Ice Fishing: Catch & Release

Video Transcript

"Let's talk now about catch and release fishing, and some tips and techniques for doing so. A lot of anglers these days do tend to release most of the fish they catch, and there's a few pointers that you always want to keep in mind when doing that. Now, one of the ways the fish protects itself from disease is to have essentially a slime layer, a mucous coat on the outside of that fish. So one thing, when you release a fish, that you want to do before you touch that fish is to lightly wet your hands. Obviously a more enjoyable task during the summer than the winter, but nonetheless it's important. So I'm going to get my hands wet so it doesn't take off that slimecoat. Then, again, I'm going to firmly hold that fish, get that hook out of there as fast as I can, and simply get the fish back in the water. Let it go. Time is of the essence. The longer that fish is out of the water, the longer it can't breathe. So you want to make sure, you know, you have maybe, ten, fifteen, twenty seconds, but you want to get that fish back in, especially during the winter. A day like this, it's sunny out, but the air temperature's below freezing."