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Posts: 30
| Caught a nice Minnesota 40" musky today on a Sucker. Got good hooks in her only in the jaw nothing in the gills and I have a Big Kauna and all the proper tools to keep her minimally out of the water! It was like every other catch for me with pull the hooks and let her set in the net until we are ready for pics Then a quick photo and bumb board then back in! But unfortunately I don't think she was going to make it! Stayed with her boatside for a really long time and tipped her every way to see if there was air in there and nothing helped! Just really frustrating because this has never happen to me before and I would never even keep a legal fish so a good release is very important to me so always take extra care and have all the tools to safely release! Just looking for any advice on what else I could have done! Thanks |
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Posts: 213
Location: FIB land | Even though she's in the net we need to be sure her head is under water also . |
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Location: Green Bay, WI | Other than stay home (ie; not fish), I don't know of anything else that you could do. Certainly, like Don stated, we need to make sure the fish's head/gills is in the water when they are in the net. All too often it seems, I see catches on YouTube where the anglers get a big fish in the next and then congratulate one another...while the lure's hooks are caught in the net and the fish's head is out of the water. It's like a person running a race and then, as soon as they cross the finish line, someone shoves their head into a water barrel. I'm not at all saying you did that mind you--just commenting on what Don stated. As for your fish, if the water temperature was sufficiently cool so that the dissolved oxygen (DO) level was adequate, then keeping the fish in the water should be sufficient.
Was there much blood loss from the fish? One thing we can do is to minimize any trauma that we cause to the fish's mouth and gill area, to minimize blood loss. Fish don't have a whole lot of extra blood volume to lose, so anything we can do to prevent blood loss is going to help them recover from the catch. There have also been a few papers in the literature about cardiac and electrolyte (blood chemistry) abnormalities as the potential cause of post-catch mortality in fishes, but I haven't read anything conclusive. I need to review the literature again this winter, because I haven't followed it for a couple of years. But the *only* thing I do differently than most people is to fish with barbless hooks, to minimize the risk of trauma to the fish and attempt to minimize blood loss for both the fish and myself. And we could have a discussion about that aspect of fishing, but that's probably best left for another thread.
Look...the bottom line is that sometimes, no matter what we do as anglers, a fish is going to die after the catch. I think this is somewhat analogous to saying that in a given population of humans, some wouldn't make it after being forced to run a race (essentially) for their lives. We don't know the underlying baseline health state of a fish, other than that they were healthy enough to try feeding on our lure--but you could argue that is only their instinct driving them. You can only choose not to eat for only so long before your instinct starts to drive you towards feeding. Unless there's something wrong with your mental faculty, you're going to do what you need to do if someone sets a plate of food in front of you when you're starving. A musky likely isn't much different, so the fact that they were "healthy enough to bite" doesn't indicate to me that they necessarily "healthy." So maybe the fish that don't survive the angling event are simply sick or otherwise compromised in some way, and we simply don't understand it yet? I don't know. But I wouldn't beat yourself up about it--it sounds like you did everything you could to prevent it.
It's a great topic for a thread, because we can all learn something from these types of discussions.
TB
Edited by tcbetka 10/16/2017 8:26 AM
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Posts: 3469
Location: Elk River, Minnesota | Hiya,
Once in a great while this type of issue just happens...
Without knowing details of things or being there to see, I'd find it really hard to make any comment about was done wrong.. I'm assuming best intent here on your part for the fish.
I had a pike do this once on me as well... short fight, but upon release it just would not go... good 20 minutes but no good. About the only saving grace in that scenario was the eagle watching and getting dinner shortly after I gave up...
Steve
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Posts: 833
| This type of thread pops up every so often on here. I agree with and practice that we should be doing all we can to keep the fish alive, including not taking it out of the water for a photo if it is a particularly stressful encounter.
That being said, a guy on here in one of these threads awhile back made the comment "it is a contact sport" and he was right. All you can do is make sure you are using best practices. At some point though, the more you catch, the more likely you'll hit that rare moment where you'll lose one. |
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Posts: 859
Location: MN | Sounds like you did what you could. Bottom line if you fish you kill fish. This time you saw it. Anyone who says they have never killed a fish is delusional or doesn't catch many fish. I may not have seen it but I have little doubt that some fish that have swam away didn't make it for some reason or another. |
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Posts: 20179
Location: oswego, il | I caught one two weeks ago that took about 45 minutes before it swam off. Kept her in the net while i cut hooks to get the bait out of the net., not hooked bad but she would not let me grab her and kept digging her head where the bait was so i had to take the time to get the bait out first. Even though she stayed head in the water, she didn't swim off for a very long time. Sometimes they just die on you for no reason before you ever take them out of the net.
Edited by ToddM 10/16/2017 8:26 AM
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Location: Grand Rapids, MI | Teamemmajo - 10/15/2017 10:12 PM Stayed with her boatside for a really long time and tipped her every way to see if there was air in there and nothing helped! Can you describe what the fish was doing? Was the fish just resting on the surface or was it turning belly up? What were the conditions like as far as waves? |
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Posts: 8719
| Caught one on a short cast a few years ago that didn't fight at all. Hooks came out in the net, fish never moved. No blood, no damage, fish was relatively fat and healthy looking. Picked it up, quick pic, back in the water, nothing. 15 minutes later it finally swam off, but I've never been confident that it survived. My only explanation is there must have been something wrong with it to begin with. I guess that happens. |
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Posts: 51
| Like others have said, unfortunately you fish long enough, you're going to lose a fish. I would love for someone to come up with a two minute sedative you could give the fish once landed.... |
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Location: Green Bay, WI | Well, a sedative might be great...but about 5 minutes of 100% oxygen might be nice as well. There are those oxygen additives that the bass & walleye guys use in their live wells, but I don't know how well they work--and you would really need to be able to have a large enough live well to comfortably hold the fish, but then also the water would need to be cooled enough so that its oxygen solubility is increased enough to absorb all the extra oxygen you're trying to add.
TB
EDIT: Just found this Catch and Release Calming Livewell Additive on the Bass Pro Shop website. Anyone ever try this for either bass or walleye?
http://www.basspro.com/shop/en/catch-and-release-calming-livewell-a...
Edited by tcbetka 10/17/2017 3:30 PM
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Posts: 30
| Thanks for all the feedback! Will, The conditions were good with no heavy waves, not a long drawn out fight and 55 degree water temps. It keeped wanting to roll over through the reviving! Thanks again for helping me learn as much as possible to protect these awesome Fish that we all have a great passion for!!!! |
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Location: Grand Rapids, MI | Sounds like a barotrauma issue. Though a muskie has the ability to exchange gasses in their swim bladder the stress of being caught seems to impact this ability. Perhaps there is too much going on in their pea size brain to be able to burp and struggle to get free at the same time. From my experience it doesn't have to be a fish that came up from deep water, I've had problems with fish caught from as shallow as 12'. |
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Posts: 113
Location: Shoreview, MN | I think a very important factor that I've not heard discussed is not just keeping them in the net in the water (and head in the water...duh) but keeping them UPRIGHT. It seems that if they go side-ways or belly-up while in the net, even for a short period of time, it can make for a long recovery no matter how little time they spent out of the water. Rather than try to handle/hold them upright (by the tail etc..) while releasing, I'll put them back in the net and use the net to keep them upright and let them recover. You can easily leave them in there a long time (30+ min) and then when recovered ease them out without handling them. It does kinda suck that it takes away from your fishing time... but the alternative is a dead fish.
Edited by MNSteveH 10/23/2017 3:47 PM
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