Short Cast: Releasing fish, best practices

0:00This is Daniel Galhardo and you're listening to the Tenkara Cast, a podcast about the simple Japanese method of fly-fishing, Tenkara. In the Tenkara Cast we'll be sharing information on techniques, history, philosophy, and Tenkara stories from anglers all over the world. This podcast is brought to you by Tenkara USA, introducing Tenkara outside of Japan since 2009. It's only possible we create content such as this podcast and videos because of your support. So we thank you so very much for purchasing Tancata Yosei rods, lines, and flies. I hope you enjoy learning more about the simple method of fly fishing. Hello, hello everyone. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Tancata Cast. I just came back from a good vacation celebrating my 10th anniversary with my beautiful wife. Now I've been catching up and I decided to sit down and record an episode that I've been wanting to record for a while. So today's episode is going to be a short cast, one of the short episodes for the Tenkara Cast podcast.

1:05I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk to you about best release practices. When you're intending to catch and release fish, there are certain things that will be very helpful to keep the sport of fly fishing going. And one of them is keeping fish alive and healthy in the water. So I wanted to talk a little bit about best ways to release fish in a healthy way so that they live for a long time. I have recorded an episode in the past about catch and keep versus catch and release, where I share some of my thoughts and philosophy about catching and keeping fish, which sometimes I do. And I am going to post a link to that episode on this episode's podcast page on tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. if you want to learn a little bit more about my thoughts on that you can listen to that episode but with that being said as in a nutshell i'd like to say that Tenkara USA really strongly encourages catching and releasing fish using fly fishing as a sport primarily we're not against catching and keeping fish you can listen to that episode to to learn more about that but especially in places that see a lot of pressure a lot of people might be fishing if everybody's going to keep a fish, pretty soon we're not going to have any fish left in the water unless we have more and more planting and that kind of thing. So as much as possible, I do like to encourage catching and releasing fish. However, releasing fish in itself is not going to guarantee that the fish are going to stay there for, you know, people that go fishing in the future to catch them as well.

2:47we do have to not only release fish but release fish with certain things in mind so that they when we do release them they're going to stay alive and they're going to stay healthy so that's what i wanted to talk to you about today and this episode was also prompted by a friend of mine chandra who recently sent me a couple of questions in terms of keeping fish and i'm going to talk to you about that at the very end but mostly in terms of catching and releasing fish there are a few things that they're fairly common sense when you learn about them but before you learn about them you might know know that they're important and with more and more people taking up fly fishing because of Tenkara I think it's my responsibility my duty to share some of the common or some of the best practices when it comes to releasing fish so that they survive and they still stay healthy in the water. So pretty much we can make a little bit of an outline and I'm going to post them the outline on the tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast page for this episode. But it's a few very very simple principles that you should adhere to when you are intending to release fish.

4:06First of all, when you do catch a fish, bring the fish in quickly, as quickly as you can, essentially. This is where Tenkara comes in really handy. You don't have line that the fish can take away, and then you have to retrieve it back and that kind of thing. So Tenkara, in general, helps us bring the fish in quickly to hand, even large fish, because they don't have a lot of line to take you're just kind of in this battle and you're kind of trying to bring the fish into your hand kind of quickly you can't just let the fish run but it even with tenkara it's important that you know that this is important so that the fish are not going to be exhausted to death so first of all when you hook a fish bring the fish in as quickly as you can i have seen it in the past people wanted to play a fish for the fun of it i would encourage you to focus on catching the next fish as opposed to playing this one fish longer. So bring the fish in as closely, as quickly as you can to your hand. That's rule number one, very, very important so that the fish are not exhausted. Maybe a little subset of that, you know, part of number one, I do like to encourage the use of barbless hooks so that when you do bring the fish in, you can remove the hook very quickly as well. But rule number two, after bringing in the fish as quickly as you can, you're going to grab the line, start bringing the fish in towards your hand or towards your net, and you might have to handle the fish. When you do have to handle the fish, which is probably eight or nine out of ten times, before you ever touch the fish, please wet your hand.

5:47That's very important because if your hands are dry and you go touch the fish, there's a very good chance that your hand, your dry hand, is going to remove some of the protective layer, the mucus, on the outside of the fish's skin. And that's going to make the fish more susceptible to disease and fungus down the road. So before you handle the fish, wet your hand. Number three, I do like to encourage the use of a net whenever you can. This is, you know, it's a soft number three. It's something that I like to encourage, but a net essentially makes things a little easier to handle the fish when you do have to. And use nets that are going to be good for catching and releasing fish. The Tenkariosei nets that we sell, they are knotted, but the knots are on the outside of the mash bag so that the fish, you're never going to see any mucus or any scales left over on the nets that we sell. Rubber net materials are very popular for that reason as well.

6:49So a net can come in very handy in terms of minimizing the handling of the fish. Using a net essentially makes it so that you're not forced to grab and hold on to the fish as you attempt to remove it. And if the fish is flopping and that kind of thing, that's a very handy thing to have. with that as well if possible or actually I should say not if possible but as much as possible minimize the handling of the fish and that's going to help with that sometimes you can also not even touch the fish and that's actually something that I'd love to encourage more and more people to do before you know if you're if you if the hook is right on the outside of the fish's mouth and you can see that there's a very good chance you can just grab the hook and just make it so that the hook pops right out of the fish's mouth without you having to ever touch the fish this way a net comes in handy you don't have to have a net to do this but if you see the hook kind of like right on the outside of the fish's mouth and you can grab the shank of the hook remove it you're completely minimizing or eliminating the handling of the fish and that's really, really good so that you're not getting the fish to spend a lot of time outside the water, you're not getting the skin of the fish dried, and that kind of thing.

8:10I guess I intended to do a number one, two, three, but I'm kind of losing track of those. I'll try to outline those later on. But so far, we have number one, bring the fish in as quickly to your hand as you can. Number two, before handling the fish, always wet your hand. Number three, minimize the handling of the fish, period. A few other things that you may want to do. Leave the fish in the water as long and as much as you can, if possible, the entire time. This is where your net also comes in handy. You can put the fish in the net, keep the fish completely in the water. If you have to Hold it to kind of keep the fish from flopping. Just get your hand underneath the fish while in the water and then attempt to remove the hook that way. If you do have to lift the fish, sometimes we're going to have to do that in order to see where the hook is and so forth. Make sure to do it above water.

9:13I've seen too many cases where people will do that like on top of gravel, on top of the bank, and that a fish flops and a fish falls on the dry ground and so forth, and that really harms fish quite a bit. So that, I would say, is number four, which is handle the fish above water, but keep it wet as much as you can. A little bit of common sense. I'm going to ask all of you, please do not put a fish on dry ground to take a photo. I know there's a big argument on that. You know, like sometimes people say, oh, yeah, the fish are sturdy. You know, they can handle it. They swam. I don't really care. You know, I think a fish should never be placed on the bank so that you can get a photo of it. I think that's just not necessary. It's something that I'd love to see less and less of in the future. Do not put a photo, you know, a fish on the bank or on dry ground to take a photo. If you really want to take some photograph of a fish, that way what I recommend is you make a little bit of a bed in the water, like where you kind of put some rocks around a fish, put the fish in there, and then snap a fish while the fish is wet and in the water.

10:27Some of them are going to flop and they're going to swim away, but that's one way to do it. So do not put a fish on dry ground to take a photo of it. So at this point, you're at the point where you're kind of handling the fish. You're maybe handling above the water. Sometimes you might need these hemostats. But keep in mind, I mean, it's pretty common sense. A fish doesn't breathe air outside the water. You know, it needs to be in the water to survive. So just try to have the fish outside of water as little as little as you can. And at this point, you're removing the hook, and you're about to release the fish back into the water. when you're going to do that just put the fish facing the current so that the water is going to be flowing if at least if you're fishing a stream so that the water is going to be flowing through the gills of the fish and just cradle the fish there that's something i should have mentioned earlier on the handling of the fish do not grab the fish you know do not squeeze the fish i see a lot of photos where people are squeezing the fish like from below and you can see that kind of like indentation mark on the fish's body.

11:41When you try to grab a fish that way, it's going to damage all the organs that the fish have. Plus, it also makes them want to flop a little bit more because you're squeezing them. If you cradle the fish very gently, they're not going to flop as much. They're not going to be trying to escape the predator as much. So just put your hand very gently underneath the fish, cradle it in your hand, kind of like make a cup in your hand when you're doing that. and then to release it, make it face the current, hold it there very gently, and let the fish go on under its own power. This is very important. Sometimes you put the fish in the water, and it's going to take a few seconds for it to regain strength. Don't just let it go. If the fish is kind of like sitting there kind of stunted, not moving at all, he might need a little time to recover. And if you release it before it's ready, if you throw it back in the current, there's a good chance that it's not ready to swim. It's going to, you know, turn upside down and it's going to pretty much drown.

12:45So hold the fish gently in your hand and it's going to go when he wants to go. So that's kind of like the last step, maybe number six if I get track of it. But very important. And if you're in a lake or in place with very calm water, just kind of sway the fish back and forth. The objective here is to try to get water to go through its gills. And again, when it's ready to go, it's going to go under its own power. So don't squeeze the fish and release it. A little note outside of that, if you are taking photographs or getting somebody to take a photo for you, get the person with the camera to get ready and focus on you with the camera before you lift the fish out of the water. You know, don't try to get a bunch of photos. I don't think you should try to get the perfect photo, but we all want to have a good memory of our fish. Sometimes we want to get a good photo of it. Get the person with the camera to focus, you know, usually pressing halfway on the camera button on the shutter, lift the fish quickly out of the water, get the photo snapped, put it back in the water. If you're trying to get another photo, put it back in the water for a bit, do it again, but don't do it a bunch of times. That's just not fair. I'd like to encourage you to catch a second fish instead of doing that with one fish. So that's kind of it, my little soapbox, a little bit of education today about best release practices that I'd like for us to all share and be mindful of. So that's mostly it on that. And I did have a question from a friend of mine the other day that I wanted to talk about as well, very briefly, outside of releasing fish. Some of it has to do with catching and keeping, but some of it just in terms of ethics, in terms of catching and releasing. So my friend asked me the other day, she wanted to keep a fish for dinner. She went on the strip and caught a trout. And then when she went to clean the trout, there were eggs in it.

14:53And she asked me, she felt pretty bad about it. I do too when that happens. And she asked me, what can be done to prevent that from happening again. And for some reason, I had never really thought too much about that because I don't keep fish a whole lot of times, but it has happened to me as well. And pretty simple, actually. So I noticed a photograph that she shared with me. It was a brook trout. So just a couple of things to keep in mind. If you are intending to catch and keep fish, or if you're even if you're catching and releasing fish we want to be mindful of the breeding season for different types of trout so essentially all you have to know is that brook trout and brown trout will breed in the fall and what you want to be very mindful of in terms of that is if you're going to places that have brown trout and brook trout and they're breeding because it's fall They're also going to have their what is called RADs, R-E-D-D.

15:58RADs are essentially the nest that a trout creates in a gravel. It's going to be a place where there's going to be a little bit of an indentation, a little bit of, it looks a little bit different from the surrounding. Maybe it's going to have smaller pebbles or maybe more of a sandier kind of bottom. Those are RADs, places that almost look like a nest. And if you see fish in places that have brook trout and brown trout, you see fish kind of circling with each other and that kind of thing that's a breeding mating behavior that they have and that indicates usually where the rads are going to be as well so in those places first of all avoid walking in the water where they're going to be rads because you're going to be destroying the nest you're going to be making all the eggs get out of there and those fish are not going to procreate if you do that so rule number one there avoid rads for all you can. Just usually if I go fishing places that have native or non-native, but if they have brown trout in the fall, I'm very mindful of trying not to walk much in the water.

17:02If there's brook trout and they're native, I'm very mindful not to walk in the water as well, especially in small streams because they have fewer places to do that. On the other hand, rainbow trout will breed in the springtime. so springtime and you're going places that have rainbows avoid walking too much in the water and maybe avoid targeting them so that's one thing that she had a concern about you know even not only so much catching keeping fish and seeing the eggs but what else can we do to prevent stressing the fish during the when they have eggs so you can do a few different things besides walking on the red not walking on the reds you can avoid catching certain species during the breeding season. I don't think it's super important, but if you feel compelled to do so, just avoid targeting brown and brook trout during the fall. And if you want to keep fish, avoid keeping those as well, or rainbows in the spring. And you can also start learning how to distinguish a male from a female. Usually males will have a little bit more of a developed jaw, especially during their breeding season.

18:18So if you must catch a fish and keep it, you know, the females are going to have smaller mouths, a little less developed jaws, so you can just be aware of that. So I think that's pretty much all I wanted to share. If you have certain concerns about their breeding season, you know, catching females that might have eggs, first of all, avoid their breeding season. And second, just know the females from the males of different species. So that's it today. A little short episode about catching and releasing best practices. If you have more to add, if I missed anything, I'm kind of talking off the cuff here. If I think of anything, I'm going to post them. But if you have any other thoughts as well, I'd love for you to share. at Tenkara USA we're trying not to share images of fish that are completely out of the water anymore we're trying to do a few things that will encourage catching and releasing best practices and love to hear discussions if you have any thoughts share them via email Facebook or on the Tenkara USA podcast page at tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast where I'm going to have a little bit more information about what I taught today. Thank you so much for listening in. I hope you enjoyed this episode, the short cast for the Tenkara Cast, and until next time.

20:02And as always, I'd like to extend a special thanks to our friend Nick Ogawa Takenobu. You can listen to this song, which is called Fishing and more at takenobumusic.com Nick has been very generous in extending a lot of use of his music to our podcast and videos And pretty much that's what you'll hear in most of the videos that we've released on our video page On YouTube and at inkariose.com Thanks again, Nick, for letting us use your music and enjoy the song Fishing by Takenobu Thank you.

21:27Thank you.