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Bleed Your Catch

Handling the catch in the correct way is one of the important parts of sportfishing. First You have to render the fish with a hit on the head. Flyfishermen have a tool called priest. This kind of tool should belong to every fishermen’s equipments. As a priest You can, of course, use any suitable club, but making a nice priest is a part of the handicraft in sportfishing. I have seen a priest, western style, which has in the handle several cuts, each of them marking a pike over ten pounder.

Why to bleed the catch? The answer is simple: The blood of the fishes is the one, which begins to spoil first. If You do not bleed the fish, it will spoil the meat of the fish, because there is blood in the muscles. This causes errors in the taste of the meat,too.

A simple, clean and neat way to bleed a fish is: Cut on the right side of the fish the outermost arc of gills. Make the cut to the end near the mouth. Put the fish so, that the head is a bit downwards, and the blood will run out. Compared with the classic way to cut the throat, this way has two advantages: The fish will stay as whole, which makes possible to make a nice trofee of it. Freeze the fish immediately as whole and take it to the taxidermist. The second advantage is photographic: Rinse the fish and You have a stylish mannequin, who’s gills are not hanging like a bloody whisk.

KTL