Holding a fish. Should you hold it supporting the belly, putting the weight of the fish horizontal? Or, holding by the lower jaw and let it hang? Well a lot of thoughts about that. Horizontal holding, while it is a good idea, should be tempered with just a bit of real. I have watched 1000′s of bass fisherman holding fish by the jaw. It seems that when a fish is smaller and not huge around the belly while it is not great for them, it is not going to unhinge the jaw. And when a fish is smaller using your hands on it’s belly you are removing the slime coating of the fish and making is susceptible to Bactria sores, and a slow death.
The other side of that is when the fish is heavier and the weight of the fish is much greater, large Belly. Then it’s a serious problem. The weight of the fish will then unhinge the jaw and the fish will most likely starve to death, not good use your judgement when handling a fish.
Do not be taken in, like no stainless steel hooks. Every study ever done has found no difference between stainless hooks and other types of materials, stainless does not rot or corrode so no poisons in the blood like when a bronze type or cadmium. If stainless killed, every kid in the mall would be dead.
People swing and around at the end of ropes by their teeth, spin around on their heads dancing. Would I like or want to do that? No! Tarpon fisherman break off lines while the fish is in the water, and the hook is in the Tarpons Jaw. We are talking about 50 to 60 pound of jerking to break that line and no one is complaining about that. Why? Because no Eco not thought to tell you it was bad. We all do things which are not great, the truth usually lies between the far end of the topic. Let’s use our best judgment. Let’s talk to each other not point fingers and say you are a bad person, or good person, because they did not get the latest memo about going to hell for the latest do gooder cause.
We pull the fish to us by its jaw with a hook. Really there is no 100% good way to do this. 5% of all fish caught & released die! So yes we are working to be better people. Let’s start being better people by the way we talk to each other instead of the blame game. Tell the next person your ideas about what they are doing and why it may be bad. We are all guessing here and trying to keep what we love doing (fishing) alive and keep the fish from as much harm as possible. So we need to stick together not pick each other apart.
Just a thought from the middle of this twisting turning highway of life.
Southwest Florida, be safe, have fun and be nice to each other.
Frank