and if smaller trout are the issue, they should be small enough for you to grab with your hand (after wetting it first of course) to undo hooks. theres nothing on the market i can think of that with rid of this problem. although ive never had a serious issue with either, and I do take them both with me on every trip, anytime you use foreign object to grab a trouts mouth, the sucker is at risk of tearing. if you are of the catch and release mentality, you can hold the fish with the gripper with its body still in the water and pull out hooks. I think the main problem is that people are using both the lip grippers and the bogas to lift fish completely out of the water needlessly (yes i know bogas are for that, but why weigh any trout less than 22-25 inches in the first place? and even then, you should weigh quickly enough to get a measurement, not hold it up forever). The plastic fish grippers are made of, well, plastic but they on occaision maim and kill fish. The boga style grippers are made of metal. I'm not sure, given the design basics described above, you could ever completely be certain you wouldn't seriously mutilate the occasional trout, no matter how you held them. Some people might have figured out a "trick" to using one, but they learned the hard way. ![]() ripping a trout's mouth to shreds with the fish gripper has happened to most people who've used one. Releasing a fish in either of theses conditions would be irresponsible. With trout, which are certainly more delicate, you'll tear a hole in their jaw or even completely break their jaw. ![]() In the case of a redfish, which is built like a tank, this isn't a problem. All of the weight of the fish is transferred to the clamped skin in the mouth. The fish gripper clamps onto the skin in the mouth and holds there. What this translates to is how the two different styles behave on the jaws of a fish: the boga style clamps behind the jaw and slides to the jawbone where the pressure from the weight of the fish does little damage. ![]() These contact points also have a large surface area. When closed, there is significant force between the contact points. Additionally, the contact point between the two metal pieces is extremely small because of their rounded ends. That is, the two metal pieces which hold the fish's jaw rest against eachother without significant force. I was pretty excited by this product but it's bad news for catch and release. Keeping it vertical might be a little better than perpendicular, but I had a very energetic trout flop and tear its jaw, all while I held the gripper vertical. Like chicken said, if you're keeping them, no harm done.
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