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ausablemur

Going Barbless

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Barbless hooks taking less time to make a release is an unintentionally biased position in my experience. For trout; perhaps yes. But, for Centrarchids: no way! [Centrarchids being the large and small mouth basses and their close relatives, the sunfishes (bream)]. The difference lies in the fact that centrarchids typically totally engulf (suck in) the fly in their mouths, resulting in the hooking, more often than not, being somewhere down in the back of the buccal cavity (mouth/throat area), as opposed to being near the lips in the case of the salmonids (trout) of my acquaintance.

 

With the short shanks on our flies (yes, so called "trout" flies work GREAT on sunfish) one still has to 'wrestle' with the fish while inserting some type of hook disgorger down into buccal cavity to push the hook first backwards to back it out of the tissue, and then pull it forward to get it out of the buccal cavity. (One does not often have the benefit of simply 'reaching down, grasping the fly, and giving a slight twist' to unhook these fish without taking them completely out of the water. At least, NOT the ones we have in Texas! Sorry!) Such handling imparts the same level of stress, regardless of whether or not the hook is barbed. If done properly with an appropriate instrument,the only difference may be very slightly more tissue damage at the hook entry point with a barbed hook. Any such difference would typically be expected to be insignificant.

 

Yes, I have used barbless while pursuing my favorite fish, the bluegill and it's close relatives, and did NOT find release to be any easier or faster when barbless, as compared to time involved using barbed hooks. Just another anecdotal observation.

 

Perhaps I have been either extremely lucky, or extremely blessed, but in 71 years of fishing, I have yet to hook myself with a barbed hook to the extent that the barb penetrated my skin. I have had more serious encounters with a hook at my tying vise than I have actually fishing! Ironically enough, my sister had a hook deeply embedded into the loose skin in front of an arm pit as a consequence of water skiing!

 

Therefore, IMHO, barbed vs barbless relative to fishing is a moot point! Just do whatever 'floats your boat'.

 

I have already conceded that for personal safety reasons, it is perhaps a wise thing to do. However, once again, that is a personal choice, and decision, one has to make.

 

Regards,

Frank

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One thing i dont belive was mentioned is the loss of flies in fish, if a fish snaps you off i feel ( with no hard evidence) that the hook would fall out of the fishes mouth easier if it is debarbed then barbed, allowing the fish to get back to its feeding habits quicker. also on the thought of it bieng better for the fisherman than the fish, if its easier to get out of our skin then why wouldent it be the same for the fish? im sure those of you that have been hooked by both can say that it hurts a whole lot less to pull out a barbless hook then a barbed one.. and from my experince brook trout fishing using barbed hooks can mess up there jaws pretty bad esp. when using sz. 10 hooks with a standard barb. also i find it hard to belive that when bait fishing using a barbed treble hook (in still water esp.) that it is the same as a single hook barbless using that same bait, from my experience with both its a whole lot easier to remove the hook there is a less of a chance of gut hooking the fish. and the fish isnt shoked quite as bad, for these reasons i support single hook barbless laws, and crimp all of my barbs before they leave the vice.

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well barbless vs. barbed is about a useless argument myself I think they should make rules about nets and out of water time most nets used by trout fisherman remove the slime and scales and open the fish up to infections parasites and diseases which are way more harmful to the mortality of the fish then a 2 mm hole in the mouth caused by a barbed hook and then the out of water for 5 minutes to get 100 pictures is another pet peave of mine a good practice I use is if you hold your breathe from the time you pull the fish out of the water till you release it your doing fine I don't take alot of pictures of fish I catch unless they are coming home for dinner no need for the undue pressure to the fish

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Hooked fish will often immediately return to feeding; for example, and it is only a single personal experience/observation, but during the redfish tagging program I mentioned earlier, on one of our tagging outings, a very large redfish was caught, and it ultimately broke off, 20-30 minutes late one of the other fishermen hooked into another 'big one', which also broke off, again later, a third guy also caught, and broke off a big one. Not too much later, a fourth individual hooked a monster that fought like crazy for about 20 minutes. This guy was finally netted and taken to the tagging table, where it was discovered that it had three lures in its jaws! That fish had been caught FOUR times in less than 2 hours! This was all witnessed and acknowledged by five professional marine fisheries biologists who were involved with the project.

 

Granted, this may be a rare instance; but it does show that we really don't know that much about an individual fishes' behavioral response to such individual "assaults".

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Well perchjerker that is a really cool story about that red and i hope to target them one of these days but as previously mentioned trout are a very delicate fish, and from my 18 years of experience trout fishing i can say that nothing like that has ever happened with me most trout take one whack at a fly, feel the hook and dont come back.. ive never found a hook in a fishes mouth exept one time last year when i was fishing a small sesonal creek just a few miles from my house. it was me and a friend fishing for rainbows and brooks, we spotted a 14 inch rainbow at the next hole up so we took a few casts at it, the fish dident take the flys so we kept on moving up usually at this point we walk right up on them because this creek is in a sort of slot canyon and we cant really bypass the hole. when we walked up on him he dident budge so then my buddy noticed that he was attached to a downed log by fishing line and he was extremley skinny we where actually able to grab the line and pull the fish out of the water and we found that he was gut hooked by a single egg hook( barbed) we were able to remove the hook with our hemostats and release the fish. i came back to the creek a few days later to see the same fish in the same hole. i dident cast at him but from the look of it he was starting to recover.. this is something i will never forget and one reason i will always use barbless hooks on trout.

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Many years ago, while fishing the North Platte east of Encampment, Wy. at the junction of Douglas Creek, I cast to a rising trout that hit instantaneously. My reaction was also instantaneous and I jerked the fly out of its mouth. I immediately cast back to the same spot and immediately had a hit. I was a tad slower with my reaction this time, and brought a very feisty 10" brown to net. Unbeknownst to me, there was a couple on the mountain side a short distance above me who had stopped to watch as I made my first cast. He made two comments: 1) that it was the same fish that rose both times (from their vantage point, they coil see it in the water); and, 2) it was the best fish they had seen landed all day---they had been hiking the river from upstream. I personally cannot swear to it that it was the same fish. I can only attest to the fact that it came almost immediately after the first strike (you know, that instantaneous reflex action to get the fly right back to the same spot) and from the exact same spot.

 

As a (retired) fisheries biologist, I see no reason why a trout, if it misses on the first attempt, would not immediately make another attempt if the opportunity presented itself; especially if they were in a feeding mode. It is SOP amongst the large mouth bass fishers to immediately, if NOT sooner, get their bait right back to the exact same spot when they miss a strike, as, more often than not, the fish is still right there and more than willing to make a second attempt to get the bait. Therefore, I suspect that a second take attempt by a trout occurs more often than we think---just an educated guess on my part!

 

There is so much more to be learned about fish behavior, and so few dollars and so little time to gain it!

 

Regards,

Frank

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The only thing i could say about that is he probably didnt feel the hook which is why it came out of his mouth, furthermore brown trout tend to be much more agressive and much less weary (esp. at the sz. of ten inches) than rainbows, as they are actually a different species( not sub-species). Which would be like comparing bass with bluegill. The day someone posts or i hear a story of a rainbow caught with a hook in its mouth ill shut up..

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istripbuggers:

 

Please for give me if I come across as being arrogant (any of my friends and associates will assure you that I am not!), but you are preaching to the choir. I am a retired (retarded?) fisheries biologist with advanced degrees in the subject. So, I am well aware of the things you point out.

 

There is an alternative explanation for that fish's apparent 'second take', and one which is typically seen when fish are in a crowded environment, such as hatchery raceways and ponds, but can also be seen in the wild on occasion; that of "competitive feeding", where it is a case of 'grab it or go hungry'. This is the 'feeding frenzy' one sees when large predaceous fish attack schools of bait fish, or the hatchery attendant throws a handful of fish chow into the raceway or pond.

 

In my example, who knows? The point of the story is that, in spite of widely held beliefs that a fish won't hit a second time may, in fact, be a fallacy. As noted earlier, it is most unfortunate that we do not yet have all of the answers relative to fish behavior; but, we don't.

 

I do appreciate that fact that you brought your points out on this forum, as it and my response might help clarify things for others. We all learn from this kind of civil dialogue!

 

TIGHT LINES!

 

Frank

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I absolutly agree frank. im glad that these points have been brought up and there definatly is no one answer on the subject. and i wasnt trying to make you sound misinformed( or retarded) and that is once again a very valid point, and i still have alot to learn about these fish that i love. i think its decussions like this that help me and people who read this thread to do so so thanks for keeping it civil and also informitive.

-Miles

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I don't think we can say the very act of fishing kills fish.If that was the case, Coarse fishery owners in the UK would soon go out of business if twice weekly, 5hour long fishing matches plus the other 5 days of the week pleasure anglers meant the fish that are ALL c&r died.

I think that some species are more hardy than others. In a book I own from the 1940's tench are being moved from one water to another in wet newspaper. Carp and Tench can tolerate low levels of oxygen very well. Try that with a trout and its your lunch wrapped in the paper.

 

I am not against barbless hooks or C&R. 70% of my hooks must be B/L and 95% of my fish go back but I think B/L only rules do nothing to help the fish populations long term. That relies on better education of handling fish and people on the ground to police it. Which in the UK is impossible.

 

 

I think you are confusing individual fish with a fish population. Fishing does kill fish but the population survives because it is self renewing. That is why catch and release works.

 

It is also why there is no difference between the population effects of barbed and barbless hooks. The difference (.2%) is minor compared to the base mortality rate of being hooked.

 

http://tinyurl.com/cstlgko

 

"For flies and lures combined, mean hooking mortality was 4.5% for barbed hooks and 4.2% for barbless hooks."

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silvercreek...

 

Piker20 will have to respond for himself; but, I must point out that any population is built up of individuals; not the reverse, as your comment can be construed to mean. As the individuals tend to fare, so fares the population. Thus, the loss of a single individual can have a very definite negative impact on the overall population if the population is small, stressed due to lack of food, suitable reproductive sites, etc. Thus, one cannot summarily out of hand dismiss the potential for adverse impacts on the population due to an adverse impact on a single member of that population. Vide what happened to the passenger pigeon, what nearly happened to both the Whooping Crane, and the American Buffalo (bison). It was the decimation, one-by-one, of the individuals that took it's toll on the overall populations.

 

Your citation (link) is further evidence of the lack of need for, or fishery benefit from, barbless hook use limitations.

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My feeling would be the line. " Fishing does kill fish but the population survives because it is self renewing." may be true for wild trout in a stream or acres and acres of water where the removal of one is nothing in the scheme of things. BUT in a small water where C&R is the only method of fishing, ie competition waters, the population would not survive through self renewing due to the pressure applied day in day out 52 weeks of the year. As a commercial business these waters would be impotent.

Is it coincidence that on these waters the speed of retrieving and unhooking a fish is paramount and the handling time cut to the absolute minimum and these waters see lbs and lbs of fish caught and returned over and over with very little fatality.

 

I still think that trout thrive best in the low temperature regions and are not hardy when compared to other species of fish when handled. Which may also have a large impact on how the figures for trout look compared to the experience of non trout fish.

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Certainly different species could have different survival rates after hooking. However, studies of hooking mortality done in other fresh water fish and also salt water fish species have shown little difference in hooking mortality between barbed and barbless hooks. It is also independent of the fishing method: whether flies, hard lures like spinners, or live bait is used.

 

Here are published studies in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management of freshwater walleye pike, trout caught with spinners, and a salt water fishery.

 

Relative Hooking Mortality among Walleyes

 

"Anglers sometimes use alternatives or modifications to J-shaped hooks to reduce hooking mortality in fish that are caught with live baits and then released. One such modification, the removal of barbs, has been evaluated for several fish species but (barbless) has shown little promise for reducing hooking mortality. ……. This study illustrates how gear type can affect hooking mortality based on the amount of damage caused when the fish is caught and adds to the body of literature indicating that the removal of barbs from hooks does not increase fish survival."

 

Relative Hooking Mortality among Walleye

 

 

 

Effect of Hook Type on Wild Stream Trout Caught by Angling with Spinners

 

"This study assessed short-term (48-h) hooking mortality, eye damage, jaw injury, and capture efficiency of three species of wild stream trout caught on size-1 Mepps spinners having barbed or barbless treble or single hooks. …………. Barbless single hooks were quicker to remove than the other hook types, but the difference was insufficient to reduce mortality. Our results DO NOT indicate a biological advantage with the use of single- or barbless-hook spinners when caught wild stream trout will be released.

 

Effect of Hook Type on Mortality

 

 

Barbed and Barbless Hooks in a Marine Recreational Fishery

 

"In this fishery, barbless hooks probably did not reduce hooking mortality and conferred only slight benefits at the expense of reduced catches."

 

Performance of Barbed and Barbless Hooks

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