Leaving fish on the ice and going home?

[Ringtailhunter]

Here is a situation I don't understand, at the end of the fishing day my son will usually go out to where portables have been and come back with one or two fish abandoned on the ice, what is the thinking process behind this, are they leaving the fish for me?

We do take them home and clean them. Should I just put a sign on my permy stating we will take the one or two fish worth throwing on the ice but aren't enough to take home?

[jBohmer]

I am frustrated by this as well but this situation allowed me quite a show yesterday. I was sitting out on the St. Croix yesterday when I saw a bald eagle fly over and perch on a near by tree. A little while later I looked at tree and saw the bird had gone. I then looked out of the front of my protable and saw the bird about 70 yds. ahead of me standing on the ice. He was obviously eating something so I just wathced him for some time, I think over 20 minutes. When I noticed he was gone I went for a stroll where I had saw him. He was sitting in a spot where someone was fishing and had left a fish in one of there holes. It was half frozen belly up. The eagle had eaten every part that was not totally frozen in the ice. It was kind of neat thing to watch. I would not leave fish on the ice just for this, it just goes to show that it is not always a waste.

[Jack Peterson]

It's a pretty dumb thing to do...I see it happen all the time when people are fishing for Crappies in 35-50 feet of water. Idiots don't realize that they have a limit of dead fish already, and they keep pulling up more. Hmm...I've seen many frozen crappies sticking out of ice holes. If you plan on fishing in deep water, you have to be willing to keep what comes out of the hole.

[MJ1657]

There are more people out there then we think that have no ethics, sportsmanship etc.... It's interesting to see the different view points and heated discussion at times on there boards. The bottom line though is I think 99% of the people on here are good sportsman and try to do the right thing. Unfortunately we are probably only 1% of the people out on the lakes.

Only thing we can do is try to educate as many people as we can on ethical fishing and sportsmanship.

[uptracker]

I caught 8 big jumbo perch the other day and two that were under 4". The problem is, I was fishing 50 feet down and as soon as they exit the hole, their swim bladder pushes through their mouth and they won't go back down. Since the legal limit was 7", I had to leave the two undersize fish or the eagles, or fox. I know it sounds bad, but there's not much I can do about it.

Just something to think about...

I know you can fizz larger fish, but if anybody has a tip on tiny fish, let me know.

[Dry_Fly]

IMO you have to slow down a bit and take your time reeling these fish up from these depths or they will die everytime. I see it happen all the time on Lake of the Woods with Saugers in 30' of water. When fishing with someone new I have to tell them to slow your retrieval down almost everytime. What's wrong is when people don't like keeping them as part of their limit and disguard them on the ice or in the snow. I understand the problem with the slot size makes it real tough on people keeping these. Just need to slow down pulling fish from these depths is all.

[fish2morrow]

IMO you have to slow down a bit and take your time reeling these fish up from these depths or they will die everytime. Just need to slow down pulling fish from these depths is all.

Good info. I'll keep that in mind next time I fish. Though I've never left any fish before, but have left pliers.

[Ed Carlson]

I was told by a DNR freshwater fisheries biologist reeling them up stow has no positive effect on deep water fish like perch, panfish, or walleye in relieving or preventing air blander bloat. As he explained it to me you would need to reel them up about 2 hours or more at slow intervals to balance the pressure out effectively, depending on the depth they come from.

The only fish that I know of that can quickly adjust there pressure quickly is the Lake Trout and the sturgeon, as they can somehow belch out the pressure and expel the bloat.

[Crappyfisherman]

I was wondering if you bring them up slow and thier swim bladders are still showing could you put them in a bucket of water and wait till the presure equalizes? Ijust hate seeing fish die for no reson.

[brian6715]

I was wondering if you bring them up slow and thier swim bladders are still showing could you put them in a bucket of water and wait till the presure equalizes? Ijust hate seeing fish die for no reson.

My advice is to try to find fish in shallower water. Problem solved! Or as stated before, plan to keep EVERY thing comes up the hole.

[TruthWalleyes]

Sooo your trying to tell me that reeling slow still kills em...

20 fow and deeper, I reel slow enough to bend the spring bobber (I Rarely care if the hook comes out since i'm 99% C&R anyway, yes i lose some fish) and not much more. If the fish is bigger than they'll bend the pole as they're fighting, but i'm never horse'n them up....

Then i put them back in the hole...and they swim down on their own strength....THEN...i watch them slowly swim down to the bottom again on my marcum.....

You're telling me that these fish are dying? Doubt it

I'm sure there are many opinions on that fish that swam back to the bottom dying though, but doubt any facts.

I will agree 100% that you can reel them in fast enough to kill them...but disagree that they are all dead from depths greater than 20'

[LightningBG]

Truthwalleyes, I think they're just saying, there isn't much that can be done to prevent the swim bladder from coming out. Now if it never came out in the first place, then it's perfectly plausible that those fish that you caught are back down there living just fine.

[Walleye Guy]

I was told by a pretty reputable guide that once you start pulling fish up through the water more than 33 ft. you will have problems with swim bladders. Has to do with the change in atmospheric pressure and it unrelated to the time it takes to reel them up. You can certainly get some of the fish to go under the ice. Use your underwater camera to see how many of these fish are floating against the bottom of the ice. The swim bladder in those fish may go down over time and some of them may be just fine.

I would recommend that if you are strictly catch and release, that you focus on fish in shallower water. If the fish in deep water and you are catching the species and the size that you want to keep, catch a limit and go home or move to shallow water and focus on a different species.

[timjones]

I was wondering if you bring them up slow and thier swim bladders are still showing could you put them in a bucket of water and wait till the presure equalizes? Ijust hate seeing fish die for no reson.

Equalizing the pressure isn't going to help the fish. Once the bladder expands it damages the fishes other organs to the point that the fish will die either soon or in the next several weeks.

[motley man]

I've heard about using a small needle to puncture the bladder. Has anyone heard or done this to get them down.? I've seen it done on marlin & other fish on ocean fishing shows.

[daylate]

I'm reading alot of opinions, and see very little facts. I would love to hear from someone with the credentials to set us straight.

[bak2MN]

What about stop fishing when you have your limit. If a fish dies and don't swim away it is counted as part of your limit. Ethics?

[PurpleFloyd]

What about stop fishing when you have your limit. If a fish dies and don't swim away it is counted as part of your limit. Ethics?

That just might be crazy enough to work.

[goblueM]

Well "fizzing", piercing the swim bladder with a needle or knife, has been shown not to be beneficial. There is a lack of clarity in the literature, with some studies finding that "fizzing" results in more fish swimming away, others finding that there's really not much you can do once a fish suffers barotrauma.

One confusing factor is the definition of "release". Many studies come from angler reported data, or scientists that lack the resources(money, time) to actually determine the survival of wild-caught fish.

Unfortunately, just because a fish swims away after fizzing doesn't mean that it is going to survive. These fish with severe barotrauma have internal bleeding, messed up organs, and some heavy duty stress. Kind of like if we took a scuba diver with a bad case of the bends, and then fizzed him and tossed him back in the water.

This is from a paper reviewing studies of barotrauma by Wilde at Texas Tech: "fish that are unable

to submerge after release have poor survival prospects. Fish

that cannot submerge are subject to predation (Collins 1996;

Keniry et al. 1996; Overton et al. 2008), stress from high surface

water temperatures (Shasteen and Sheehan 1997; Bettoli

and Osborne 1998), and injury due to sun exposure (Keniry et

al. 1996) and being struck by boats (Gravel and Cooke 2008).

Although fish that can swim away or submerge commonly are

considered to have survived catch and release (e.g., Gitschlag

and Renaud 1994), this assumption is largely untested and there

is some evidence that the ability to swim away is unrelated to

survival (Bettoli and Osborne 1998; St. John and Syers 2005).

Additionally, fish suffering barotrauma often exhibit atypical

behavior (Gotshall 1964; Hannah and Matteson 2007; Gravel

and Cooke 2008), which can adversely affect survival"

Bottom line is that these fish can swim off looking ok, but they don't have a very good chance for survival. Here's an interesting study reviewing non-fizzed bass survival after barotrauma. Interesting to note that all the fish were considered to be live releases, yet there was pretty significant mortality attributed to barotrauma

http://www.carleton.ca/fecpl/pdfs/NAJFM-Gravel%202008.pdf

This study used radio telemetry to track smallmouth caught in a tournament on Rainy Lake. They found that 40% of of fish with severe barotrauma (eg bloating, hemorraging) died after 5 days, they didn't monitor past that time period, so long term mortality is unknown. By the way, they observed 0% mortality in fish with no trauma.

http://www.tccycling.com/misc/M09-013.pdf

This study looked at fish caught in the St. Lawrence at varying depths... mortality from barotrauma started with fish caught at about 6 meters (20 feet) and got worse the deeper they went. Interestingly enough, they reported fish looking normal, but then when they stopped swimming their symptoms appeared - the authors mentioned that detecting the effects of barotrauma are difficult, and even fish that looked normal upon observation quickly died. They didn't try fizzing, however, just releasing the fish with a downward momentum to help them get back to depth

Long report by Ontario MNR on smallmouth: http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/stdprodconsume/groups/lr/@mnr/@letsfish/documents/document/226950.pdf#page=55

[slipperybob]

Just unhook the fish while it's still in the water in the hole...

[zamboni]

Jack Peterson- your pup is almost too cute. Sorry, guys- had to get that out.

[Fisherman45]

I saw a couple of eagles flying low and circling around a group of ice houses last weekend on Chisago they would land and try to pull the frozen fish off the ice and out of half frozen holes.

[FISHINGURU]

I've heard about using a small needle to puncture the bladder. Has anyone heard or done this to get them down.? I've seen it done on marlin & other fish on ocean fishing shows.

Yes sir, I use a small needle to poke a hole in the swim bladder.

The reason they leave the fish behind is because they catch a couple with the intentions to keep some fish but then they don't catch anymore and don't want to deal with only a couple fish. Thats why I don't keep fish very often or when I decide to I have to be hammering them.

Something eats the fish eventually so it's not really a waste just. Some animal, bird, fish, turtle, ect, will eat it.

[MN BassFisher]

I feel like I've had success with slow reeling them from like 30ft. Crappies that is, if you reeled them up quickly they would get to the hole, sometimes with eyes bulging and they wouldn't swim or have any life upon release. If you took a minute and reeled them up, they wouldn't ever have bulging eyes, and had plenty of life when you put them back in the hole.

[bikeoutback]

Isn't it illegal though? I thought there was a wonton waste law in the dnr regs that prohibited this type of behavior. Last time I went out I caught one crappie within 3 minutes of getting my line down and it was large enough to keep so I threw it on the ice. 1.5 hours later no more fish up the hole. Cleaned one fish that night cause I figured I didn't have any other choice and I don't mind adding one more to the freezer for a fish fry.