Fishing News
Device helps fish survive catch, release - Hook removers, better care will save fish, Fenton Roskelley says.
By Fenton Roskelley
Every time I watched my fly-fishing friends release a steelhead, I cringed.
They would drag a steelhead up over rocks, plant a boot on the big, frantic fish, stoop over, remove the hook and kick the flopping fish back into the river.
That, to them, was the proper way of releasing a steelhead.
Sometimes they couldn't hold a steelhead down with a booted foot. They would drag the fish around until they could get a boot on its side to stop it from flopping. By the time they released the fish, more than a couple of minutes would have passed.
Occasionally, a hook was buried so deeply in a steelhead's jaw that the one who hooked the fish had to put down his rod, kneel down, hold the fish with one hand and try to wrench the hook out of the fish's mouth. That took a minute or two.
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