With the new one-fish bag in place and significant improvement in our striper success of late, I want to examine briefly the technical aspects of releasing striped bass in good fighting condition—it’s straightforward when you’re shooing away 21-inchers, but gets trickier when the stripers you’re liberating scale 30 or 50 pounds. I maintain that we’ve entered a new phase in our striper fishery, and should think hard about drilling on big bass no matter how thick the fish might be in one little corner of the coast. Catching one for the table and a couple more for exercise remains wholesome—so long as you know how, and take the time, to give every fish you send back best odds of surviving the ordeal.
A few basic tools and a handful of practiced steps when you lift a bass aboard will do wonders for the striper survival rate in your cockpit. Best practice when releasing large fish is to avoid removing them from the water—to lip them by hand if your boat affords you ready access to the water, or use a reliable dehooker on a long, sturdy pole if leaning over is too risky.
When your young nephew boats his first 30-pounder, unless you already have a full limit, keep it for him, and circle back to conservation later. Either way, you owe him (and yourself) a good photo of his catch. To buy yourself a time, keep a towel or striper-sized remnant of non-abrasive carpet on the boat; lay it out on deck and douse it with salt water just before landing the fish, then transfer her from net directly to it. Keep a bucket of saltwater handy with a second, smaller towel you can lay across the fish’s head to cover its eye. It’s amazing how quickly even the greenest bass will go limp as a noodle without its sight. This will prevent a fish from thrashing around and injuring itself further.
Keep the fish swaddled until your camera is ready to point and fire away. This should be no more than a minute all told.
Avoid holding the fish so its lip is carrying its entire body weight (as you might hold a schoolie). Lip her, but before you lift, use a wet second hand to support the belly, holding her at about 45 degrees.
Obvious as it sounds, never, never touch any part of a striper’s gills, gillplates (the inside thereof), or eyes, and minimize contact with any part of the slime coating. Speaking of slime, any skin or fabric that will touch it must be wet.
If the fish is visibly frisky, cradle the fish by its lower jaw and belly against your side and launch it head-first, torpedo-style back into the drink to give it an oxygenated jolt before it heads for bottom.
If a fish is exhausted— as water temp heads toward its high-summer apex, the effects of long fights (lactic acidosis) send mortality through the ceiling—you should drag her at idle speed to run oxygen over her gills until she rallies visibly.
It’s when water’s hot that the stakes of release are highest. Unfortunately, we get bath water and the chance to catch 20 cows in a tide around the same time. How do you handle that? Don’t be the guy bragging back at the dock about how you caught two 50s, five over 40, 15 over 30 pounds. The stock already carries a load that’s hard to fathom. Don’t add your ego to that total: Catch a couple, then go fluking, go sharking, go snipe-hunting or parasailing. Just leave the bass alone.
Another (related) matter: We Light tackle is lots of fun. Unfortunately, in the wrong hands, too-light gear (and drawn-out fight times) exterminate big stripers. It’s not just the ones you gut-hook. It’s the ones you spend five minutes “reviving,” the ones that swim weakly out of sight then die on the bottom and feed crabs. When water’s hot, beef up the gear. Period.