Weighing bass

How do you weigh your bass? I use the hook and go under the gills and am careful not to poke the gills so as not to harm the fish. Thinking about getting a bag and just weighing the fish in it then deducting the weight of the bag.

Thoughts?

I have a scale that has a strong clip which holds any fish really well. just clip the lip. No holes or anything. I think if you used a bag, you would be keeping the fish out of the water much longer than it's safe for the fish. Just my opinion.

Lip gripping scale

If you have a net just use that. This might be hard to explain but you can just use the netting and not the whole net. Once you have the fish in the net pull two loops on each side of the fish together and hook them with your scale. Hold the weight of the rest of the net in one hand and let the scale hold to the fish and what little netting is holding the fish. Or just weigh the whole net and use the whole net and subtract it.

I agree with the lip gripper and scale. If you're using the hook method right now you can just get the lip gripper and tare the weight. That's what I did and I feel much better about getting a weight on big fish without putting them in a bag and harming their slime coat

You can get scales that zero out things like nets, bags, etc.

I use a Rapala® Tournament Model 15 lb. Touch-Screen Scale that Academy sales for about $40 bucks. You can wet your weigh bag, grip the straps, turn on the scale and it will zero itself out. Or you can just grip the jaw of the fish. It has held a 11.95lb on it so the grips are pretty strong.

http://assets.academy.com/mgen/60/10321760.jpg

Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah I was leaning towards the bag idea or the grip. Think I may go with the gripping scale. Seems easier and probably faster. Thanks again!

Has anyone seen just the grip sold so that I can upgrade an existing scale that works fine?

I haven't seen the grip for sale anywhere. This is a pretty strong grip. Another good thing about the Rapala scale is the ability to keep track of what your best 5 bass would weigh in a tournament or just a fun day of fishing. Uses to AA batteries that last a good while

I have an original first-on-market Rapala scale that must be 25 years old now! I bought a newer one (also Rapala) almost two years ago thinking the old one might go at any time considering its age now. Of course, they now have something much nicer, but I don't need three scales for sure. Maybe I'll look at adding a plastic lip gripper tool to the hanger on a Rapala.