White bucket brigade

[ChaseChrome]

Not a panacea by any stretch folks, but it sure does put a finer point on the argument to go "barbless" (fewer fatalities)
CC

 

[FishingNoob]

i agree with never look back and grubmans points... both are valid. I actually never thought about the gill hooking and fish going to die anyways point of view....

There are times where a baby pan fish is hooked in the mouth and i see the hook come out near the edge of the eye. I always threw the fish back... would that be considered a sure death?

I do not think that it will die but it might lose sight from that eye.

 

[FishingNoob]

Again with this topic. I was fishing Buckhorn on the weekend. I had a 2+LM took a couple of pics and let it go. Then I hooked a small LM, it was maybe 8 inches. When I got it to the boat blood was running all down the side of the little guy. I was upset that this guy got gill hooked, they had not been biting hard all morning or the day before. You know according to the regs if you think it's gonna die you have to keep it. Reluctantly I put it on the stringer and let the other guys I was with know that it was gill hooked.

While we were taking the boat out of the water the launch was filled with boaters waiting to go in. Several of them saw our stringer and commented that our fish were too small. They did not know my bass was a goner and I did not take a pic of it with all the blood on it's side and dripping off it's fins. It was in the water with the stringer and all the blood washed off. The poor little guy had died while we were heading back to the launch but no one would know that. Most of those people thought we were just catching and keeping what ever was biting irregardless of size. It could have gotten ugly but how could I then prove that it was going to die anyways? Would anyone have even believed me, probably not.

Thanks for posting this. Like Dugger said "Looks can be deceiving". In that case scenario you did the right thing, I think this says a lot.

 

[Alfiegee]

i agree with never look back and grubmans points... both are valid. I actually never thought about the gill hooking and fish going to die anyways point of view....

There are times where a baby pan fish is hooked in the mouth and i see the hook come out near the edge of the eye. I always threw the fish back... would that be considered a sure death?

Not sure. Possibly with a baby. My friend and I who fish the Grand a lot often catch one eyed Channel Cats, 2-4 lbs. As far as I know there are no nuclear reactors upstream of Caledonia LMAO. I suspect these injuries are due to fishing. As CC pointed out, barbless hooks greatly increase a fishes chance of survival. My friend and I are not sure if we are catching the same fish over and over again or if there are many.

Alfie.

 

[grubman]

i agree with never look back and grubmans points... both are valid. I actually never thought about the gill hooking and fish going to die anyways point of view....

There are times where a baby pan fish is hooked in the mouth and i see the hook come out near the edge of the eye. I always threw the fish back... would that be considered a sure death?

It may be able to survive with one eye, but it's chances are reduced. I read somewhere that with sunfish/bluegills they can lay almost 300,000 eggs from just one female. If that is correct then predation is one of their main population controls and one angler can't effect their overall population, that is if we are catching and keeping our limits or less. If we treat them like the buffalo then that's extermination. So one or two hooked in the eye is not something I would worry about. It happens to me and every other angler on occasion too.

Thanks for posting this. Like Dugger said "Looks can be deceiving". In that case scenario you did the right thing, I think this says a lot.

Thanks, legally I really had no choice. Next time I will have to take a picture as proof that it was gill hooked and with all probability die from it's injuries.

As I have seen on many occasions following a cold front, it is the small fish that become more aggresive when feeding, makes sense, they want to grow larger and they are hungry.

Thanks guys for the support. It really was the low point of the trip.