1) If you want it to be ZERO... don't fish.
Yes.
2) If you choose to fish, regardless of how you fish (bait/lure/fly)... single biggest way to reduce mortality is to keep the hook from ever being taken into the mouth.
This is NOT a slam on you, brother, but doesn't this suggest that the snagging/flossing we all agree is unethical is the most fish-friendly method of sport fishing? The fine line we walk....
3) Once you hook up, fight 'em as hard as the tackle can stand.... translation = quick is good, slow is bad
4) When releasing, no-touch technique is best, but sometimes you gotta touch 'em (net or hands) to get that hook out fast.
5) Watch the airtime (gills exposed to air), translation = short is good, long is bad. This applies to extracting the hook as well as photo-ops
Photo-ops are NOT the end of the world. J F C .... you just intentionally skewered the critter with a potentially lethal sharp pokey piece of metal and caused it to violently struggle for its life for the past 5 minutes. Any potential harm caused by the 10 second photo-op while it revives pales in comparison... like pissin in the ocean
Yes, yes, yes.
As eyeFISH has reminded us on several occasions, fishing is a blood sport. Any of us who think we're doing fish any favors by fishing are absolutely wrong. I personally believe the best we can do is to minimize the inevitable harm we ALL do.
One thing we should all take comfort in is that no matter how we fish, as sport fishers, we do immensely less harm to our quarry than commercial fisheries. It was once widely accepted that there was nothing mankind could do to deplete salmon runs. Can we all agree that was as large a pile of steaming feces as has ever passed through human lips?
Want to save salmon? Cut commercial harvest in half. It really is that simple. It's often argued that Pacific NW streams have been degraded to a point at which they aren't capable of supporting higher escapements. How much of that is due to insufficient nutrient content? Where did the nutrients that once supported multiple orders of magnitude more salmon come from?
But oh, yeah... back to the present... stop sport fishers from killing so many salmon. It's the only way to assure their future. Hmmmmm....