On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:55:20 GMT, notbob wrote:

On 2008-10-16, daytripper wrote:

It's usually a dead-giveaway that a salmon is foul-hooked when it is doing
cartwheels across the stream, whereas a fair-hooked fish will usually try to
bull its way out. Generally, people will try to long-line release or simply
break-off a fish once it's obvious the fish isn't fair-hooked.

Hmmm. I would have thought a fish that is foul-hooked ....what I call gut
hooked.... would be kept for eating as there's a good chance it will die,
anyway. Your reply would seem to countradict that. Am I mistaken? If so,
how? Thank you for your previous enlightening reply.

nb

Of course, all of the king salmon will expire at some point in the run. Their
ultimate demise isn't predicated by where they are hooked, although there is
surely a higher percentage of fish that will die before they have accomplished
their prime directive if they are played while foul-hooked. Especially in high
water, a foul-hooked fish will take much longer to land, particularly if
hooked in the dorsal fin, which is a fairly frequent occurrence.

It's pretty hard to control a 20 or 30 pound salmon hooked mid ship, so it's
often a matter of practicality to find a way to disconnect from such a hookup,
before some serious gear is lost. Heck, I foul-hooked one salmon in the dorsal
fin in a particularly fast, narrow run near the top of the river, and in far
less than a minute that fish had run out at least 200 yards of backing with no
relief in sight. Saving $70 of line and backing was a no-brainer.

While the NY DEC has been making incremental strides to eliminate snagging -
intentional or otherwise - through gear restrictions (and they implemented a
bunch of new rules this October 1) - it still happens, and there are some
people that will take anything they manage to land, regardless of how. But
they run the risk of prosecution: we saw DEC cops out with video cameras in a
few locations during our stay, saw them ticket a half-dozen offenders and
confiscate their gear.

We fish primarily in the most restricted sections of the river, and quite far
from any access point, to get away from the crowds. We usually put at least a
half-mile between us and the access point, and often twice that or more.
People that are going to keep their catch tend to congregate quite near the
access point - they don't really want to have to drag their catch any
distance. So, where we fish, we usually don't see anyone keeping their catch
anyway, and rarely see people playing foul-hooked fish for long...

/daytripper