Gloves make it easy to hang on to a fish while unhooking it, or posing for a pic, but is it a good idea to wear gloves to prevent the fish from wriggling loose? I would think that the slime removal by gloving runs the risk of bacterial infection to the fish. Any thoughts?

i always thought it is a bad idea to use a glove...if you can use your hands only that's the best....if you watch when hatchery workers are handling adults they don't wan't to fungus up,like springers,they don't use gloves on 'em....

make sure your hands are wet before you touch 'em too...dry hands are pretty bad on 'em also.......

Boy, did I get an earful on the Vedder last year.!

I was releasing a wild steelie and had a wool glove on. After picture and release,a fella came over and gave me the what for on using gloves on a fish.

He was a volunteer at the hatchery and the first thing they teach you is handle only with a wetted hand.

He calmed down later.I think he was more upset that a couple of Yanks had pulled fish out of the drift while bottombouncing in amongst the boober boys.

Anyway,it made sense not to use a glove as it rubs the slime off.This is especially hard on summer fish.

what erks me is the idiots who fish chum and dont give them the proper handling ie: boot em back in the water, blatantly snagging them..its such unethical treatment, bad enough seeing netting practices of the anadromous fish, but to think that sport fishers do it to, lead by example...

If you ever forget the net and are planning on keeping a fish, a wool glove is like velcro while tailing a fish.

Heres a question, which is worse for the fish if you are in a boat. Netting or tailing with a glove? I was tailing springers just because it seemed like it was easier on them than being in the net while trying to get the hooks out of them. Just wondering and I will go with whatever seems to be best for the fish.

Firedog -
With chinook I would say that tailing the fish would be better than netting. When tailing chinook a glove is not needed. They have a much narrower cadual peducle or wrist in from of the tail than steelhead that makes them much easier to hang onto. Grabbing steelhead or coho in front of the tail is like trying to hold a bar of wet soap while chinook, chums and pinks have built in handles.

The only trouble with tailing chinook is that when the get large it may be hard to get your hand around the wrist - for me that is a fish in the plus 40# range - may you have lots of such troubles. As mentioned earlier using gloves on fish that are likely to be in warm water or around for sometime before spawning like spring chinook is just asking for problems for the fish.

Another consideration is those chrome bright fish just entering the river. Those fish with loose scales are very fragile. Anything that may knock off scales such as netting is likely to cause significant mortality. Once the scales become "set" the fish is much more tolerate to handling.

Tight lines
Smalma

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.

use a wool glove its a lot easier on the fish than netting or dragging them up on the beach. If your are concerned about harming the fish why not just reach out with the needle nose and cut the leader or twist out the hook?
p.s. these fish arent made of glass.