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17 January 2005
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Barbless Vs Barbed hooks for grayling?
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After my own primitive but pleasing research, reading several articles, fisheries reports and have just come of the phone to a marine biologist in England, all studies have suggested there is a difference between the survival of fish caught with barbless and barbed hooks, especially when it comes to grayling.
The studies were almost all made with grayling with a few specimens of brown trout and rainbow trout, using small trout flies ranging from size 14 to 24. Moreover, on the studies made with grayling, the fish were caught only once rather than repeatedly.
The studies measured on survival and mortality of hooked grayling, without assessing the non-fatal damage done by hook removal. Damage to grayling, not survival, is the main reason we should use barbless hooks.
Now that catch-and release is more popular and the most rewarding fishing waters are those that force the release of grayling with special limits, the chances that grayling will suffer hook injuries are much greater having a softer more delicate mouth tissue than the trout. Any successful angler who routinely fishes heavily fished waters, for example, will catch many badly injured salmonids. Last spring, I estimate more than 30 percent of my catch at the Kings river (Kongeå), had missing, bleeding, and/ or baldly torn jawbones and tissues. About 20 per cent of grayling I caught were with badly distorted and disfigured mouths.
A few damaged grayling were carrying hooks that someone had clearly cut off the leader at the hook. The unremoved hooks were fairly deep in the gullets of these grayling and blocked any possibility that the fish could have eaten successfully. Many of the hook-bearing grayling were thin an obviously food-deprived. Most of these hooks could have been successfully removed. I removed few, but removing these hooks would have been much easier and less damaging if they were barbless.
Throughout the spring of 2004, I had seen one or two nice Kings grayling float by, belly up -- wasted for either food or future angling enjoyment. Some of these grayling might have lived if the anglers had used more care in handling and/or barbless hooks.
2003 / 2004, I witnessed anglers from France, Belguim and Holland using worms with treble hooks, wrenching hooks out of small grayling and trout and throwing them back. On some similar waters these fish may be caught repeatedly. My fishing partners, clients and I, believe we caught several of the same grayling and trout when we returned to a hot spot on a following day.
Barbless hooks reduce damage to mouth and throat tissues when hooks are removed. They also make the removal process much easier, allowing short-shanked hooks to be reversed out with needle-nosed pliers, and letting anglers carefully go through the gill slit to reverse long-shanked worm hooks caught fairly deep in the throat. The finding of two reports is that grayling are usually more likely to survive if even deeply taken hooks are removed. Don't cut leaders unless you have no choice, and if you must leave a hook in a grayling, leave a foot or more of the leader outside the fish to let it feed normally while recovering and eliminating the hook naturally?
Experienced anglers will know that barbs on hooks require harder hooks sets, and grayling have very soft mouth tissue. I have seen many anglers strike a fish with amazing force, one angler last year lifted his rod so hard that the small fish actually left the water, became airborne and landed behind him. Grayling anglers will more easily hook with barbless hooks.
I use them much of the time, and lose very few grayling or trout in the process. There are drawbacks, however. Each sportsman angler must make his choices. Decide for yourself when the health of the fish and the fishery is more important than slightly increasing your own fishing success. Quality is better than quantity especially if you want your children and their children to enjoy this wonderful sport.
Comprehensive research shows the risk of injury to grayling is reduced with the use of barbless hooks. A barb disrupts more flesh going in as well as coming out. The open wound is an entry point for pathogens.
Hooks sometimes cause injury in places other than the mouth. A hook buried in a fin or the fish's muscle can better be removed if there is no barb.
Even a grayling hooked in the eye can survive if hooks are barbless. The eye will be lost, but studies have shown trout can function with only one eye. Salmonids have remarkable senses consisting of touch, smell, sight, and hearing. As long as structures and veins around the eye are not damaged, the grayling can live.
But hook injury that causes substantial bleeding in any area but the mouth indicates the fish is badly wounded and likely will not survive. Reports have concluded that hooks in the gills are always fatal with the fish dying within six hours after release.
· ON THE WATER — Pinch the barbs, particularly on smaller hooks that are more easily ingested, or hooks constructed so that they penetrate deeply.
· Any hook buried in a part of the fish that could cause significant injury if removed should be left.
· A hook in a throat will not hinder the fish and will rust away or be expelled in a short time. Pulling a deeply embedded hook free will almost certainly kill the fish, even if the hook is barbless.
· In lakes, steams and rivers where retention of fish is not allowed, anglers need to take extra care to ensure hooks do not cause lethal injury.
· Fish are built to live in water, where the effect of gravity is virtually nonexistent. As a result, their organs and skeletal systems are not able to support their weight out of water.
· A fish grabbed from underneath and lifted out of the water by a well meaning angler can quickly suffer lethal internal injury. The potential for injury increases as fish increase in size.
· As well, fish that are removed from the water cannot breath. A temporary lack of oxygen isn't fatal, — just like humans; fish can survive short times without fresh oxygen.
· But when people go swimming, they do not fill their lungs with water and expel it later, he says. That's what being pulled into the air is like for a fish.
· The delicate gills are not properly supported when they are out of water and often cling or stick together. Prolonged periods out of water can damage gills permanently.
· And fish are most in need of oxygen at the end of a fight. Fish kept briefly out of water may not die, but could suffer brain damage as the result of lack of oxygen.
· ON THE WATER — Fish that are to be released should be netted, and the net kept in the water. Remove the hook and pull away the net to free the fish.
· If a fish is showing signs of exhaustion, it should be revived, by moving it lengthwise back and forth in the water, he says.
· The motion forces water across the gills, increasing the transfer of oxygen. With a big fish caught in warm shallow water, it may be necessary to spend two or three minutes giving resuscitation. A fish should never be released unless it can swim away under its own power.
· If you want to take a picture of a fish, be ready. The person with the camera shouldn't spend long times focusing and getting set as the fish waits out of water.
· The fish should be well supported, quickly lifted, then returned to the water within two or three seconds. Ideally, the picture can be taken with the fish mostly in the water.
On the grand scale, there is no doubt that catch and release is good for fish. Sport anglers who release portions of their catch keep populations of vulnerable fish species from being quickly depleted.
Catch and release allows ever increasing numbers of anglers to continue chasing fish, in places where the harvest of fish cannot be supported.
But catch and release is not without risk to fish.
There is no guarantee a sport-caught fish will survive, despite the best intentions of those holding the rod. Even in ideal conditions, biologists believe five per cent of released grayling or trout die — out of sight and long after being put back in the water. But that’s no excuse. The percentage of dead fish resulting from catch and release is lower than fish taken by predatory animals.
Enough said…
Tight lines and a knot free leader
Ripley Davenport
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