In a former life I spent lots of time handling fresh adults in salt water, loading them onto a truck at a release/recapture facility and shipping them to a freshwater rearing facility a hundred miles away (Some of you Oregon boys may guess what I am talking about ). The tool of choice for doing this was a soft nylon 1/4 inch mesh net. These were fish that were #1 ocean brites in September, yet we had 98% survival to spawning in late November. I net my fish to release them using the same kind of net - these are commercially available now but mine is the home sewn variety we used to use. Netting them means you can get them off without exhausting them.