Reviews by: CAPT. MIKE SCHOONVELD
In truth, it sucks to be born a fish. If you are a little fish, something is going to eat you alive. Maybe it will be a quick grab and gulp, as bass would do to a shiner. One minute you are just minding your own business swimming along and the next second everything goes dark and slimy until – ouch – death by stomach acid! Worse is a fish preyed upon by a toothy fish, like a pike or being cut in two by an even toothier fish like a barracuda.
A tiny percent of the fish in a lake end up being hooked by an angler, pulled from the water and tossed in a cooler of ice to get hypothermia and suffocate; perhaps dunked in a dark livewell for a period of time until removed to be cut into pieces or left to flop around or slowly suffocate while happy fisher-people take photos. Yep, a fish may live a happy life, but few of them have a peaceful end.
I don’t much worry over the plight of a fish, but I do have some empathy for their fate. Their path through this world is tough enough that I can’t blame them for one last attempt at retribution once an angler hauls them out of the water. Many of the fish seem bent on skewering the angler with the same hook that caught them in the first place, while others – the sharp toothed ones, especially – aren’t above inflicting damage to the people who caught them.
Grab a Billy club, people. I have one handy on my boat all the time and lately, I’ve been whacking the fish destined for the cooler with a handy, ball-bat shaped model sold by Boone Bait Company. Depending on the size and toothy-ness of the fish, some get sharp crack on the top of the head even before they are removed from the net. Others are dispatched once I have a “gill-grip” on them just before they are placed into the fish box. Either way, their demise is quicker than most of the other alternatives they faced.
Though you might find a Boone Fish Billy in a saltwater tackle emporium, most Great Lakes people would do better picking one up from www.boonbait.com or some other online outlet.
FISHING TOYS 