Posted by LarryM from 12-248-176-98.client.attbi.com on March 07, 2002 at 21:00:31:
In-Fisherman had an article recently about badly hooked fish and what to do about it. One smaller article in the larger article was about a product called the D-Barb Fish Medic. It's $19.95 at this site - http://www.dbarb.com/home_mid.html.
Watch the video.
If you are serious about catch and release, or if you fish with bait you owe it to the fish to have this tool handy. I've been looking for something like this, because other types of cutters just don't work well.
Last spring I had a small pike inhale a Rat'L'Trap, and I'm sure it's dead now, even though it was alive when I finally got the hooks out of it. It would have been dead if I just cut the line because the lure was blocking the stomach.
Sorry for the sales pitch, but there's so much grief given to people who do catch and keep of legal fish.
Nobody ever leaves a message about how many fish they killed on a fishing day because they either had to tear their 5-cent hook out of a fish, or had to leave the hook in, which can be just as fatal.
I ordered one of these cutter/removers tonight because I don't want to kill fish anymore. Up until now I couldn't help it.