I'm afraid I killed a nice bass this week trying to get a swallowed hook out. After working on it for about 5 minutes I just cut the line and released it but it just floated belly up. I'm just wondering what others do to get the hooks out or do you just cut and release to minimumize damage to fish.

I'm no expert but I have caught fish with hooks in them and if they've been in awhile they seem to come out easy enough. When I hook one deep I will just leave the hook in if it looks like I will do damage trying to get it out.

I e always heard cut the line and let it rust out

In the end it's just a fish

cut the line and throw it back soon I cut it, sometimes it their bleeding, if you get back in the water fast, they'll live.

i have a set of heavy duty wire dikes in the boat. I just cut the hook somewhere in the middle if its where I can, and if they have swallowed the whole thing to where the eye is just sticking out I either poke the point out and cut it off or just cut it at the eye. You lose a hook but it seems to me if one side is cut it has a lot better chance of working itself out.
I don't even try to get it out the normal way if they are deep, just cut the hook as close to in half as you can and most of the time you can pull it out easy. Takes about 10 seconds. The fish probably died from lack of oxygen for 5 minutes rather than the swallowed hook.

IF you don't own one of these then you need to get one. There are alot out there that look like this but they are not. You have to get this one and gut hook fish are no longer a problem. Do not get anything else other than this specific one, comes in two sizes. It has an extra slot that allows the hook to swing 180 degrees and pops it out in seconds.

Fish Hook Extractor

99% of the time I can cut the line then pull it back thru the gills with a pair of hemostats then keep pulling straight down with light pressure. This turns the hook around and you can grab it with a pair of needle nose and it pops right out. It's very quick and easy.

Thanks Skeeter Don, I will check it out.

Learn the through the gill method and remove them quickly with minimal damage to the fish. There are lots of videos online showing it. I haven't left a hook in a fish in years.

Thru the gill with the line method for me. Once you have done it a few times it is really quick .

Exactly, that's what I do.

Through the gills method is the quickest and easiest way and i have never killed a gut hooked fish since my dad showed me that trick somewhere around 20 yrs ago!

Definitely through the gills. The speed will come with executions, and needs to be pretty quick especially in warmer water (power plant lakes in the summer). I have had one that took a little too long on a 8lber on Monti. I finally got him released, but had a lot of work to do to revive him. It works GREAT for single hooks, but can be done on trebles too, if done carefully!

go through the gills with hemostat foreceps or thin pliers

Although it was long ago and not so far away, I did my own study on the mortality rates of two different groups of deeply hooked bass. I was working for a place that no longer exists in its previous form, "The Lakes of Danbury." We had been operating the thing for maybe a year (back in the 80's) and I'd seen a few large bass wash up dead. We were quick to write it off as "unavoidable fishing mortality" but I was thinking about the attrition rates and comparing to replenishment (especially of larger specimens) rates. It wasn't a good picture. So...and I posted this before;

I set up a study where several of my members would keep in an oxygenated livewell and bring in at the end of the session their deeply hooked fish (fish where the hook was easily removed were not included in the study). The fish were placed into two separate raceways for keeping.

One raceway received fish that no matter how difficult, and with several differing approaches, the hook was removed immediately by the fisherman.

The other raceway received fish that as close to the hook as possible, the line had been cut and hook left in place in the fish.

After two weeks, I learned several things, one of which was very surprising. First, about 80% of deeply hooked bass that had the hook removed by the fisherman, died in about one two five days. In contrast, about 80% of the bass with the hook left in were still alive after two weeks.

Number one conclusion was to make a rule about deeply hooked fish (alternatively a rule for barbless hooks on soft baits) that the hook should be left in and the bass released.

The surprising thing I learned was about the fish the hook had been left in. With a few notable exceptions, almost all the hooks came out of the fish in one to five days and were laying on the bottom of the raceway. Not a one was "rusty." So I began to watch newly placed specimens closely to figure out what was happening, I could not conceive of the hooks "passing" trough.

What happened was the place where the hook was embedded festered up and rotted away (even if in the stomach or intestines), allowing the hook (with barb) to just fall out of the rotted spot, which then healed back over. A few exceptions included fish that died with the hook in, a fish the hook actually came out of the side of the fish, and one where the hook made it as far as the vent and got stuck there.