Nicholas Cole
Senior Member
Evening All
Thought some of ou might like to share your views on acceptable behaviour when it comes to the practice of resting and re-resting barbel for the purposes of weighing and photographing.
In the past few seasons I have become increasingly concerned about keeping a big barbel out of the water for more than a short period so my 'process' is as follows;
1. Get lucky and net big barbel
2. before removing from the water, rest barbel in upright position in net
3. Whilst resting, set up scales and camera if needed
4. Using Prologc quick release attachment, remove net from pole
5. remove fish from water and unhook whilst in net (sometimes too tricky to unhook in the water)
6. Weigh net (now well soaked) and fish together
7. Pick up fish and fire off a couple of self-takes with camera remote control
8. Return fish in net to water
9. rest fish in upright position in the flow until ready to go
10. Release fish
11. Weigh sodden net and deduct weight from total at above.
It's taken longer to type that than to actually do it, barring the resting periods and I've given up ith the sling approach as it was just another time consuming action .
The reason for relating all that is that I recently saw an angler (no names) who wanted to weigh and photograph his fish go through a process of putting the fish in a sling to weigh it, back in the river to re-rest it, taking it out for a photo then re-resting it, taking it out again for another set of photos and then finally resting it before release. The fish was uharmed by its experience as it was recaptured a couple of days later but I did think that it was all a bit excessive and suggested to the captor that it was high time it went back after the second set of snaps.
We could of course simply unhook fish in the net and slip them back (or, ultimately not fish for them at all) if we wanted to take best care of them but i acknowledge that weighing and photographing is an important part of captures for a lot of us.
So, finally, assuming that the fish as to leave the water once for a brief time for hook removal etc, my question is: How many times would you regard as an acceptble number for re-resting fish (ie dipping it back in the river and then taking it out again) before final release?
Thought some of ou might like to share your views on acceptable behaviour when it comes to the practice of resting and re-resting barbel for the purposes of weighing and photographing.
In the past few seasons I have become increasingly concerned about keeping a big barbel out of the water for more than a short period so my 'process' is as follows;
1. Get lucky and net big barbel
2. before removing from the water, rest barbel in upright position in net
3. Whilst resting, set up scales and camera if needed
4. Using Prologc quick release attachment, remove net from pole
5. remove fish from water and unhook whilst in net (sometimes too tricky to unhook in the water)
6. Weigh net (now well soaked) and fish together
7. Pick up fish and fire off a couple of self-takes with camera remote control
8. Return fish in net to water
9. rest fish in upright position in the flow until ready to go
10. Release fish
11. Weigh sodden net and deduct weight from total at above.
It's taken longer to type that than to actually do it, barring the resting periods and I've given up ith the sling approach as it was just another time consuming action .
The reason for relating all that is that I recently saw an angler (no names) who wanted to weigh and photograph his fish go through a process of putting the fish in a sling to weigh it, back in the river to re-rest it, taking it out for a photo then re-resting it, taking it out again for another set of photos and then finally resting it before release. The fish was uharmed by its experience as it was recaptured a couple of days later but I did think that it was all a bit excessive and suggested to the captor that it was high time it went back after the second set of snaps.
We could of course simply unhook fish in the net and slip them back (or, ultimately not fish for them at all) if we wanted to take best care of them but i acknowledge that weighing and photographing is an important part of captures for a lot of us.
So, finally, assuming that the fish as to leave the water once for a brief time for hook removal etc, my question is: How many times would you regard as an acceptble number for re-resting fish (ie dipping it back in the river and then taking it out again) before final release?
