Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Gaining a Grasp

Until I was recently asked about how to grab fish to unhook them, I hadn't really considered the fact that almost every popular freshwater species is different. Most bass fishermen know they can hold their favorite fish by the lower lip, but you'd better not try that with a bowfin or a chain pickerel. Bluegill are easy to grab around the body, as long as you know to slide your hand down the body - not up it - and to push down the spiny dorsal fin in order to spare getting pricked. Then there are channel cats and bullheads, with those three sharp fins that you need to avoid, and white bass and stripers with their sharp gill plates. Trout won't hurt you, but you can harm them, so it's best to handle a trout as little as possible if you plan to release it. The list could go on.

Fish handling is one of the many aspects of our sport that most folks learn by trial and error, by observation or from other anglers, as they go, but it's also one of those things that folks like me, who write fishing stories, could do a much better job of covering in articles.

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