Anyone else had some less than proud fish handling moments recently? I've noticed that this tends to happen to me early season more than other times. Or maybe it's more the first few weeks when I'm switching from one kind of fishing (i.e. winter rivers) to another kind (lake bass or small creek trout). But for whatever reason, I end up accidentally having a few crappy fish handling sessions. Unlucky hooking, not well thought out handling, etc.
Like a Largemouth I caught this morning. Tough hooking through his upper jaw near his eye that took more force for me to free than I was expecting and I ended up putting more stress on his lower jaw than I should have. Why didn't I just lay him down in the stripping basket/fish measure net thing on my float tube once I realized the bad hooking? I just didn't think of it. Usually a vertical lip hold is the easiest and fastest way to unhook and release smaller bass. He seemed fine and swam away, I just felt bad about it. Or a 10in "monster" small stream Rainbow I caught the other day. Silly as it seems, I bring a net with me when 3wt fishing because it keeps these smaller fish from thrashing around so much and beating themselves up on the rocks. But I lifted him a little higher than I needed to to untangle the leader and he flopped out of my hands smack onto a rock. Again, he swam off and seemed fine. But I would have rather avoided it.
I don't have anything against taking fish for the grill/freezer as long as it's a resource that can support it. But otherwise, I'm a really strong believer in catch and release. I really want those fish to be there for the next person that comes to fish for them. Hell, I want them there for ME the next time I come to the same spot to fish for them. But I think that mindset makes me feel overly guilty when it goes wrong. I know there's always going to be SOME mortality with catch and release, no matter how hard we try. I also know that any fish that dies just ends up in the food web. And hell, a non-native highly successful species like a bass and a hatchery bred stocker trout washed down from a lake, like in the examples above, aren't really fish to stress over.
Still though, I always end up wishing I'd done a bit better.
Like a Largemouth I caught this morning. Tough hooking through his upper jaw near his eye that took more force for me to free than I was expecting and I ended up putting more stress on his lower jaw than I should have. Why didn't I just lay him down in the stripping basket/fish measure net thing on my float tube once I realized the bad hooking? I just didn't think of it. Usually a vertical lip hold is the easiest and fastest way to unhook and release smaller bass. He seemed fine and swam away, I just felt bad about it. Or a 10in "monster" small stream Rainbow I caught the other day. Silly as it seems, I bring a net with me when 3wt fishing because it keeps these smaller fish from thrashing around so much and beating themselves up on the rocks. But I lifted him a little higher than I needed to to untangle the leader and he flopped out of my hands smack onto a rock. Again, he swam off and seemed fine. But I would have rather avoided it.
I don't have anything against taking fish for the grill/freezer as long as it's a resource that can support it. But otherwise, I'm a really strong believer in catch and release. I really want those fish to be there for the next person that comes to fish for them. Hell, I want them there for ME the next time I come to the same spot to fish for them. But I think that mindset makes me feel overly guilty when it goes wrong. I know there's always going to be SOME mortality with catch and release, no matter how hard we try. I also know that any fish that dies just ends up in the food web. And hell, a non-native highly successful species like a bass and a hatchery bred stocker trout washed down from a lake, like in the examples above, aren't really fish to stress over.
Still though, I always end up wishing I'd done a bit better.
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