At what point can you say ?I caught a fish??

When fly fishing for trout, and lure fishing for pike, I tend to fish barbless hooks and try and handle the fish I catch as little as possible. I rarely use a landing net, preferring to unhook my fish in the water. I bully fish when playing them, too, the better to get them in quick and see them swim healthily away. Because of these factors, I do lose quite a lot of fish when I get them under my rod top. And funnily enough I don?t really mind, especially in the case of lively Summer pike with their tendency to flare their gills, open their mouths and jump. I?d really prefer not to have to unhook them myself, if possible. If I used barbed hooks, played the fish a bit longer and tried to net them all, I?d no doubt be able to say I?d actually landed many more fish.

Here?s the dilemma; I hook a fish, play it hard on a barbless hook and don?t try and net it. It falls off at my feet. Can I claim it as a catch? Do I have to touch the fish for it to be truly caught? Does it have to have been lifted clear of the water to count? If I just touched the leader and the fish fell off would it be enough to claim it as being caught (I think the latter is considered to count when big game fishing)?

I fish for that wonderful moment of the ?take?, and rate my success - to myself - in terms of the number of hook-ups I achieve rather than landings. But when do you consider that a fish has been well and truly ?caught??

Personally, a fish on the bank is a fish caught. Only exception being to unhook in the net and then release.

If that elusive 40lb carp was about to slide over my landing net, only for the hook to pull at the last second, I could hardly claim it!

I'm of the opinion that an unhooked fish is a caught fish. I fish predominantly for trout and practice C&R as much as I can so, like Dave, don't use a landing net and unhook the fish while it's in the water.

If I don't get to unhook it, I don't count it.

Touch the trace or leader and its caught but If it was a corker I would rather see it up close and on film:O)

Some would argue that you have to bank it, cradle it in your arms whilst the obligatory photo is taken. That's a very blinkered way of seeing it.

I've know a few pike anglers that are happy for the fish to get off in the margins to save handling it. Not that they're afraid of it, I'm certainly not, and I don't mind losing them like that. As far as I'm concerned, it's caught!

There's a group of anglers in Florida go out in the evening in those floats with a pair of flippers fishing for tarpon over 100 lb. They've no hope of landing it so they let off slack line and the fish throws the hook. They enjoyed the fight therefore they caught it.

Good point Woody. Nearly all tarpon fisherman now go for catch and release which entails chasing the running fish until the boat is over the top of it and then grabbing the leader and giving a hard, sharp tug. This usually snaps the leader, within a couple of feet of the hook.
Because the tarpons mouth is hard and bony the hook can never penetrate deep enough for it to stay in once the pressure' taken off so the fish swims off unharmed and still fresh enough to avoid the sharks.
As far as I'm concerned any fish played in close enough to have been able put a net under it is a caught fish even it slips the hook before I'm able to do so.

if you unhook a fish in the water,or intentionally hold the line\trace so that it shakes off i count that as a fish caught,with an estimated weight(ie:if i thought the pike was between 10lbs and 12lbs,i`d just call it a low double).if one comes off before i try to unhook it or shake it off,i class it as not caught

There is no one answer to this question as we can see from the comments above.

A fish isn't caught in a match until it's in the keepnet.

A record fish isn't caught until it's been weighed, witnessed, scales verified and accepted by the record fish committee (and even then it could be in doubt if it's a crucian, roach or rudd!).

Unless it's a big one I want to weigh and photograph I'm happy for trout to be slipped off the barbless hook in the margins.

The best answer is to say a fish is caught when you have got the fish exactly where you want it.

In order to state a fish is caught you must satsify your own criteria, whetehr thats catch and release in the water, banking and in the keepnet or shaking the leader whilst at the side of your boat. It's your fishing time, its your pleasure and its only you you have to justify too.

Whatever rocks your wagon.

i would never claim a weight for a fish unless it was weighed properly,but i don`t feel the need to weigh a medium or small fish just for the sake of it,far better to release it without actually landing it in my opinion.ESPECIALLY in the warmer months.

my names Mr tenchy and my mate is MR Roachy ,whilst swimming around our kingdom together last saturday we could see one of those strange people, the sort that chuck us loadsa of food you know the type,they chuck it in then try and trick us to taking a piece of food with some means of pulling us out of our kingdom! well we've sort of figured out that if we dont eat this food 'til the persons gone we can eat our fill with no chance of being pulled away from our mates. It's no great hardship when it does happen because all these strange people do is say what a great catch, and as we dont know what a catch is as we are a tench and a roach you see , we thought we would have a go at finding out, so as i have stronger lips than my mate, we found one of these people who had just given us a free feast.And decided to see if we could figure it out , i grabbed hold of this piece of food that was obviously the piece this person wanted us to grab, on account of it having one of those metal things in , but i didn't let it poke a hole in me because we know its hard to get off then , i just hung on tight for as long as i could , my mate roachy was cracking up watching this and the face of this person which seem to be showing his teeth , i think you people call it smiling .One of his mates had come over to watch him which made me hang on even more then, until he started to poke around with this big stringy thing in the water.Then the plan was to let go and watch what happened ,so i did. His face sort of changed shape and water came out of his eyes, me and roachy just looked at each other and blew bubbles at him and his mate , and came to the conclusion that a CATCH is something that makes you smile and until you pull us from our kingdom we are not a catch because you don't smile until then. We think that you are a strange lot anyway feeding us pulling us from our house so there . Anyway we are off to wind someone else up now. We can see a small person overthere with a big person next to him with lots of stuff with him, so i'm going to let the the small person smile a lot because i'm big and he can hold me. And roachy is going to wind the big one up . TATA people until we meet again, keep feeding us.We might make you smile next time or then again we might let that water run from your eyes.!!

Keep taking the tablets!

i knew i forgot something this morning , cheers malc.

No worries ;o)

When I used to do loads of trotting while stood in the river, my rule was that the fish would only count if I got to hold it.

Each to their own though.

The only time you can really say you caught a fish is when it's in your net. If you hold it in you hand, or you have some other means of staking it out.

If it falls off before any of those, you missed it!!

Rik what were you and roachy on?

I agree with Stu, whatever your criteria is, if you are happy (showing your teeth) then it's yours! If you want to claim a record, you know what you have to do!

How caught do you want it? Nothing to stop you taking the hooks of and fishing for strikes ... rumour has it that sucessful fly-fishers have been known to get within one fish of their limit, then fish experimental patterns/tactics with "pointless" hooks to gather info, before attaching an intact lure at home-time and completing their bag.
An american (of course) fly-tyer, John Betts, I think, has even had made "touch and Go" fly hooks with an eye at each end of the wire!

My rule for claming a caught fish is if I totouched it with my hand. Whether that be to unhook it in the net or the water if it?s a medium sized fish. Large fish I normally weighed and remove from the water to the mat.

My mate Craig has just returned from a fishing trip to the Florida Keys. With Tarpon, the Keys guides break the fish off by snapping the leader at the side of the boat, or even pull for a break when the fish is even some yards from the boat. These fish, of course, count.