Brookie from Hickory Run

[Out4Trout]

 

[Wild_Trouter]

You really need to work on your fish handling skills. In the first video, you do not wet your hands and then apply the vulcan death grip to the fish. In the second video, you have the fish out of water much longer than necessary. Not trying to bust your chops, but educate. I'd like to go there sometime and catch the same fish. I won't be able to do that if you keep handling fish in this manner.

 

[Swattie87]

Wild_Trouter wrote:
You really need to work on your fish handling skills. In the first video, you do not wet your hands and then apply the vulcan death grip to the fish. In the second video, you have the fish out of water much longer than necessary. Not trying to bust your chops, but educate. I'd like to go there sometime and catch the same fish. I won't be able to do that if you keep handling fish in this manner.

Lighten up man. Those fish were fine. They’re fish, they squirm when you touch them and try to take the sharp object you just stuck in their jaw out. There was no death grip there. He got control of the fish, unhooked it, looked at it for a few seconds, and put it back. Aside from the video not showing him wet his hands in the first one, I thought his handling was pretty darn good. Shows how subjective and silly these discussions are.

O4T - Try to wet your hands first, I’m sure you know that. Perhaps the video just didn’t show it or it wasn’t safe to do with that bank there and the fish already hooked.

 

[timbow]

Don’t worry about it, you handled those fish just fine. Guys on here seem to forget that we are all out there with the intent of impaling fish in their face with a piece of sharp steel purely for our enjoyment. I think the trout would much prefer to be touched with a dry hand rather having a hook stuck in their face and then dragged in by a piece of line

 

[ryansheehan]

Nice fish! Wet hands make a difference. Wildtrouter really is trying to help, it's a tough conversation. Swattie is spot on about fish moving around and not always being easy to control. I remember an ah-hah moment for me when I didn't wet my hands and was left with a ton of fish slime after handling. Realized that if it was all over my hands it wasn't on the fish.

 

[mcarney99]

Even when brookie fishing I carry a small net. Easy to pop them into the net keep them in the water and then wet your hands. Handling a 25” brown with a dry hand might remove 15% of the protective “slime” but handling a 7” brookie struggling to pop the fly out can remove 50+% and jeopardize its survival. It is tough to try and educate people because you end up sounding a bit pompous telling a C&R fly guy he’s hurting fish when the 14 with the rooster tail is dragging them up a bank. But it’s up to us to protect these fish. There’s been plenty of fish that circumstances can cause you to wish you handled better. I accidentally killed a rainbow in Wyoming this year hooking deep with a mouse fly at night and not handling with the care I would have if it was a large brown. A combination of a pierced artery and poor handling killed the fish which I was very ashamed of.