Gut Buster

[FrontenacPike]

I have a question for all my FM friends.

When fishing deep water and you bring a fish up too fast, you often see their air sack in their mouth. Is he doomed or will he eventually deflate it and survive. When ever I hook a fish from the deep I always do my best to bring them up slow to avoid this, but sometimes it inevitable no matter how slow I bring em up.

Does anybody know if the fish lives or what he does after being released to deflate his air sack?

[TurnUpTheFishing]

From what Ive hear there is a good chance that fish is dead. There is something called fizzing. I believe you stick a hypodermic needle into its air bladder before releasing but Ive heard lots of mixed reviews on whether it actually works.

I try my best not to fish deep water unless I want fish to eat. When I do. I dont do any sorting.

[polarsusd81]

I have heard of fizzing as well, but like TUTF said, mixed reports on it. I heard of guys doing it on Mille Lacs last year with walleyes on the mud and they told me it helped with the fish mortality they witnessed. Not really recommending it though as I have no first hand experience with it.

Anytime I bring anyone new out on the ice and we are fishing 12 fow or more, I let them know about the air bladder problem when bringing fish up fast. Anytime I am fishing deep water, I do all that I can to slowly ease a fish up, keeping enough tension on them to not loose the hook of course. Play em, have some fun, and put em back.

Tom

[Deitz Dittrich]

I am not an expert on this.. but even if the fish goes down the hole, it will die soon...Your better off keeping it and having it be a part of your limit..

[FrontenacPike]

If that is the case, they all die, I really feel bad for what I've witnessed others doing on the ice. I do everything I can, and even loose fish because I'm so careful not to horse em up. I personally have lost countless fish because I'm extremely careful not to wanton waste. I've watched so many people power in their fish and toss em back in, it's starting to make me sick. If this is true, why hasn't the DNR / anybody made this common knowledge amongst fisherman.

[PerchJerker]

I believe Deitz is correct, even if the fish is able to swim away it is almost sure to die.

Regarding fizzing, I think most of fish biologists and other experts in that field recommend not doing it, as you are most likely killing the fish anyway. The majority of the "success" stories are not true.

[GoFish4]

I thought that as long as the bag was in tact and not ruptured that some could survive......from what I see posted that is not correct?? What do you do with the little perch from winni/ml when you are fishing 25+ fow?

[polarsusd81]

GoFish4

You just have to bring em up slow, as long as you don't crank em from 25 feet below to the surface in two seconds, you can usually get them to swim away. If you lose a small one because you were bringing it up slow to release it anyway, is it really a loss? Not in my book.

[PerchJerker]

 Originally Posted By: GoFish4

What do you do with the little perch from winni/ml when you are fishing 25+ fow?

I perch fish a lot and bring my fish up slow, it's not very often I have one with an expanding air bladder. Most of the fish I release swim away immediately. Occasionally I have a fish that stays in the hole for a few seconds and then swims away.

If we have small perch that don't go back down the hole, we keep them, count them as part of our limit, and clean them.

[TNFL]

 Quote:

If you lose a small one because you were bringing it up slow to release it anyway, is it really a loss? Not in my book.

I agree, shortly after hook-set you should be able to determine if its a larger fish or a smaller fish. I've kept a few 7-8 inch crappies that don't swim down, you can get eat-able fillets if you know what you're doing. I just don't like the idea of waste.

[slipperybob]

tiny fishes,,, they're northern fodder...

[blackdog1101]

Wow, I've been fishing for nearly 40 years and never knew this. Why isn't this talked about more? Most of my fishing experience is in streams and rivers, so I've never had the issue come up before. But I've been returning quite a few crappies and sunnies this ice season, and now I'm wondering if they made it.

[ozzie]

If they took off healthy they should have no problem surviving....I never really pay attention to how fast I reel in fish from deeper water but I know that majority of the fish go back pretty fast and are still swimming strong when they leave my sight.....I would guess that if they go down on their own power they will survive...if it takes an ice scoop to get them under the ice they will most likely become bait for cruising northerns!!

[Wanderer]

I'm more or less with ozzie on this one.

I try to be careful with the fish I bring up from deep water. Sometimes the bladder comes out to the mouth and sometimes not. If I don't want to keep the fish, I unhook it immediately and release it nose down so any effort the fish makes to swim takes it deeper instead of into the side of the hole. I NEVER force one down the hole.

The ones that don't make it in short order are kept and counted.

I've only caught crappies this year in deep water. When I've released them, I've actually marked the swimmers on my Vex go all the way back down to the school they came from.

I've found that you usually have just a few seconds to get them back in the water though before they start exploding.

[Coach1310]

I think this is a tough point to be "speculating" on. I for one, don't know. None of us on this forum want to waste a fish or intentionally harm a fishery. If a fish doesn't swim away on its own, I keep it. If it swims back down the hole, even with its air sack visible I assume it is fine. Not sure if I a right in doing this, but it would be great if anyone had some good, solid information on the subject.

[Scott K]

For me I avoid deep water for this exact reason. I 99% of the time C&R, so the release isnt as rewarding when you release them and they die! If I am out for meat, I will fish any depth to get fish, and not sort much if I dont have to. Also if Im sitting on a hot bite, and practicing C&R I wont sit in the spot and nail fish for ever. Even if you release them carefully in shallow water chances are 1 out of 10 will die, if you C&R 100 fish a day on a hot bite you kill 10 fish a day!

[Craig Plummer]

sounds like some made up stats to me....Is there any conclusive facts or reports on this stuff?

[polarsusd81]

Craig, he did say that chances are 1 out of 10 die, not saying there is scientific evidence of such. It depends a lot on how the fish are handled, thats pretty much all there is to it. We shouldn't have to put handle with care stickers on fish, that should be common knowledge.

[ozzie]

Why are 1 out 10 fish dying from a shallow water bite.....if you are paying attention the hook shouldn't be deep enough for them to swallow and it should be a quick unhook release....last year in the month of Dec I personally caught well over 700 crappies out of 22-30ft depths and I can honestly that all but maybe 5 swam away with no problem and they were all caught in the top of the mouth.......the other 5 are in my belly!!

[Scott K]

I personally dont have any data to back them numbers up, but I gave numbers on the conservitive side of dnr estimates, most of them that I have seen have been in the 30%-60% mortality range. I was just throwing out a # you can do the math. There would be alot of things that would effect them #s such as water depth, water temp,size of the hook, hook mortality, how gentle and quick the catch and release was, ect... The best you can do is just use comon sense!

If you are on a hot walleye bite and you catch 100 walleyes, you keep 4 of them, and continue to catch until the bite goes dead. You will kill alot more then the 4 you are bringing home with you!

[Scott M]

Guys, do not puncture air bladders!!!

Here is the scoop:

Most fish (with some exceptions like sculpins) have air bladders, also called gas bladders. They are used to allow the fish to achieve neutral buoyancy, kind of like how a diver uses weights and breathing to achieve neutral buoyancy. A fish uses its neutral buoyancy to be able to stay at any dept it wants by letting gas into and out of the bladder, like inflating or deflating a balloon.

There are two different types of gas bladders in fish. One is physostomous, the more primitive gas bladder and the other is physoclistous in more recently derived fishes.

Fish with physostomous air bladders take gas into their bladders using their mouths. These are the fish that ‘gulp’ air. To let out air, they just burp it out. They have this great little pneumatic duct that lets air in and out, and quickly. Examples of this kind of fish are catfish, trout and salmon, pike, bowfin, sturgeon, minnows, suckers, and eels. These fish often burp out gases when you bring them up. I’ve seen this in the spring when pulling up sturgeon and also when on the ice and pulling up lakers.

Physoclistous gas bladders, however, do not open to the mouth, so the fish has to let gas in and out of the bladder using a very complex little patch of blood vessels that absorb or let go of gases from the blood (and then from the gills). Fishes with these bladders include bass, perch, walleyes, and sunfish. When you pull up deep caught summer bluegills, or ice a nice walleye from a deep hole, you often get that bladder bulging out of the mouth…You have to really take those fish up slow if they are coming from deep water; they just cannot burp out gases and so they cannot change depths quickly.

[The Hammer]

I know that when scuba diving and you are at a certain depth down if you come up too fast you can get what is called the benz. When this happens you have to be in a decompression chamber. When people scuba over a certain depth (I believe 60 ft) you have to decompress at 15 ft for a few minutes then you can come up to the surface. I think when you pull fish too fast this can happen to them in some sort of way. I know sometimes their eyes pop out of their heads too.

[Scott M]

Same scenario Hammer. I think you mean "the bends" or decompression sickness.

Haven't seen the eye thing, maybe I'm not fishing deep enough.

[Wanderer]

I've seen the eye thing twice this year but can't hardly recall seeing much before. Definite keeper no matter what size.

[irishwalleye]

The MRS asked about this while we were fishing this weekend and she had a pretty good follow up question that I couldnt answer.

Does this still happen during the summer months also or do we just fish deeper in the winter?