A trout that swims off strongly can still die hours later from exhaustion, from a torn gill, or from skin stripped of the slime that keeps infection out. Almost everything that decides the outcome is in the angler’s hands: how long the fight lasts, how warm the water is, whether the fish leaves the river, and how it is held. None of it is difficult. All of it has to be decided before the fish is on.
Before the first cast
- Crush the barb. Press it flat with forceps until the hook slides out of a cotton shirt without catching. Do it at the vice or the car, not with a fish in the net.
- Choose tippet for a short fight. Use the strongest the fly and the water allow. One size heavier than you first thought is nearly always still fine enough: 5X where you had 6X in mind.
- Carry a rubber-mesh net. Knotless rubber or rubber-coated mesh does not scrape slime, split fins or tangle hooks. A net also ends the fight sooner, because you need not wait for the fish to tire completely.
- Carry a thermometer and forceps. Both on a cord, both where your hand finds them without looking.
- One fly, where you can. A second hook swinging loose near a netted fish finds eyes, gills and fingers.
The fight
Keep it short. Use the rod’s lower half: hold it low and to the side, and turn the fish’s head off balance rather than lifting it straight up, which only lets it rest in the current. Change the angle of pull each time the fish changes direction. With sensible tippet a 30 cm trout should be at the net in well under a minute, and a much larger fish in two or three.
Move the fish out of the fast water and bring it to you rather than chasing it downstream through others’ lies. If it gets below you in heavy current, walk down the bank to it. Net it head first, with the net sunk and still, and lift only until the rim is clear of the surface.
In the net
This is where most of the harm is done, and where it is easiest to avoid. Leave the net in the water with the fish in it, facing upstream, and get your breath back. The fish is doing the same.
- Wet your hands first. Dry skin, gloves and towels lift the mucus coat. So does laying a fish on grass, gravel, sand or snow, which you should never do.
- Hold, do not grip. One hand lightly round the wrist of the tail, the other flat beneath the body just behind the pectoral fins. The heart and liver sit there; a squeeze does damage you will not see.
- Keep fingers out of the gills. Gill filaments are as delicate as lung tissue and bleed easily.
- Keep the fish level. Hanging a fish upright by the jaw or the tail strains its spine and organs.
Unhooking
A barbless hook usually falls out in the net on a slack line. If it does not, take the bend in forceps and back it out along the path it went in. Keep the fish’s head under water while you do it.
If the fly is out of sight in the throat or lodged in the gills, do not dig for it. Cut the tippet as close to the mouth as you can and let the fish go. A small barbless hook left where it is gives the fish a far better chance than a minute of probing. A fish that is bleeding freely from the gills is the one case in which, where the rules allow a fish to be taken, the kinder course may be to dispatch it quickly.
Ten seconds is longer than it feels with shaking hands, and shorter than most photographs take.
Photographs
The best picture of a wild fish is of the fish in the water, in the net or in your wet hand at the surface. If you want it lifted, set the camera up first, lift the fish only a hand’s width above the water so that a slip costs nothing, and count aloud. Ten seconds of air is the outside limit in mild weather; in hot or freezing weather the limit is none. One lift, one picture, back in.
Reviving and release
- Choose gentle, clean, moving water about knee deep, out of the main push and away from silt you have stirred up.
- Hold the fish upright and facing upstream, so that water passes in through the mouth and out over the gills. Support it; do not restrain it.
- Keep it still. Do not pump it back and forth: water forced backwards over the gills does nothing useful.
- Wait for three signs: the fish holds itself upright, its gill covers open and close in a steady rhythm, and it pushes against your hand.
- Open your hands and let it leave when it chooses. Watch it to cover. If it rolls on its side, bring it back and give it longer, several minutes if need be.
Water temperature
Warm water holds less oxygen at exactly the moment an exhausted fish needs more. Take the temperature in the main flow, in the shade, about 30 cm down, and take it again at midday. The thresholds below are the ones this almanac fishes by; many fisheries publish their own, and where theirs are stricter, theirs apply.
| Water | °F | What it means for the fish | Our rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Below 4°C | below 39°F | Fish are sluggish and recover slowly. In freezing air keep them fully in the water: gills and eyes can freeze in seconds. | Fish, with care |
| 4–10°C | 39–50°F | Cool, well-oxygenated water. Fish fight less hard and recover well. | Fish |
| 10–16°C | 50–61°F | The comfortable range for trout and grayling, and the best feeding temperatures. | Fish |
| 16–18°C | 61–64°F | Oxygen is falling. Shorten fights, use stronger tippet and keep every fish in the water. | Fish gently |
| 18–20°C | 64–68°F | Stress rises quickly. Fish only in the cool of early morning; rest the water by late morning. | Mornings only |
| Above 20°C | above 68°F | A played fish may die even if it swims away strongly. Grayling are at risk sooner than trout. | Stop |
Frost and grayling
Grayling fight to the point of collapse and tolerate handling badly. Unhook them in the net without lifting, support them facing the current, and expect recovery to take a minute or more. Do not keep several in a net for a group picture, and rest a shoal after three or four fish.
In freezing air the rules tighten. Wet skin, eyes and gill filaments exposed to air below 0°C can freeze within seconds. Keep the fish under the surface throughout, never lay it on frozen ground or snow, and dry your hands afterwards so you can go on tying knots.
Spawning fish
Trout spawn from late autumn into winter and grayling in spring, both over clean gravel in shallow, brisk water. A redd shows as a pale, freshly swept patch with a mound at its downstream end. Do not fish to fish on redds, do not wade on or just below them, where the eggs lie buried, and step round pale gravel for some months afterwards.
The pocket card
- Barb flat. Tippet strong. Net rubber.
- Thermometer: stop at 20°C.
- Short fight, rod low and to the side.
- Wet hands. Fish stays in the water.
- Deep hook: cut the tippet.
- Air: ten seconds at most, none in heat or frost.
- Head upstream, hold still, let it go when it pushes.