Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations leave hook in ?

I catch and release lots of red ear in my pond.
Being redear they will sometimes take the hook deep in the throat. If I leave the hook in am I just prolonging their misry or will the hook dissolve with little damage being done. I havent found any dead one floating but the resident blue heron maybe getting them first.
thank for your help in advance.

Conventional wisdom is that the survival rate is better leaving the hook in, and that it rusts out. There may be studies to back this up but I have never seen them quoted- perhaps some of the pros on this site know what they are. My thoughts are that if you are already fishing catch and release you should be crushing the barbs down to make it easier to get the hooks out anyway, since you are worried about fish getting away. I am a surgeon and I have found that I can remove barbless hooks from the esophageal opening by sliding a hemostat through the gills and releasing the hook. This approach gives you an angle to turn the hook and release it that you cannot get through the mouth. Smooth cold steel seems pretty atraumatic to the gills.
I do not have an answer for hooks that penetrate the gills and produce bleeding. I have been told that these fish generally die. Again, this is all anecdotal. I have not seen studies documenting a high mortality with gill hooked fish.

Meant to say you should be crushing the barbs down since you are not worried about fish getting away as you are letting them go anyway.

David, there is an excellent article about this subject in the current issue of IN-FISHERMAN magazine. They give permission to use their article by anyone, anytime just to get the word out. I suggest that anyone interested in this subject get the current issue of IN-FISHERMAN.

BOB LUSK: I suggest you reprint this entire article.

"Background information, no matter what you've previously heard:

Hooks left in fish don't quickly rust away, don't quickly get digested...and often last until the fish dies.

The gills of fish are sturdy, tough organs that can be touched or handled. Bloody gills or other organs... fish blood rapidly coagulates in water.

The gullet and stomach linings also are resilient.

Cutting the line should be a last resort, not the first resort that it is tody."

The way they teach to remove the hooks is as described by LRunkle below. That is to go through the opening below the back gill to remove the hook.

For panfish that swallow the hook, they suggest considering using circle hooks as they tend to catch the fish in the mouth. There have been many discussions about the use of circle hooks on this forum.

Here's In-Fisherman's link to circle hooks. A lot of great information on preventing hooking mortality can be found in this magazine.

http://www.in-fisherman.com/magazine/articles/if0502_VVCircleHooks/

While I haven't yet read the article, I do have a moderate amount of experience with fish expelling hooks. I have collected plenty of fish with shanks of hooks protruding from their south sides. While most of the hook was gone, digested by strong gastric acids, the fish usually appear to be in good condition. I disagree with the statements quoted. I believe hooking mortality to be much higher when a deep hook is removed. While tissues may be resilient, they are torn. Torn flesh in fish cannot heal as it was. No stitches, no repairs. Remember, these tissues are used either to feed or to breathe. Pretty important tissues. Fish bleeding from the gills usually die. My best estimate is that more than 80% of gill hooked fish die, if they obviously bleed. How does blood coagulate in water? Blood IS water, mostly. Do hooks left behind digest quickly? No, but they digest. Ripped flesh, inside a fish, can quickly kill the creature. As tough as the tissue is, when torn, it leaks. Leaks are not good. I choose to leave the hook. If gills were sturdy, they wouldn't be surrounded by a bony plate. Sorry, the writer may be selling, but I ain't buying.

Honestly, we all know that when a fish swallows the hook, or catches one in the gill...it's to be eaten or tossed back to die. If you cut the hook off, it has a LOT higher chance of survival. The hook may not decay, but the flesh/sore in the mouth will loosen the hook allowing the fish to spit it back out. Also, I have caught several healthy fish that already had another hook in inside their mouths, and every time, it's been rusty.

Do they make a hook that will rust out quickly? I remember as a child, hooks seemed to go pretty fast, but these new hooks are coated and probably extend the hook�s life in a taklebox, but also in the gut of a fish. For my personal pond I would prefer something that rusted out quicker.

Bob, I think the authors of the article would be glad to provide you with any and all the backup material you would want.

Norm,

I have the article in the In-Fisherman magazine too. Although I am skeptical of some of it, it does make a lot of sense. In-Fisherman is usually reliable and uses research vs. some of the other mags (I know as I write articles for some of those mags )

Most of the fish I have caught though that were bleeding floated up in the near future. But that may have been due to some actually physical damage vs. something less serious.

That said, I have always been skeptical of those that say hooks dissolve quickly in the gut of fish just as the In-Fisherman article says they do not do so. It would seem the "gold" plated hooks that some folks use would be even worse.

Here's something of interest. To make a long story short I had one of my pellet fed bass break off a line and had a floating popper fly lodged in the side of it's jaw. Everyday I went down to feed those bass I would see him with that popper on the side of his jaw. It stuck out like a sore thumb. On the fourth or fifth day as I was feeding, the popper just floated up. Apparently where the hook went in a hole had worn and the hook had come loose. I examined the hook for any breakdown and there was none.

Come to think of it as a taxidermist I have mounted bass with part of one of their gills torn that obviously repaired itself. So even damaged gills may be able to repair themselves. Maybe it just how tough the fish is and what kind of condition he is in with all kinds of mitigating factors whether he will survive the trama of a bad hook set? I so see a lot of mutilated mandibles from catch and release.

Bob, if fish blood won't coagulate under water, what is the survival advantage of having the ability to clot, since fish are rarely on dry land? Seems unlikely a clotting mechanism that does not work would have evolved. Actually, I don't really know if fish blood clots at all but I seem to recall clotted blood on fish when I clean them. The kind of study that needs to be done is to have three large pens available for the sample fish, one for mouth-hooked and released fish, and the other two for deep hooked fish, one with hooks left in, one with hooks removed. I would guess that a sample size in each group would have to be 30 or so to minimize random effects of sampling. I have not seen the studies alluded to in the In Fisherman article, they may have done this sort of thing. I wish I could reference them for my own curiosity.

In regards to clotting under water I see no reason that it would not considering that human blood will also clot under water.

The myth that those that cut their wrists will bleed to death by running water over the wounds it just that -- a myth. They may bleed to death depending on the extent of the slashing, but blood can still clot under water.

Fish have very low blood pressure due to the 2 chambered heart, and don't bleed that much anyway.

Once we were fishing in the BWCAW and my brother caught a northern, and it was bleeding from the gills. We put it on the stringer and figured that it would be dead before dinner. Nope, so we figured we would save it for breakfast. Bye the time we got around to eating that fish it had completly healed and fully recovered... on a stringer.

Someone did do a study on hooking mortality and growth rates of rainbow trout. They intentionaly throat hooked trout and lip hooked trout. They found that you should use circle hooks and cut the line. There were only a few circumstances were leaving the hook in affected fish growth. Otherwise most of the fish recovered and grew normaly. If I can't get a hook out I gladly cut the line.

Great thread.
I have never seen any empirical data which supports removal/non-removal of hooks. I looked through the In-Fisherman site, bought the January issue today and can't find the article. I would love to see the article and the backup material. If it's backed by solid science, count me in. If not... My opinions are simply that...based on a career of raising/observing fish. Fish that obviously bleed in the water usually die. I, too, have come across fish with torn gills, or scarred mouths. But, if those fish bled, I don't think they would have lived.
Regarding coagulating blood, if the tiny vesicles seal with coagulating blood, they heal. At the same time, I have watched too many bleeding fish give it up, especially bleeding from the gills. Layton, your point is well taken, loaded with common sense. It makes sense to me that fish blood must coagulate, but it has to be a mechanism that starts inside the wound, rather than at the surface, like our blood. I ain't never seen a scab on a fish. I have seen healing tissue, over a sore...and it doesn't look like coagulated blood. I ain't no expert about it. But, until proven to me otherwise, I'll believe cutting the line better than digging a deep hook out of a fish.
You guys are the best...thought provoking.

Bob looks like you will need to spend a few more dollars to get the February issue. See page 10.

One thing on going with barbless hooks is the new school of thought being the hook has a greater opportunity to pierce the vital organs. Some studies indicate barbless vs. non-barbless shows no statistical difference in survival rates. My gut still says barbless does a lot more in the way of preventing jaw damage so I go with my gut.

Also when leaving a hook embedded a small amount of line should be left just outside of the mouth so the hook will sit in a favorable position prior to decomposing.

From my experience the extra time and extra stress trying to remove a hook from a fish that is not barbless vs. barbless makes the barbless hook worth it!

Cecil, I agree 100%!