I'm No Advocate for PETA, But...

For some time now, I've had a problem with sticking another piece of metal, like you find on the end of this culling clip, into a fish's mouth after I've already stuck him with a hook. And just for the sake of clarity here, I'm specifically talking about bass.

Many years ago, you might have found me hooking bream and/or catfish on a stringer, but not today. And if I hook a "toothy critter" like a pickerel or bowfin, you'll likely find me trying to release him over the side of the boat. Just to be fair, though, I will admit there have been times when I've clubbed a few bowfin with a piece of PVC pipe to silence their antics so I could release them. However, I seldom do that any longer, except for the rowdiest ones.

In most cases these days, I'm gentle with my catch, and whenever bass are in my livewell (only on tournament days), I keep constant watch on them to ensure their survival. I've said before, and I'll say again, I don't like surprises--e.g., like opening the lid of my livewell and seeing a fish in a belly-up position.

Yesterday, I had the unfortunate reality of opening the livewell and finding four dead fish. That was a depressing sight, indeed, for both my partner, Skip, and me. We were in his Nitro at the time, and he had been doing all the right things to keep the fish alive. I had been feeling them bumping the lid (directly under my feet) throughout the day, so I had every reason to expect to find five thriving bass when Skip told me to check them at one point in the afternoon. Instead, all I could focus on as I opened that lid were the four white bellies staring at me. We both worked on them for several minutes but to no avail. Bottom line: We weighed four dead fish (plus one live fish) and took a 1-pound penalty, which was bad enough in itself, but as things worked out, dashed our chances of winning the mystery-weight drawing. We would have won that drawing if all our fish had been alive.

While discussing our lot afterward, it came to light that the lone surviving fish had the culling clip poked through its mouth, whereas the four dead ones had the culling clip run through their gills. It's our theory that, with the culling clips rigged that way, and with the fish thrashing and bashing around in the livewell so much, their gills probably had been injured so severely they subsequently died.

It turns out that Skip shares my feelings about running metal culling clips through a fish's mouth and recently had decided it might be better just to run the clip through the gills. I, on the other hand, had put the clip through the lone surviving fish's mouth after a test I had run last year with an idea from the Internet. That idea involved running a piece of lawn-trimmer line, like the one in the photo at left, through the fish's gills and hooking the little electrical connections, as shown here, onto the culling clip.

I only ran one test of this device because of the results. The mouths of all five of my fish that day were blood red by the time I got them to the scales for weigh-in. Thankfully, though, none of them were dead. I immediately got rid of these contraptions and went back to sticking the culling clips through a fish's mouth and have stayed with this method ever since. And I feel pretty sure my buddy Skip will be following in my footsteps from now on, too.

I've also tried these plastic culling clips in the past, but they just didn't work for me. In most cases, the bass already were free of the clips by the time I got them to weigh-in, or they slipped out of the clips when I tried to lift them from the livewell with the attached cords.

In a sense, I equate this discussion about culling clips with those who always are trying to find ways to "build a better mousetrap." I'm certainly not trying to come up with a new invention, because I definitely don't want a bunch of people beating a path to my door.

If anyone knows a legal, infallible way to win the lottery, though, I'm all ears. That's probably the only way I'll ever be able to afford another new bass boat--or, for that matter, any other big-ticket item ever again. Retirement has its perks, but "rolling in the clover" isn't one of them--not in my case anyway.