by: Gord Pyzer Handle With Care It takes much more than good intentions for fish to survive after they've been caught and released I remember skipping a university biology class in the mid-1960s and driving through a March snowstorm to catch one of Lee Wulff's seminars in Toronto. Waving his fly wand while he spoke, the legendary fly fisherman talked about exploring the wilds of Labrador from a noisy Beaver float plane, with little more than survival staples and a pile of fly-fishing gear in tow. He showed colourful slides of monstrous speckled trout and gargantuan Atlantic salmon, arguing that such fish were far too precious a resource to be caught only once. At the time his message was strange and new.       We've seen many changes in the sport of fishing over the years—some positive, some negative—but none has been more profound than the introduction of catch-and-release fishing. True, Wulff's Atlantic salmon are in dire straits these days, the result of commercial overfishing and international mismanagement. But fish stocks in other parts of the continent are thriving, in many cases because anglers are working with resource managers to carefully release all, or select members of, the fish they catch.       In Wyoming's famed Yellowstone National Park, for example, where three million outdoor enthusiasts flock each year, catch-and-release fly fishing is mandatory on many of the park's blue-ribbon waters. In some streams, the same wild trout are caught and released three or more times each season. If they had been killed the first time they were hooked, the trout populations would have been decimated. Instead, they are thriving in the face of such incredible pressure.       The key to such catch-and-release success stories lies in ensuring that the fish survive after they've been released. And the only way to guarantee survival is if the fish are handled properly in the first place.       One of the most important things you can do to improve the odds is to use proper equipment and land the fish as quickly as possible. That means shying away from frail gear and matching your rod, reel and line to the size of the fish you expect to catch.       Pinching down the barbs, or using barbless hooks—a mandatory practice in some provinces—is another helpful tactic. And speaking of hooks, singles provide much better penetration and fish-holding leverage than treblehooks do. Plus, they make release a heck of a lot easier.       Proper landing gear can also give released fish a better chance of survival. Notice I didn't say net? Too often a fish will roll and twist in a net, splitting its fins and making disentanglement a nightmare. Worse still, the fish's protective slime can be wiped off by coarse netting material. The dingy white, cotton batten-like growth you sometimes see on a fish—called Saprolegnia parasitica—is a parasite that invades the skin and flesh when the protective slime layer has been removed.       Ideally, a toothless fish like a bass, crappy, perch or whitefish is landed by slipping your thumb into the fish's mouth and gently holding it by its lower jaw. With a toothy critter like a walleye, pike, muskie or lake trout, you're much farther ahead sliding one hand under the fish's belly while you grab the "wrist" area in front of the tail with your other hand.       Whatever you do, though, don't hold a long, lean, heavy fish—like a muskie, northern pike, lake trout or salmon—vertically by its gill plates. When you do that you can exert so much pressure on the fish's spine that you can pop its vertebrae and inflict serious damage. That's why releasing a fish in the water, without ever removing it, is always your best option.       You'll also want to take into account changes in water depth and pressure. Most warm-water species—like walleye, bass, pike, muskie and panfish—are known as "ductless species," meaning they can't deflate their air bladders and adjust to pressure changes by burping out air the way salmon, whitefish or lake trout do.       Even from a depth of just 28 feet—or one atmosphere of pressure—a partially inflated balloon will pop to the surface and explode. The same thing could happen to a fish's air bladder. So try to stay in water less than 28 feet deep when you're fishing for warm-water species. And if you inadvertently catch one deeper, release it as quickly as possible, keeping it in the water where its bladder is cushioned.       Finally, whenever you remove a fish from the water to snap a photograph or remove the hooks, take a deep breath and hold it. When you start to gasp for air and need another lungful, so does the fish, so get it back into the water.       Forty years ago it took dedicated conservationists like Lee Wulff to teach us that in the face of ever-increasing fishing pressure, most adult gamefish are far too valuable a resource to be caught only once. When we land one of these magnificent creatures today, we are holding the future of fishing in our hands. And how we let them go makes a big difference.