There seems to be a general assumption that most sea fish are tougher than their freshwater counterparts. I can’t remember ever seeing a coarse angler chucking a carp back into a pond from ten feet off the water. Indeed, it’s far more common to see them laying fish carefully on cushioned mats and applying healing potions on any wounds the fish may have picked up since its last capture. Sea anglers, by contrast, tend to have a more robust approach to catch and release. This is mostly out of necessity rather than a lack of concern; a lot of the time it is not safe to approach the sea closely and an element of ‘chucking it back’ has to be the order of the day. It is definitely true though that there has been a massive change in the attitude of sea angling as a whole to our fish in the last few decades. Gone are the days when anglers killed everything they caught, in the modern era, most sea anglers return far more fish than they keep.
I suppose this piece is inspired by the recent ban on keeping bass, not that this issue troubles me too much as I don’t deliberately fish for bass all that often and probably only take home a handful every year. However, what I really want to talk about is the general movement away from the days of less discriminate catch and kill, and chew over some ideas on how to best go about handling and successfully returning fish to the sea. Bass themselves generally seem to come through capture very well as long as they are handled with care. The only real difficulties seem to arise when fishing in places like estuaries where there are a lot of small schoolies that will gorge the bait quick before their shoal mates can pinch it off them. Oftentimes these fish will be hooked in the throat and already bleeding and the only thing the angler can do is decide whether to attempt to remove the hook or leave it in. In situations where the removal of the hook will cause more damage than it has already done, I cut it off and leave it in. If I think I can get it out without further harming the fish, I do that. In any case, I suspect that the fish’ odds of surviving are not great, unfortunately. Many dedicated bass fishermen have turned to circle or semi-circle hooks and have reported suffering no detriment in hook-up success and less deep hooking as a result. I think if I decided to take my bass fishing a bit more seriously, this would definitely be a tactic that I would look into.
Another type of fish that presents us with challenging hook removal situations is the flatfish family. Using regular ‘j’ shaped hooks, the vast majority of fish will be deep-hooked as they manoeuvre the bait into their mouths before attempting to swallow it. There are a number of ways to approach this including cutting the hook off and leaving it in the fish. However, what I have taken to doing over the last few years is using a grip wire bent into a hook shape at the end and going under the gill cover to catch the line, turn the hook back on itself and reverse it out through the mouth. This works fine, especially on flounder, plaice and dabs. The procedure is a little more difficult with sole and turbot but can be done with care. Care must be taken not to touch the gills using this method and to try not to put pressure on the gill arches themselves. If the fish does bleed from the hook wound or the gills are accidentally damaged and bleeding then I think it is better to kill and keep the fish (if legal) as it will likely die. Another popular method is to use a very fine wire hook and bend it out to extract it. Personally, I’m not keen on this idea as if I hook a better fish I don’t want the hook to give in the fight and I don’t think it offers any advantage over the method I’ve been using. Importantly, when the ‘under the gill cover’ method is done quickly and cleanly, the fish go back well and hopefully stand a good chance of survival. The throat aperture on the average flatfish is so small that by leaving a hook in it is likely to stop the fish being able to feed and I have a hard time accepting the ‘hook rusting out in days’ theory. I suspect with some models it would be more a matter of weeks or even months before the hook becomes corroded enough to disintegrate.
It’s a fact that there are some fish that just do not survive capture very well, especially some members of the cod family. Even the old cod itself, despite looking pretty sturdy, often turns belly up and floats away after it is carefully returned to the sea. It is frustrating that despite your best intentions and desire to harm the fish as little as possible, sometimes they clearly do not make it through the encounter. My current thoughts on treating cod are that if the fish is deeply hooked, has taken a battering during landing, or it is impossible to get reasonably close to the sea to return it, then it is probably better off to kill and keep it (if over legal size). Also, I’m starting to suspect that if an undersized codling is deeply hooked and has to be returned, then the odds of survival may be better with cutting the line and leaving the hook in than trying to extract it. I suspect in trying to remove a deep hook from a white fish, there could be a fatal amount of structural trauma caused in the extraction, no matter how delicate you try to be. I have caught codling with hooks still in them so clearly a percentage of these fish do survive and carry on feeding.
Other members of the cod family that seem to show particularly poor resilience to capture include pouting, poor cod, whiting and haddock. Most British sea anglers will be familiar with the typical winter situation of catching oodles of pout and whiting that despite careful handling tend to bob away forlornly when put back. Haddock appear to be much the same. Most of the ones we caught in Norway clearly didn’t survive their run in with us despite our efforts to return them as carefully as possible. Over time, I have kept a number of ‘floaters’ that I have been able to recover and have found that in most cases the swim bladder does not appear to be blown and seems not to be the major factor in the fish’s demise. I have since read somewhere (I can’t remember exactly where) that cold water fish like whiting and haddock suffer a bad thermal shock reaction to being touched by human beings and it is likely this that ultimately kills them. That makes sense to me as often, despite appearing to be alive, the fish float off seemingly in a weird state of catatonia without making any attempts to move or swim. Perhaps the best tactic then to minimise this impact would be to make sure that the fish are handled with cold, wet hands. Not always the easiest thing to do but certainly possible if a bucket of water is collected at the beginning of the session. I have yet to give this idea a proper trial but I will be doing so and I’m keen to see if it does improve survival rates. I think like with cod, if it’s clear that legal size whiting and haddock are in bad shape and will not go back strongly, it’s best to keep them for eating. I actually prefer whiting to cod so I have no problem taking some home for the pot and quite often keep the better ones I catch anyhow. Pout and poor cod are of little culinary interest to the majority of anglers but they do make excellent baits for many species and (if you have no moral qualms about doing it) can be used to attract predators to your area when cut up and used as groundbait.
Fortunately, there are other fish that seem to survive capture well. Our old pals the dogfish are probably the best example, although all the sharks and rays appear to be able to deal with being caught. Resilient as they are, if you intend to release them I think it’s good practice to treat them as carefully as any of the other fish groups to maximise their odds of survival. Even then, it’s not always straightforward to tell whether a fish has gone back strongly as a mortally wounded shark or ray will sink to the bottom out of sight rather than float off conspicuously. What is of note I think, especially with rays is to try not to handle them too much and to get them back in the water reasonably quickly. I have noticed over time that the more a ray is handled and picked up, the quicker its wellbeing seems to deteriorate. Another interesting point about shark and ray species is that when placed in rockpools, these fish will often swim to the surface and poke their heads out. A while ago I visited the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth where they keep and study a number of ray, huss and dogfish. When we approached some of the tanks, the rays displayed this behaviour and the scientist showing us around said this was not a sign of curiosity or anything like that, sharks and rays do this when they are stressed or alarmed. Perhaps the best thing to do then in this situation is to release the fish back into the sea as it has likely had enough of being in the rockpool.
When it comes to photographing fish that are to be released, I think the key factor should be that the fish are handled as little as possible and kept out of the water for a minimal length of time. When fishing by myself, I used to hold fish up for the camera or take pictures using the self-timer but I have almost completely stopped doing that with live fish now, preferring to lay the fish on the ground, in a rockpool or on my seat box with the rod and reel in the shot for scale. This allows the fish to lie in a natural attitude with not too much gravity stress on the organs. They will usually be much calmer than they generally are when held and restrained too, as well as there being no chance of the fish being accidentally dropped. Of course, if you are fishing in company, then there is no problem with getting someone to take a quick snap of you with your fish before it goes back.
An odd situation that crops up from time to time is finding parasites on fish. The most common that I have come across are large parasites attached around the gills on whiting. I’ve quizzed one or two fish biologists on why whiting in particular should be so plagued by these but no one has been able to shed any light on the subject yet. One thing that I was told though is that the parasites should not be removed as they will likely do the fish more harm than good. I also mentioned that occasionally I have come across leeches on rays, specifically thornbacks caught in estuaries, and the advice was the same for this situation also; leave the parasites alone and let nature take its course.
I suppose this piece is inspired by the recent ban on keeping bass, not that this issue troubles me too much as I don’t deliberately fish for bass all that often and probably only take home a handful every year. However, what I really want to talk about is the general movement away from the days of less discriminate catch and kill, and chew over some ideas on how to best go about handling and successfully returning fish to the sea. Bass themselves generally seem to come through capture very well as long as they are handled with care. The only real difficulties seem to arise when fishing in places like estuaries where there are a lot of small schoolies that will gorge the bait quick before their shoal mates can pinch it off them. Oftentimes these fish will be hooked in the throat and already bleeding and the only thing the angler can do is decide whether to attempt to remove the hook or leave it in. In situations where the removal of the hook will cause more damage than it has already done, I cut it off and leave it in. If I think I can get it out without further harming the fish, I do that. In any case, I suspect that the fish’ odds of surviving are not great, unfortunately. Many dedicated bass fishermen have turned to circle or semi-circle hooks and have reported suffering no detriment in hook-up success and less deep hooking as a result. I think if I decided to take my bass fishing a bit more seriously, this would definitely be a tactic that I would look into.
Another type of fish that presents us with challenging hook removal situations is the flatfish family. Using regular ‘j’ shaped hooks, the vast majority of fish will be deep-hooked as they manoeuvre the bait into their mouths before attempting to swallow it. There are a number of ways to approach this including cutting the hook off and leaving it in the fish. However, what I have taken to doing over the last few years is using a grip wire bent into a hook shape at the end and going under the gill cover to catch the line, turn the hook back on itself and reverse it out through the mouth. This works fine, especially on flounder, plaice and dabs. The procedure is a little more difficult with sole and turbot but can be done with care. Care must be taken not to touch the gills using this method and to try not to put pressure on the gill arches themselves. If the fish does bleed from the hook wound or the gills are accidentally damaged and bleeding then I think it is better to kill and keep the fish (if legal) as it will likely die. Another popular method is to use a very fine wire hook and bend it out to extract it. Personally, I’m not keen on this idea as if I hook a better fish I don’t want the hook to give in the fight and I don’t think it offers any advantage over the method I’ve been using. Importantly, when the ‘under the gill cover’ method is done quickly and cleanly, the fish go back well and hopefully stand a good chance of survival. The throat aperture on the average flatfish is so small that by leaving a hook in it is likely to stop the fish being able to feed and I have a hard time accepting the ‘hook rusting out in days’ theory. I suspect with some models it would be more a matter of weeks or even months before the hook becomes corroded enough to disintegrate.
It’s a fact that there are some fish that just do not survive capture very well, especially some members of the cod family. Even the old cod itself, despite looking pretty sturdy, often turns belly up and floats away after it is carefully returned to the sea. It is frustrating that despite your best intentions and desire to harm the fish as little as possible, sometimes they clearly do not make it through the encounter. My current thoughts on treating cod are that if the fish is deeply hooked, has taken a battering during landing, or it is impossible to get reasonably close to the sea to return it, then it is probably better off to kill and keep it (if over legal size). Also, I’m starting to suspect that if an undersized codling is deeply hooked and has to be returned, then the odds of survival may be better with cutting the line and leaving the hook in than trying to extract it. I suspect in trying to remove a deep hook from a white fish, there could be a fatal amount of structural trauma caused in the extraction, no matter how delicate you try to be. I have caught codling with hooks still in them so clearly a percentage of these fish do survive and carry on feeding.
Other members of the cod family that seem to show particularly poor resilience to capture include pouting, poor cod, whiting and haddock. Most British sea anglers will be familiar with the typical winter situation of catching oodles of pout and whiting that despite careful handling tend to bob away forlornly when put back. Haddock appear to be much the same. Most of the ones we caught in Norway clearly didn’t survive their run in with us despite our efforts to return them as carefully as possible. Over time, I have kept a number of ‘floaters’ that I have been able to recover and have found that in most cases the swim bladder does not appear to be blown and seems not to be the major factor in the fish’s demise. I have since read somewhere (I can’t remember exactly where) that cold water fish like whiting and haddock suffer a bad thermal shock reaction to being touched by human beings and it is likely this that ultimately kills them. That makes sense to me as often, despite appearing to be alive, the fish float off seemingly in a weird state of catatonia without making any attempts to move or swim. Perhaps the best tactic then to minimise this impact would be to make sure that the fish are handled with cold, wet hands. Not always the easiest thing to do but certainly possible if a bucket of water is collected at the beginning of the session. I have yet to give this idea a proper trial but I will be doing so and I’m keen to see if it does improve survival rates. I think like with cod, if it’s clear that legal size whiting and haddock are in bad shape and will not go back strongly, it’s best to keep them for eating. I actually prefer whiting to cod so I have no problem taking some home for the pot and quite often keep the better ones I catch anyhow. Pout and poor cod are of little culinary interest to the majority of anglers but they do make excellent baits for many species and (if you have no moral qualms about doing it) can be used to attract predators to your area when cut up and used as groundbait.
Fortunately, there are other fish that seem to survive capture well. Our old pals the dogfish are probably the best example, although all the sharks and rays appear to be able to deal with being caught. Resilient as they are, if you intend to release them I think it’s good practice to treat them as carefully as any of the other fish groups to maximise their odds of survival. Even then, it’s not always straightforward to tell whether a fish has gone back strongly as a mortally wounded shark or ray will sink to the bottom out of sight rather than float off conspicuously. What is of note I think, especially with rays is to try not to handle them too much and to get them back in the water reasonably quickly. I have noticed over time that the more a ray is handled and picked up, the quicker its wellbeing seems to deteriorate. Another interesting point about shark and ray species is that when placed in rockpools, these fish will often swim to the surface and poke their heads out. A while ago I visited the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth where they keep and study a number of ray, huss and dogfish. When we approached some of the tanks, the rays displayed this behaviour and the scientist showing us around said this was not a sign of curiosity or anything like that, sharks and rays do this when they are stressed or alarmed. Perhaps the best thing to do then in this situation is to release the fish back into the sea as it has likely had enough of being in the rockpool.
When it comes to photographing fish that are to be released, I think the key factor should be that the fish are handled as little as possible and kept out of the water for a minimal length of time. When fishing by myself, I used to hold fish up for the camera or take pictures using the self-timer but I have almost completely stopped doing that with live fish now, preferring to lay the fish on the ground, in a rockpool or on my seat box with the rod and reel in the shot for scale. This allows the fish to lie in a natural attitude with not too much gravity stress on the organs. They will usually be much calmer than they generally are when held and restrained too, as well as there being no chance of the fish being accidentally dropped. Of course, if you are fishing in company, then there is no problem with getting someone to take a quick snap of you with your fish before it goes back.
An odd situation that crops up from time to time is finding parasites on fish. The most common that I have come across are large parasites attached around the gills on whiting. I’ve quizzed one or two fish biologists on why whiting in particular should be so plagued by these but no one has been able to shed any light on the subject yet. One thing that I was told though is that the parasites should not be removed as they will likely do the fish more harm than good. I also mentioned that occasionally I have come across leeches on rays, specifically thornbacks caught in estuaries, and the advice was the same for this situation also; leave the parasites alone and let nature take its course.