I'm not the most expert at fishing the Sound. I've got the gear, and we catch some fish, so I think I've got the basics figured out. However, when we fished yesterday, we were simply beset upon by small, 10 inch or so, blackmouth. We caught about 10 of them. Unfortunately, I think every one of them died.

We were using coyotes on some of the rods, herring on the others. The poor little guys would just impale themselves on the gear. Three of them hooked themselves through their back. Another lost his eye. A couple got hooked in the gills, and at least one simply got hooked and towed until we brought the gear up and let him off. He floated away.

All of the fish were too small to trip the gear and let us know they were there, so we found them when we checked the gear, which was pretty often, due to all the eel grass that was there.

I was using good sized hooks, 3/0 and 4/0, singles, de-barbed, etc. And still, I killed, accidently, 10 fish that won't grow up.

How can one avoid that?