Catch and release fish handling

[Craig's Outdoor Sports]

Good read! The thing that gets me the most are the guys that almost throw them back in like a baseball, SPLASH! Like chunkun a rock or something!  Makes my skin crawl.

 

That said, I feel like many times the fish dies anyway, no matter how hard we may try to keep it alive and well.  Just go crappie fishing at night over a bed and do the best you can to turn the small fish back and see how many are floating by morning. When they are eating the hook and you can't do anything else but cut the line and turn it back there will be several floating by morning no matter how hard you try to properly return them.  I wonder if they don't get the bends or something coming from down deep so quick and then the stress....

 

[Al Agnew]

We've all caught bass and trout with mouths completely torn up by some doofus who just ripped the hook out.  Missing maxillaries, torn gills, missing eyes, huge scars...yet they are still alive, reasonably healthy, and the injuries have healed.  These fish aren't all that fragile.  Handled correctly and released quickly, all of them should live except for some of the most deeply hooked fish.  I think what hurts fish more than anything in the releasing continuum is carrying them around in a live well or on a stringer all day in hot weather before releasing them, holding them out of the water for long periods of time, mishandling them and wrecking their slime coating, or playing them to complete exhaustion.  And yes, dredging them up from deep water probably kills a lot of them.

I know I've killed some bass over the years, hooked too deeply or in the wrong place.  But I would be surprised if more than 5% of those I release die later, and suspect that the percentage is significantly less than that.  Having a pond full of bass in the yard helps to get some idea of whether or not they die after being caught.  I know I've caught some of the same bass over and over, several times a year in multiple years, easy to identify because of distinctive scars or mutilated fins.

[Haris122]

I don't know what the experiments all entailed, but some of the scientific articles I skimmed through while trying to find more out about proper catch and release have some pretty high mortality within a day or two post release. Mainly related to lactic acid buildup and prolonged (30 seconds or more) exposure to air that collapses gill components and such. But it seems to depend also a lot by species and experiment, so I'm curious just how they stressed the fish in the higher mortality studies compared to the lower mortality ones, cause I feel like most of the fish I release survive.

Which species do you guys think are some of the most difficult to release in good condition? I saw a mention that Black Crappie seem to do pretty poorly post release, along with some species of trout and Striped Bass. Smallmouth seemed to do worse than Largemouth, and Lake Trout (which we don't have) seem to do pretty good. Any more insights.

[fishinwrench]

Fishing shows and guys making videos are the worst.   We see it already and yes it's a nice one..... Now let it go and THEN tell your story or pimp your baits!  

Someone mentioned holding your breath while the fish is out of the water.  Not a bad idea.  Getting them back in the water ASAP is the biggie.  

ASAP to be taken literally.  

[MOPanfisher]

Crappie seem to be a fairly delicate fish compared to most, but I have caught a lot of crappie in my life, have pulled them up from deep enough so that when you release them they will just lie on the surface and die, but tap them with a rod tip and back down they go.  Spending a lot of time on the lakes during the crappie spawn you will see dead crappie, some shorts, and a fair amount of keepers that die from spawn stress, it happens.  Knowing on those days when I was catching fish well, including a lot of short fish and knowing everyone else was too, the lake should have been carpeted with dead crappie, but wasn't.  I have set over brush piles and caught crappie releasing many, occasionally seeing a deep hooked one not survive but very few.  Sometimes fish don't survive being caught and released, that's a fact, but from my experience its a very very low percentage, of course it changes depending on the circumstances, fish with live bait and you are going to deep hook more of them, warm water with add stress and increase losses.  I personally have never seen anything that leads me to believe C&R mortality amounts to more than a footnote.  Heck we all catch fish that have big chunks out of them from turtles, muskie, boat props whatever, bass with gig marks on them in the rivers maybe, and survive, I just can't believe that C&R fishing is hurting the population.  One final anecdote, years ago our office had a large aquarium in it, with 6 or so crappie, and a couple little bass, we bought minnows locally and fed them.  Working nights it was somewhat of an entertainment to keep a short piece of broken rod, with a little mono and a crappie jig tied on it.  I wouldn't even guess how many times over the course of the summer I caught every fish in that tank, some twice in a row, they didn't die or even lose their appetites.