FFIM

I see a lot of pictures of people releasing fish while wearing those white cotton gloves. I've read that it's suppose to protect the slime coating on the fish. To me the glove would remove more of that protective slime than a bare hand. Is anyone familiar with any studies that would pertain the this practice. Appreciate any help with finding any information on this.

I agree. I just cant see how it 'protects' the fish.

The gloves help achieve 'grip'. And, to do that, you must be effectively penetrating / cutting through the slime coat. I did see a video showing a brook trout becoming infected after tailing.

I always thought the benefit was the reduced pressure needed to control the fish. The lighter grip and also the less flopping on the shore and within the net probably helps too.

My strong preference is to handle fish as little as possible--advice I give better than follow, as will surely be pointed out to me when someone looks through past photos on this site.

In a canoe or float tube, you can often release fish without ever removing them from the water. Use barbless hooks, and grab the hook and release as soon as they are at your side.

This is harder in moving water and with larger fish. I those cases, I try to net, unhook and release fish as fast as possible.

This will greatly your reduce your ability to get grip and grin shots--but those are boring anyway.

I pretty much always grab the fly and release the fish without touching it. For small flies i use my hemostats.

I use the 'The Force' so I don't even need to touch the hook... But what is the opinion on tailing gloves posed in the original question, do they harm the fish? I cant help but feel that even gloves, they are more abrasive than a bare wet hand.


Personally, I think the invention of rubber nets has done the most to lessen the physical impacts on released fish.

There may be situations--Atlantic and Pacific salmon, steelhead--where a glove is needed to handle fish. I don't handle big numbers of large fish so I don't know.

But it strikes me that "handle fish with gloves or with wet hands" is the wrong question. Our goal should be to release fish without touching them at all as often as possible and to minimize handling every way we can.

FWIW, I have been out in the field with biologists from MDIFW, MDMR, US FWS, NOAA Fisheries, Mass Fish and Game, and multiple private contractors on studies that handled fish by gear including gill nets, trap nets, fyke nets, backpack electrofishing, boat electrofishing, and angling methods from worms to barbless flies, and none of those professionals have used gloves (other than rubber/nitrile gloves in some cases to prevent contamination of tissue samples they were collecting) to handle fish.

I will say that in some of the remote pond survey and coastal stream survey angling I do, we try to document every fish with photos, and I find myself handling fish far more than I would like to get those photos.