Floaters, unpopular subject

This problem occurs on the great lakes,gb and even simcoe, generally with trout and salmon ..

Lakers in gb., after a long tussle they come to the net , not having a quick assent they still float belly up , same with salmon in lake o,

We tired every thing drag beside the boat for quite a while , release , still no life, here come the gulls , first thing they peck out the eyes , fish is done ...

Think the problem is the fish are totally exchausted, Its a shame and a waste to watch a large salmon or laker bobbing in the waves ..

We end up keeping lakers we dont want but we do find a home for them ..

Hoping someone can shed some light on this subject with their input to perhaps help us all with this sensitive subject...

Dave

For Salmon and Steelhead I have never had one die after dragging it beside the boat for release. I have had a couple die from bleeding out b cause they swallowed the head me and got it in the gills.
For Lakers fight them fast and don’t take pictures and release them right away. Dragging them does work but it’s not as reliable. I am sure a decender device could help but it’s hard to do that when rigging. Saying this I have never killed a Laker when rigging but I also don’t target them. The few I have caught have swam off fine straight down. I usually don’t boat them and just pop the hooks.

I usually just get them back in as quick as possible and don’t have much of a problem, especially lakers I usually do what disco says and don’t even bring them in the boat. There’s always lots of excitement when you bring one in but you’ve just gotta handle them carefully and get them in quick, not that there’s anything wrong with taking photos.

Hey guys thanks for your replies..

Lets talk lakers ,...baby lakers (under 5 lbs) are generally not a problem, they hit most times dont trigger a release just watch rod tip for movement , mature fish over 10 rod pops and stands there with a slow drag ...

Easy to tell a laker bite compared to the drag screaming run of a salmon ..

My approach to boating a laker, I fish a 9ft ugly stik spooled with 20lb floro , laker hits no mercy ,drag tightened to the nuts and rod bent in a u to the water, still cant raise these larger fish (10 to 15 lbs)as quickly as would like ...

After a tug of war fish is boatside ...with pliers try to relase without even netting , if netted leave in water and remove hooks , drag for awhile hoping for revivial, as said baby lakers seem no prob but the big lads are a different story .....do all we can but the large fish still present a problem..

Hey guys be prepared for some long drawn out battles with gb lakers , i predict they will hit 30 to 40 lbs no limit...with the abundance of bait and life span no reason it wont happen..hey 3 yrs ago we got beat out of 1st place by a 21 lb laker ...
In summary

IM NOT A LAKER FAN

unless of course their a target species in a tourament...

here is my take on lakers and other deepwater great lakes fish.


I agree with most of the info presented especially about dragging fish prior to release, mainly salmon and steelhead. I have tried this multiple times with big lakers and do not always have positive results, so switched that to strictly popping the fish off beside the boat. sometimes we have to just hold the tail to get it back upright and away it goes. having some wind also hepls for sure

the dog days of summer are the problem days when there is very little wave action and the surface temperture is 75 and above......It\s just damn hard on lakers coming up from say 80 feet, so we opted not to target them at all for the past decade or so.

so, does anybody like floaters....no, but they do happen with all species and i see it every year especially during tourney times when there is a minimum weight for salmon entry...sad

lastly, when I fish lakers up around my cottage and they come up again from 50 to 70 feet while jigging, I purposely let the fight at around the 20 foot mark and i always see bubbles as the burp out air.....after that it's to the boat get the hooks out and hold the fish by the tail. they let you know when ready to go and I have never killed any with this method.

I should point out i do not keep lake trout over 2 pounds so most are released this way


If i have to, I will put on a homemade descender when necessary, but most of the time........minimal handling......no netting and no photos with fish out of the water works just fine


It's a good topic Dave, but a tough one

Great info and spot on accurate.
I used to fish Parry Sound area a lot for lakers. I would follow the same process and most of the time the lakers would take off by themselves. (There's been a few I would've loved to get pics of, but I didn't want to handle them more than I needed.)

I mostly focus on shallow water species now, and there are still fish that will float, regardless of our best efforts. Smallies, perch and muskie are a few species that come to mind.

Happy fishing all! I think 99.9% of us do our best to release fish safely.

Unfortunately its the opposite for the tournament folks. Recent stats in from Bass tourneys (In-Fisherman references) detail some grim numbers for keeping them in live wells. Would expect much worse for the cold water species. Just saying.

Some good advice on this thread so far. Here's my two cents:

Crimp your barbs if you don't plan on keeping lakers. No sense having them bleed out when you were going to release them. Big lakers don't taste good, carry more toxins and can be very old. Shame to kill them for no reason. (Same goes with salmon. They get hooked in the gills more than lakers so barbs kill them.)

Fight the big lakers slowly. They will burp out air eventually and this helps with their energy and survival.

Buy a descender! I use a Seaqualizer with my downrigger for releasing big fish. It works really well. You can see fish swimming down on the sounder once they release at 50 feet. Quick and easy and worth the money.

Mac

This post has been edited by DaddyMac on Aug 27, 2024 - 10:22 am

If a fish is hooked in the gills I am not sure how a barbless hook helps? If you hook the gills the fish will bleed out barbs or no.

Now I will for sure agree barbless does help get fish unhooked quickly which can help survival.

Some days Salmon fishing the only fish I end up taking home are someone else's floaters! If I see Salmon flopping around I try to revive it and if that fails it's my catch of the day. No point wasting it.

it all species. Some people will throw back a fish even if it is dead. I remember perch fishing in a pack a few years back. I was down wind of most. I caught more perch using my net than I did using minnows. these fish were still kicking but could swim and as big as I was keeping. this summer I was trying for some bigger walleye so was culling the smaller ones all while keeping the small ones in the live well. I ended up stopping as I started to gill small ones so had to release bigger fish. I will never through a fish back if it is not going to make it.