Aggie Park

General fish care suggestions:

• Wet your hands before touching or handling fish. This preserves the slime layer on the fish, and slime layer = stronger fish immune systems.
• Limit the fish’s time spent out of the water. Keep the gills and body wet if prolonged handling is necessary.
• Use a landing net with a large frame and shallow net (rubber or soft knotless mesh is preferred). 
• If landing a larger fish and no net is available, kneel down and unhook in the water. 
• Provide proper support to the fish if handling the fish out of water. Avoid squeezing.
• Use needle nose pliers or hemostats if the hook is deep or difficult to remove. If necessary, cut the line and leave the hook behind. At a certain point deep hook sets are more detrimental to remove, than to leave behind.
• Use barbless or flatten barbs on hooks to reduce the effort necessary to remove the hooks.
• Limit treble hook use. Consider using pliers to clip off one or both of the extra hooks, to reduce the effort necessary to remove the hook.