Yakabout - The speed bleed

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The speed bleed

Friday, 07 September 2007

A dilema no more

I've always been pretty religious about bleeding certain species pretty much as soon as I catch them, largely to improve their eating quality. There have been times that doing this has made me a little nervous though, due to the shark-bait nature of anything bloody. That's never been enough to stop me from doing it, although it has always played on my mind. But it wasn't until I sat down and had a conversation with Fishing Noosa's Bill 'Billybob' Watson that I came to learn the error of my ways. We did discuss the shark thing of course, but that wasn't the clincher. It was when we broached the topic of fish photos that I realised that I making a bit of a mistake.

By gutting and bleeding fish immedietely - which has practically become force of habit whenever I catch Aussie Salmon, Tailor or Trevally - I'm reducing their size and weight, and significantly altering their 'as is' appearance. If you take a look in the Fish section of the Yakabout gallery you'll note that many of the pictured fish have been cleaned before being photographed. The end result is a picture of a fish that looks like it came from the fish market instead of straight out of the water. I'll be making a concious effort to stop doing that from now on. I will, however, put them straight onto ice whenever possible (I don't always carry it) as soon as I've snapped off a couple of shots.

The side benefit to my new attitide is that I'll be dumping a lot less fishy-flavoured blood and guts into the water to, which should help to make me less of a target to the big 'ol biteys.