Cool Hook Removal Study

I saw a great post the other day on the Big Indiana Bass blog about a recent study on hook removal for bass. In December, I posted "How to handle gut hooked bass". This study goes a step further and actually shows a scientific approach to different methods using: "a control set of fish that were hooked in the oral cavity ('in the mouth' but not deep as well as the deeply hooked fish that were given 4 treatment types:

• barbless method - through the mouth with hemostats
• standard method - through the mouth with hemostats
• through the gill method - the IF technique with hemostats
• hook in method - left the hook in the mouth with 1' or less of cut line attached

After all the testing was complete, fish were placed back into ponds and checked in both the summer and the fall for feeding and growth." Check out this link for the full results.