Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
Last Month I ran a few inshore charters on my little boat with clients who wanted to do some light-tackle and fly-fishing for the stripers, bluefish, and the hickory shad that are now so abundant down around the inlet and Rt.50 Bridge. The action was pretty good with the best of it happening during the first or last few hours of daylight, particularly on an outgoing tide.
On some outings most of the fun was provided by the 17-19 inch shad which will jump all over small spoons, jigs, or flies. Of course there is no season for hickory shad in Maryland so that end of the fishing is strictly catch-and-release and when the action is good it can translate to a fish on every cast, requiring anglers to do a lot of unhooking and releasing which can highlight a long standing problem between fish and fishermen - which I’ll get to in a moment.
The quickest and best way to release a small fish is to use a de-hooking tool that inverts the hook and allows the fish to fall back into the water without ever being touched by human hands. But, depending upon how the fish is hooked, or what lure is being used, sometimes it’s necessary to actually hold a fish down and carefully remove the hook (or hooks) with pliers.
I always keep a fish rag handy for such instances and when we bring a fish that’s going to be released to the boat I submerge the rag in water and wrap the fish in it as soon as the catch comes out of the water. The rag is not just “damp,” it’s totally saturated and wringing-wet. The rag both immobilizes and protects the fish from injury while the hook is being extracted. Because the rag is so wet it won’t cause mortal harm to the fish by rubbing off its protective slime layer – that’s important!
With fish like striped bass that have no teeth, you can sometimes get away from the rag by holding the fish by the lower jaw while performing the surgery, but shad have such a small and delicate mouth that’s not an option. The wet rag is by far the safest way for fish and angler when working on or around the snapping dental work of bluefish. Wrap the fish up like a pig-in-a-blanket with just his snoot showing, extract the hooks, and slip him back over the side - a simple procedure with no harm done to either party.
Ok, if de-hooking tools and wet rags are such simple solutions to catch-and-release fishing, what’s the problem? As we have all witnessed too many times, the problem is that there are still a lot of fishermen who won’t take the time to handle and release fish in a manor that best assures the survival of their catch. Some folks are so intent on getting the fish in, off the hook, and their line back out so they can catch another one that in the process they batter and abuse the fish so much that it ends up dying from the ordeal.
For example: The other day I watched a guy standing on the cement part of the inlet’s north jetty pulling in double-headers of shad. Because he was up on the cement, every time he brought in fish he had to drag them over and through the rocks that were between him and the water. After bouncing the fish up to his position he’d grab one fish (with bare hand) and unhook it while the other flopped around on the hard dry cement. As the fish were unhooked they’d each be flung 30 or more feet in a most ungraceful reentry to their environment.
The same day I noticed another guy fishing from a pier. He too was pulling in two fish at a time but his release technique was to lift the catch over the railing, let them flop down hard on the wooden deck, hold them down with his foot as he did the unhooking, and then kick them back into the water. “Oh Boy.” I thought. “That’s one technique we’ll never see on Saturday morning Outdoor Channel shows!”
I’m sure that both of these “gentlemen” are good anglers and probably love to fish. The problem is that they don’t love “the fish” enough to appreciate the fact that each and everyone is a necessary link in the chain that keeps our sport of fishing alive. Maybe they’re just little-old shad that seem to be very abundant, aren’t any good to eat, and you can’t keep them anyway, but I guarantee they’re an important food-source to fish like rockfish, bluefish, sharks, tuna and a whole lot of other more “respected” game species.
Such abuse is certainly not limited to hickory shad. In fact, from marlin to flounder, any species of fish has a chance of tangling with the wrong angler at the wrong time and end up in a very bad way for the encounter. Before they were “released to live another day” I’ve seen tuna gaffed, flounder allowed to sizzle on the hot cement of the Rt.50 Bridge, billfish hauled aboard for long “photo sessions,” sea bass wrapped-up in DRY rags, and seatrout squeezed so hard their heads were squished and eyes bulged out! I can only imagine how many of these indiscretions are carried out by folks who then go home and brag on themselves for being such great “sportsmen” for all the fish they released.
In my book “real” sportsmen are the one’s who plan ahead, have the proper tools, and take the needed time to ensure that, if they are going be releasing fish, they’ll be able to provide the best chance of survival for each one. Instead of dragging fish across the rocks to get them in – sportsman will move to a different location. If most of the sea bass being brought up from a deep-water wreck are dying from the decompression – they’ll move to a shallower wreck. If the flounder they’re catching all seem to be swallowing the hook, they’ll switch to circle hooks. If sharks are eating every fish they hook – they move to an area that’s less “sharky”. In other words, ethical sportsmen will do whatever it takes (even if sometimes means hooking a few less fish) to enjoy their sport without leaving a bunch of dead fish in their wake.
Mark Sampson
