Aggie Park is here for all visitors to enjoy. Please review the information below for fish handling recommendations that will help keep our fish healthy and growing.
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.
