Does “backflipping” hurt fish?

[Fishyboy🐟🐟🐟]

It’s a trend to do while fishing, to release the fish but backflip them while releasing? I personally think is mostly harmless as long as the fish isn’t too big, isn’t thrown to high, and dives but mostly harmless I think, what are all of y’all’s opinions on this? Do u think it hurts the fish?

 

[Fallen_Leaves16]

By "backflipping", do you mean...just...chucking the fish back into the water by flipping it like a coin?
That seems unnecessarily cruel and I really don't see any reason to do it. Never heard of any such "trend"; any self-respecting fisherman should at least give some respect to the life of a fish, especially if they intend to release it. If done from a tall dock or pier, the fish could very easily sustain severe, oftentimes fatal injury if flung with any great force.

 

[Backfromthedead]

Me and some friends used to wade the lower brandywine river in pennsylvania where we targeted bass, but often lost bait to annoying masses of bluegill and other panfish sized sunfish. When we unhooked a sunfish it was customary to display our annoyance by hurling the fish high into the air and yelling "sunny toss!" in a funny voice.

Its pretty silly that were considering whether throwing a fish into the air hurts them when the first step of the process is literally impaling part of the fish with a sharp hook and jerking them out of the water...

 

[esoxlucius]

Yes, it seems a bit odd discussing whether tossing them back in the manner you describe hurts them, when just before you toss them back you've yanked them out of the water, manhandled them, forcefully removed a hook, even worse if throat hooked.

That said, when I used to go fishing a lot, i was always as careful as possible to put the fish through the least amount of stress as possible. And when I had reeled them in, netted them, and removed the hook, always barbless, I certainly never threw them back in the way described.

Even those annoying tiddlers that I wasn't even targeting would get treated in the same manner. After all, the annoying tiddlers of today are potentially tomorrows specimen monsters!

 

[Backfromthedead]

I am 1000% certain the sunny tosses did not harm them. The sunny toss actually originated when we started catching the same sunny back to back, becoming fat off of the crayfish we spent hours laboriously collecting. So our reaction was to get these verminous fish as far away from us as possible in the most efficient manner possible. We would still get repeat offenders though, seems a sore lip and brief aerial maneuver was a small price to pay for a crayfish dinner.

 

[jjohnwm]

The smaller the fish, the less likely it is to be harmed by this practice. And, even with larger fish, there are plenty of serious anglers who release them by "torpedoing" them into the water, with the intention being to give the fish a blast of freshly-oxygenated water through the gills to speed up recovery.

But, I gotta say that I just find it distasteful and...disrespectful, for lack of a better word. I won't do it. If I intend to release a fish...which is my intent with the vast majority I catch...I will hold it and make sure it is breathing normally if I have any doubts before gently letting go. I won't even drop it into the water; if I am still physically capable of fishing, then I can still bend over and place the fish back in.

It's reminiscent, to me at least, of the way some hunters grab the antlers of a dead deer and casually swing the head around while taking a trophy pic, then drop the head afterwards like a sack of potatoes. I won't do that either; yes, I know it's dead, but...once again, it's a "respect" thing.

 

[Trouser Cough]

A true catch and release man often doesn’t even take the fish out of the water. When he does it's treated as respectfully as possible. Here's the deal...

You're a fish in the river and some dude dangles a sandwich close enough that you nail it. For the next couple minutes you're in an ultimate struggle expending more energy than you ever have in a full tilt life or death effort to get away from the thing that is intending to kill you. Once you're winched back to the edge of the boat you're exhausted and have nothing left to give. You are the equivalent of an asthmatic fat guy that's just run 1000 meters at Usain Bolt pace. Your heart is about done, every other system you have is on the verge of catastrophic failure and you literally can't breath as there's no way to replenish oxygen depletion as rapidly as it was spent. To top that off your new captor pulls you out of the water to grope you for a masturbatory polaroid event during which time you are physically incapable of breathing.

Now your captor wants to torture you for fun once he's damn near put you into cardiac arrest by intentionally throwing you into the most unnatural position you'd ever encounter during your normal life in a gesture that serves no purpose other than to provide the captor a moment of bullying joy albeit under the guise of catch and release sportsmanship.

The number of times I would do a backflip release is zero.

The number of times anyone in my boat would do a backflip release is one.

To each his own and I think you're right to have asked the question.

 

[Joshuakahan]

I don’t get why it would be so hard to just place them back normally or why urge to find stupid ways of releasing the fish so strong that this thread was even necessary

 

[Trouser Cough]

I don’t get why it would be so hard to just place them back normally or why urge to find stupid ways of releasing the fish so strong that this thread was even necessary

The underlying premise is that by physically harming the fish you're teaching it a lesson, that being not to eat meals intended for a different fish. Sort of like the lady at Walmart that instead of teaching her kids what's wrong or right she just beats them for what they did.

 

[Fishyboy🐟🐟🐟]

Yea but aside from the respect part, does flipping them actually hurt them?