5 Fish Handling [Bad] Habits That Cause Injuries By: Capt. David Bacon

Injuries result from dangerous fish-handling habits. That makes them bad habits. Symptoms may include severe bleeding, contusions, swelling, nausea, and intense pain, not to mention angry shipmates and a sudden infusion of colorful new words into one’s vocabulary. Here are some very bad, but surprisingly common, habits to avoid:

        1. An angler feels a bite and swings so wild and hard that the person next to the wild angler gets hit in the face with the rod. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times. Another variation is swinging up so high (called “high sticking”) that the rod hits something overhead and breaks.   

        2. Winding a fish to the surface at warp speed. Many rockfish are lost this way because they twist off the hook during the radical ascent. At worst, the fish is pulled right out of the water and bounced aboard, often smacking into someone with the risk of serious injury from the long sharp spines. The fish always seems to come aboard in the most destructive manner possible. At the very least it will broadside a fellow passenger and leave a slime slick on the suddenly angry friend’s favorite new jacket or bare skin. At the worst, it can cause severe physical injury to someone, which warrants a medical airlift from the boat while bleeding is controlled with compresses. Don’t bounce fish!

        3. Reeling up a fish until it or weight is pulled up tight to the eye on the rod tip, which can break the rod tip. The old joke is, “Yeah, once you reel that fish through that first tiny eye at the rod tip, the rest are easier because they’re bigger and the fish is now skinnier!” With the fish up near the rod tip, no one can easily reach the fish to take it off the hook. The angler typically lifts the rod and swings the fish into the boat where it is now head high and swinging about wildly. I’ve seen spines impale people in the face, neck, shoulders and hands, while the angler causing the problem stands there watching as though he or she can do nothing to prevent the problem.  

       4. Fish soccer is a dangerous game. During a hot bite, an angler may not want to take the time to unhook a fish and put it in the fish box or gunny sack. Instead, the fish is kicked out of the way so the angler can quickly bait up and get back to the bite. Rockfish are particularly dangerous to kick because of their long sharp spines which will easily penetrate anything but steel toe boots. I have pulled numerous spines out of people’s toes. The most painful is when the spine goes in right under a toenail. That is always worth a blood curdling scream.  

         5. Disrespecting a sculpin (California Scorpionfish) is as dangerous as it gets. They have an aggressive toxin on their spines, which causes grave injury. Any angler who allows a sculpin to wave around at the end of a rod, or fly through the air when bouncing it onboard, will immediately lose the respect, but gain the attention, of a wary deckhand. The worst fish-handling accident I can recall happened many years ago, one day when I was fishing aboard an open party headboat. An angler had caught a fine mess of sculpin and had decided to save the cost of filleting by taking them home whole. As he gathered up his stuff to disembark, he grabbed his gunny sack full of sculpin and swung it over his shoulder. You should have seen the look on his face when the sack hit his back and a dozen toxin-covered spines jabbed him deeply!  A minute later, that man was writhing on the deck in pain. An ambulance was called. Fish handling safety is serious business.

Sculpin certainly aren’t the only fish warranting special safe-handling practices. Rockfish are also dangerous when they are not properly controlled, because they too have long sharp spines, which can puncture human flesh with ease. This is also the case with calico bass and sand bass. Toothy fish, such as barracuda and lingcod are capable of causing serious injuries when not handled safely. 

Happily, all of these dangers can be mitigated by thinking about safety, when handling fish. The responsibility is ours, and no one wants to be injured because of our carelessness.

Let’s balance things out here with a couple of safe fish handling methods I recommend. One is to use a gaff or net to quickly control the fish as it reaches the surface at boatside. This is almost a necessity with a larger fish which might break the line or rip the hook out, due to its considerable weight. Netting a fish will increase its chances of survival - especially if the fish is not touched by human hands. So, if a fish is to be released, netting it is the kind and appropriate way to handle it. A gaff is the best way to control a really large fish, which might break a net, and is going to be kept for the dinner table.

The other safe fish handling method is to stop reeling when there is about four feet of line between the fish or weight, and the rod tip. Lift the rod tip up high, without loading it up, and grab the line about a foot up from the fish. Now just bring the fish over the rail and it will be controlled in such a way as to limit disasters. This method is what I constantly try to get people to do during my charters.  

I recognize that excitement and lack of experience makes these safety tricks difficult to remember. But each and every time someone gets hurt, the person who caused the mishap due to unsafe fish handling practices feels terrible and knows that they just got too excited and forgot to think about safety. Be careful out there!