Northwest Fishing Reports

just want to compare what people do with their catches of salmon from the rivers, assuming that you do keep your catch for food, i usually use a cooler but its getting a bit annoying luggin that big thing around, are there other ways i can keep my catch fresh until i head to the car?

your fish is fine sitting in the river. but get it on ice if you have a long drive back home for sure. pick up a katch kooler. I know some guys like to keep the fish alive and kill right before they leave the river.

how do you keep it alive?

put your stringer in the mouth and out thru the gills. or some will run a line up thru the bottom jaw. I think you are overthinking this. are you afraid of food poisoning?

I use some good test thin diameter soft poly mountain climbing line and then some rather large spring latch carabiners tied to it. I punch the carabiner through the bottom jaw and clip the end of the line to something too big for the fish to drag off. Right before I leave I bleed them and then I put them in a kill bag with blue ice paks for the trip home.

http://www.amazon.com/36x20-Inshore-Fis ... m_sbs_sg_1
http://www.sportco.com/store/pc/Silver- ... p54870.htm

i usually kill/bleed it right away and put it out of is misury

My, how thoughtful.....

I've done all of those. The ideal is to put the fish on ice and bleed it right away. Second best is keeping the fish alive until you leave, although get a nice soft thin stringer, because I've killed fish without bleeding them when I do that. And be careful, I lost a nice Coho and a good quality stringer by not holding on tight enough after I kept it alive all day. Catch Koolers are pretty neat, although I don't like lugging around 5 pounds of ice all day.

The idea behind getting the best quality fish is you want it to go through a slow rigor, which happenss ideally at 40-50 degrees. Bleed it out good and get it on ice as soon as you can. I remember I posted on a thread about this last year. If the fish goes through fast rigor, i.e. at higher temperatures, the contraction and expansion of the muscles will tear apart the protein bonds causing the individual flakes of meat to separate and the meat to get softer and lose it's good texture.

You can tell when you look at the fillet when the flakes are bumpy instead of smooth straight across. Ideally you keep the fish whole until rigor is complete and fillet it when it goes soft again, so I usually keep my fish in the fridge for a day or until it's floppy again before I fillet it. Surprisingly waiting a day to eat your fish will make it taste better, unless you fillet and cook before the onset of rigor.

I've always wondered if keeping them live on a stringer puts out some "scared fish" pheromone that makes it harder to catch more fish. Just like I've always replaced live bait/powerbait etc once it's been mangled by a fish in case it has gotten scared fish cooties on it.

i try to keep it alive on stringer as long as i can if possible. if i cannot i will bonk it, bleed it and keep it in the river until i leave.. i usually try to pick up ICE on the way home if its possible and put it in the bag with the fish..

TroutSnipr wrote:I've always wondered if keeping them live on a stringer puts out some "scared fish" pheromone that makes it harder to catch more fish. Just like I've always replaced live bait/powerbait etc once it's been mangled by a fish in case it has gotten scared fish cooties on it.

Some people say that, others say that keeping them alive in their panic state they secrete something into the meat (lactid acid or something). I can't say if either one is true - I can say I've seen a bunch of live fish on stringer and people still catching..

For me it just depends on where I am and my resources.
If I am floating a river I am not going to drag it around on a stringer all day, I will bleed, gut & cooler it right then and there.
If I am banking it and have a cooler right there I will do the same thing, but most times if I am banking it I am mobile (and traveling light) so I will keep it on a stringer until I am ready to head out - If I am only going a short distance I will "walk" it or carry it, but if I am going further than say casting distance (around the next set or rapids or whatever), then I will bleed & gut it then just keep it in the coolest water I can find until I can get it to a cooler. The thing is I always make sure of is to bleed it and if I am hiking all over creation with a live fish on a stringer, it isn't going to be "live" for long.

[Highjack begin]
speaking of ice - I'm a cheap bastard, I rolled out a couple seal-a-meal bags the length of the inside of my cooler, sealed one end, filled em 1/3 full of water, stood em on end in my freezer and let em freeze. Then vacuum sealed the open end, let em thaw, laid em on their side in the freezer and re-froze them.
Now I have two giant "Otter Pops" that I throw into my cooler whenever I go out, then just hose em off (fish blood) and throw em back in the freezer for the next trip. I've used the same ones now for a year
[Highjack End - back to the original subject ]

down on the quilcene me my dad would usaully large back packs a long with our fishing vest and as soon as wee get one we would just clean it and fillet on the river right then and there and put the meat in freezer bags and then in the pack instead of carry 8 fish all the way back to the car.

Brat Bonker wrote:down on the quilcene me my dad would usaully large back packs a long with our fishing vest and as soon as wee get one we would just clean it and fillet on the river right then and there and put the meat in freezer bags and then in the pack instead of carry 8 fish all the way back to the car.

Don't get caught doing that, if WDFW stops you they want to be able to see what species you caught (and where regulated whether it is hatchery or wild).

Gringo Pescador wrote:[Highjack begin]
speaking of ice - I'm a cheap bastard, I rolled out a couple seal-a-meal bags the length of the inside of my cooler, sealed one end, filled em 1/3 full of water, stood em on end in my freezer and let em freeze. Then vacuum sealed the open end, let em thaw, laid em on their side in the freezer and re-froze them.
Now I have two giant "Otter Pops" that I throw into my cooler whenever I go out, then just hose em off (fish blood) and throw em back in the freezer for the next trip. I've used the same ones now for a year
[Highjack End - back to the original subject ]

brilliant!!

i never have room in my freezer for even a smaller bag of ice..

oneshot wrote:

Gringo Pescador wrote:[Highjack begin]
speaking of ice - I'm a cheap bastard, I rolled out a couple seal-a-meal bags the length of the inside of my cooler, sealed one end, filled em 1/3 full of water, stood em on end in my freezer and let em freeze. Then vacuum sealed the open end, let em thaw, laid em on their side in the freezer and re-froze them.
Now I have two giant "Otter Pops" that I throw into my cooler whenever I go out, then just hose em off (fish blood) and throw em back in the freezer for the next trip. I've used the same ones now for a year
[Highjack End - back to the original subject ]

brilliant!!

i never have room in my freezer for even a smaller bag of ice..

Thanks - I got an old beer/bait fridge in the garage with a freezer up top - free off CL

Gringo Pescador wrote:
Thanks - I got an old beer/bait fridge in the garage with a freezer up top - free off CL

oh!! you must've gotten the "honey, i do NOT want fish bait in my house!!" speech too, huh?

haha, i used to have a smaller like dorm room type fridge for bait after i got that speech. it burned out and stopped cooling..

great ideas, think ill make myself a long sturdy stringer like trout snipe and keep them alive or maybe bonk and bleed em, ill have ice in my car but i dont wanna have to walk all the way to the car every fish, thanks for the input everyone helps alot lol

Gringo Pescador wrote:[Highjack begin]
speaking of ice - I'm a cheap bastard, I rolled out a couple seal-a-meal bags the length of the inside of my cooler, sealed one end, filled em 1/3 full of water, stood em on end in my freezer and let em freeze. Then vacuum sealed the open end, let em thaw, laid em on their side in the freezer and re-froze them.
Now I have two giant "Otter Pops" that I throw into my cooler whenever I go out, then just hose em off (fish blood) and throw em back in the freezer for the next trip. I've used the same ones now for a year
[Highjack End - back to the original subject ]

This same thing works quite well with the blue ice freezer pack gel stuff. I bought a bunch of them really cheap at the dollar store and emptied it all into the vacu-seal bags. I've made six-pack coolers this way by sealing the vacu-seal bag into connected 'pouches' and then folding it into a square to fit around a sixxer. A bit of Gorilla tape to keep it that way and voila keeps those babies cold for hours!

I usually bonk my fish right away and fillet it before I move to my next spot. As far as a stringer, I just grab the thickest fishing line that I have in my backpack, double it up and use that as my fish stringer and tie it on to the nearest tree or bush