Fishing Etiquette: Trout Handling Best Practices - Flylords Mag

When practicing catch and release fishing, it’s important to note that different species require different handling practices. Compared to other game fish, trout are more fragile. Just take a look across social media, there’s a good chance you’ll come across #keepemwet. Aside from the obvious, keeping trout in the water, there are techniques that dramatically improve a fish’s survival odds. These eight practices are crucial parts of trout handling etiquette, promoting catch and release, and ensuring a healthy fishery for the future.

1. Wet Your Hands

All fish have a protective slime coating around their body. This coating serves as a barrier against pathogens in the water, enabling trout to stay healthy and disease-free. When wiped off, trout can be exposed to infection, fin rot, and other diseases. To prevent this, anglers should always wet their hands before touching a trout. By wetting your hands, the slime layer stays intact for a safe and healthy release. In addition, never handle trout with gloves on. Even wet gloves will rub off a substantial amount of a trout’s protective slime coating, leaving them susceptible to infection.

2. Use Barbless Hooks

Barbless hooks are essential for anglers practicing catch-and-release. If you’re new to fly fishing, we understand your hesitancy to switch to barbless hooks. But don’t worry, with proper technique, you’ll consistently land fish. The key is to keep constant pressure on the fish, ensuring the hook does not slip out.

The benefits of using barbless hooks are they do less damage to fish and are easier to remove. This is amplified when fishing big streamer patterns. We’ve all seen a fish missing half of its jaw. With big flies and big barbs, it can be challenging to safely remove the hook without injuring the fish. With barbless hooks, this is not the case. It is also worth noting that barbless hooks often give you better hookups. The barb on a standard hook can actually stop the hook point from penetrating. Whereas barbless hooks can be driven to the bend of the hook with much less pressure.

3. Keep Your Hands Out of the Mouth and Gills

Trout are inherently sensitive fish, especially around their mouth and gills. This means do NOT put your fingers in the fish’s mouth or gills. While it’s fine to lip some species of fish, like bass, it is best to keep your fingers out of a trout’s mouth because it puts unnecessary stress on the fish. Additionally, “lipping” a trout can damage its jaws as they are not designed to open like a bass. Even if they swim off strong, a damaged jaw for a trout is almost certainly a death sentence. Keep those hands on the body of the fish!

4. No Squeezing

Since trout have that slimy coating, they can be difficult to handle. Rather than squeezing the fish in order to get control of it, slide your hand underneath the fish and handle it by cradling it. Squeezing a trout will also result in the fish flopping around even more. Generally, the looser you hold a trout, the less it resists you and will allow you to revive it and snap a quick photo before the release. This is something you’ll get better at with time.

5. Keep Them Wet

Between the time the fish is taken out of the water and the time when the fish is released, the fish should be wet during the entire process. If you can, it is best to keep the fish in the water the entire time. But if you need to take the fish out for a quick picture, make sure to keep it quick! A good rule of thumb is to hold your breath, and once you feel the need to breathe, get the fish back in the water. After all, the trout basically finished running a marathon against you and needs to be in the water to recover. For more information on this, check out Keep Fish Wet.

6. Don’t Overplay the Fish

Fighting a fish can be a lot of fun, but prolonging the fight adds unnecessary stress to the fish. To help avoid this, use a stronger tippet and try to decrease the amount of time it takes to get the fish to the net. Proper rod angles and pressure will quickly tire out a trout. Again, the more fish you catch, the better you’ll get at this.

7. Use Fish Friendly Nets

Netting the fish is super important for keeping the fish in the water during the handling process, but some nets are better for the fish than others. It’s best to use a net with a rubber basket rather than a net with rope or other abrasive materials. Similar to wetting your hands before handling a fish, using a rubber net removes less of the fish’s protective slime, resulting in healthier released fish. Rubber nets also keep your flies from embedding in the netting, allowing you to get back to fishing rather than fighting the net to get your flies back.

8. Watch Water Temperatures

Trout need cold water to survive, so monitoring stream temperatures is important. The general cutoff point is 68 degrees. Anything above this, and you can follow every handling practice, have a fish swim off only to die in the near future. Carry a stream thermometer in your pack and check temperatures regularly. If you see temps creeping up, it’s time to put down the trout gear and target some warm-water species.

Get Out and Fish!

This is a short list of some of the most important trout handling practices. As anglers, we are always striving to improve our negative impact on fisheries and the greater world. In doing so, we can ensure healthy fisheries and a promising future for trout and the next generation of anglers.

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