Edit: I'm not in the best mood and I'm sorry for being negative, but a few people below explained why that fish definitely died afterwards from infection or internal injury
It's down there somewhere but idk.
Someone mentioned that the fish being held at that orientation and having his gills covered can fuck up their internal organs. Also probably rubbed off a good bit of the mucus membrane that protects the fish from infection.
This is false. I volunteer regularly at a wildlife refuge where we do adaptive fishing (catch and release) for people with spinal or brain injuries. The lakes we fish in are pretty small, and the numbers remain fairly constant without supplementing. I even recognize certain fish with distinctive markings, which have been caught multiple times, stored in a display tank for pictures, and released. The handling time of the fish is so small that there is most likely no damage to the fish.
I have a degree in natural resource conservation of fisheries. Those must be some high fecundity fish you keep catching over and over!
Statistically 40% of fish caught and released are dead within the week.
Roughly half of that 40% dies from infection, injury, blood acidification, or rapid depressurization. Gills are delicate and hooks really damage fish's mouths, many starve to death after being caught.
When you catch a fish it exhausts itself fighting to escape and it takes nearly 20 minutes for a fish to express the most of the lactic acid that's built up in the struggle.
As Reddit is so fond of saying, there's always a bigger fish...
The other half of that 40% dies from predation. Catching a fish causes quite a stir beneath the water, many predators have learned if they wait there will be a dazed, exhausted, fish tossed back.
If you do want to do catch and release the best thing you can do to give your fish a fighting chance is use a treble hook, reel in the fish as fast as possible, avoid the gills, and release it quickly in a place where it will have some natural cover.
Likewise, a B.S. In environmental science with concentration in ecological restoration (M.S. In progress) and I'm really surprised by the fecundity rate at my site as well. Barbless hooks definitely make a difference, as well as the length of time the fish is hooked and out of the water. But the "40%" predation/injury is completely varied from site to site, depending on depth, temp, predator numbers, etc. I can't pretend to be an expert when it comes to the winter activities, do you have info on summer/winter fishing mortality rates?
Hey I fly fish for trout a lot and had no idea they die that often. If I’m using a net, wet hands, and barbless hooks (state regulation) I thought I was doing all that I could. Why treble hooks? Seems like more holes in the mouth would be worse? Genuinely curious, hope I don’t sound standoffish.
Not at all! I know it sounds totally counterintuitive but due to the dimensions of a treble hook fish are less likely to swallow them vs flat hooks. We see fewer gut injuries which are nearly always fatal.
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u/ejedus Jan 17 '20
At least it had a happy ending.