Fish Descenders

[Oolie]

With all of the BSB showing lately I found it odd there was no dedicated thread to this tool on BWE and decided to start one.

When fishing in water deeper that 120 feet, often a fish reeled to the surface will be suffering significant barotrauma. The eyes are bulging the swim bladder or stomach will protrude from the fish's mouth, and there's very low odds of the fish making it out alive without assistance.
Black sea bass seem to fight themselves into a state of helplessness, and while they swim off on their own most of the time, their survival rate increases significantly the faster they reach a comfortable depth.
Some fish lack swim bladders, but whether or not they suffer from barotrauma or not is still not well studied.

Puncturing is not really a safe bet for the fish, because they have to make their way down past sea lions, porpoise and other predators, and then they have to survive bacterial infection of their internal organs. Odds of fish survival plummet with this method as compared to descending.

The amount of weight needed to quickly descend a fish increases significantly with the size of the swim bladder, so consider keeping and anchor handy for grouper, and descender rigged up or handy.

Thank you.

Here are some articles.
https://www.sportfishingmag.com/fish...ishing#page-12
http://www.seagrant.umn.edu/newslett...eep_water.html
http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa....kfish_down.pdf
https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Conserva...ish/Barotrauma