I've never taken a picture of a fish with my flash.

 

Enjoy your number crunching.

[ctranter]

I always thought that weighing fish was stupid. So I catch a 20" bass and weigh it and the scale says 4 lbs. Then I catch a 18" bass that just happened to eat a few minnows before I caught it, and it weighs in at 4.5 lbs... is this a more formidable catch? No

 

Measuring the length of the fish is a much more valid measure of your catch. Unless it matters, like in a tournament, I don't think the weight should really matter. Instead of shoving a blunt hook up it's gill plate, just measure it and let it go.

[troutologist]

Dana I think you're missing the point here. Obviously, the act of fishing causes stress on every fish. Making the choice to selectively harvest fish or release them all, is about using a skill set to find, pattern and catch fish, most of it being about the hunt for those bites.

 

Once this choice is made to release fish, thinking about and taking neccessary steps to minimize your impact on these fish is a responsible way to use the resource and promote angling.

[adolson]

DanC, I think you missed the humor in my post, and I don't think I'm out of hand at all. I think the eight thousand people repeating the exact same thing is out of hand. I've read the same stuff over and over again, first in the thread I posted about scales, and then here, and just now what you wrote again. I get it, don't weigh fish. Don't buy a scale. In fact, I threw away the one that I did own after the first batch of peer pressure. But my satirical point was, it's a bit ridiculous to keep repeating it, and going a bit overboard - don't weigh the fish, don't handle the fish, don't photograph the fish, don't breathe on the fish, don't look at the fish... Don't talk about the fish.