Fishing with Rod Discussion Forum
Fishing in British Columbia => General Discussion => Topic started by: BigFisher on October 21, 2014, 05:32:06 PM
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How long after you kill a fish will it be good for if you are not able to get it on ice right away. I know summer is a different game, but im talking during the fall months and out of water? Was woundering
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A couple of hours was fine for my chum doe. Putting it in the water may help.
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I left a 15 pound coho on the rocks for an hour and it tasted awesome.
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your catch should be fine for a typical day of fishing as long as the best is done to keep it that way. Putting it in the water is the one of the less desirable things to do. It will actually raise the temperature of your catch more than air will because heat energy will transfer more readily from the water to the flesh than from air. Submerging it in water allows the meat to absorb water which makes it swell and get soft. Keep fish moist. Evaporation uses heat energy and will remove it from your catch. Keep it in the shade, in cool moist grass or in a burlap sack. Don't leave it in the sun. I remember when I was a kid and went bar fishing in the summer with my father. We put our catch in a plastic bag and buried it in the sand, dug it up when we left and it was cool and fresh. There are other ways of putting your fish in a make shift cache like that.
Clean the fish as soon as possible particularly if it has been actively feeding before it was killed.
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Just plan ahead...
Take a cooler and fill it with ice before your head out. Leave it in the back of your car with a couple of beers. If you catch a nice fish, clean it and put in on ice straight away.
If you don't... At least you have a cold beer ready for you :-)
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Putting it in the water is the one of the less desirable things to do. It will actually raise the temperature of your catch more than air will because heat energy will transfer more readily from the water to the flesh than from air. Submerging it in water allows the meat to absorb water which makes it swell and get soft. Keep fish moist.
I see people putting their fish in the water all the time.
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Two observations from fishing/other stuff.
1: Dead fish in water tend to get soft, bloated and disgusting.
2. Dead fish on shore tend to get crusty, sun dried and if stepped on disgusting.
Moral of the story.
Fish dead for a few days in either location will be disgusting.
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I see people putting their fish in the water all the time.
from:http://flyanglersonline.com/features/canada/can319.php
there is one practice that should always be avoided: Never, ever, place live fish on stringers. The stress of being caught then dragged around in the warmer surface water is often enough to do them in, and once a fish dies the flesh starts absorbing water through osmosis. Immediately! For this same reason, dead fish—uncleaned or cleaned—should never be stored in water.
heat energy (usually measured as calories or joules) transfer far easier from water to other object easier and faster than it can from water air. What's more even though water may be colder than air it will hold more heat energy. This is basic physics.
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I keep mine in a moist burlap coffee bean sack...always have. Works well for the 3-4 hour outing I go on this time of year for fall salmon.
Putting it on ice right away isn't an option if you are good walking distance away from your vehicle
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From my experience, keeping the fish in a wet burlap sack will keep it fine for several hours.
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for this time of the year there's nothing wrong with keeping your catch on a stringer along the side of a free running river like the Vedder...for those who think otherwise, try standing in the water bare footed and see how long you last.
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Fish are cold blooded and their body temperature mirrors that of the water they are in. There for if you place your fish in a plastic bag and submerge it in the river it will not absorb water and it will remain the same temperature as the water.
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from:http://flyanglersonline.com/features/canada/can319.php
heat energy (usually measured as calories or joules) transfer far easier from water to other object easier and faster than it can from water. What's more even though water may be colder than air it will hold more heat energy. This is basic physics.
this makes no sense.
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Fish are cold blooded and their body temperature mirrors that of the water they are in. There for if you place your fish in a plastic bag and submerge it in the river it will not absorb water and it will remain the same temperature as the water.
I would reconsider putting fish in bag before submerging it. It would be difficult to remove all the air thus the air pockets will trap heat especially if it is sunny.
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From my experience, keeping the fish in a wet burlap sack will keep it fine for several hours.
I rely on this too.
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this makes no sense.
water's thermal conductivity is higher than air's (0.6 vs 0.025 W/(m·K)), which means heat moves 24 times easier to and from water. You can check this out here. http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_429.html
Water makes your bare feet colder when it as say at 10 degrees than air at the same temperature because of this.
Sorry, I did just edit the original statement to replace the second use of "water" with "air":
heat energy (usually measured as calories or joules) transfer far easier from water to other object easier and faster than it can from water air.
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I would reconsider putting fish in bag before submerging it. It would be difficult to remove all the air thus the air pockets will trap heat especially if it is sunny.
It's actually not hard to remove all the air. Put fish in the bag. Submerge the bag in the water keeping the open end above the water. All the air is forced out by the water pressure. Tie the open end tight.
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So sunday I had 4 fish that had been dead for 10 hours before they made it to the freezer. Would it be stupid to keep them now?
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I always use a burlap sack and it works great plus it makes carrying the fish must easier.
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So sunday I had 4 fish that had been dead for 10 hours before they made it to the freezer. Would it be stupid to keep them now.
Absolutely no problem unless they were under a heat lamp. I agree its best to get them as cold as possible as soon as possible, but I would suspect that in a blind taste test practically no one could tell the difference between a fish handled perfectly vs one that was lying at the rivers edge for a days fishing trip.
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So sunday I had 4 fish that had been dead for 10 hours before they made it to the freezer. Would it be stupid to keep them now?
Darn right it would be stupid to keep them Ryan ... bring em' over so I can take care of them for you :D
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This august I was sockeye harvesting (only went twice and had enough) and One day it was 25 degrees out and probably about 20 +degree water temperature and I had put my sockeye in the water along shore for about 6 hours and it was fine. Delicious infact.
Its not going to just "go bad". More than anything this idea of fish going bad is coming from picky people who are prissy about these sort of things. Youre more than likely fine at this time of year putting it in a bag in the water all day. Its basically like putting it in the fridge.
well what ever you think works for you that's fine. I just provided the best answer I could based on my experience, what I've been taught over the years and what I know. Smaller fish will definitely go bad in 6 hours or so if not protected from the effect of heat and sun.
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To each their own - but I don't like the idea of eating fish that has been sitting in the sun all day - even if it is a bit cooler outside. I usually bring a couple bottles of water with me that I freeze the night before. Always have a cold drink of water, and throw the other in with my fish to keep them a bit colder and safer.
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While bottom fishing for smaller saltwater species (flounders, greenling, sea perch) from shore, I usually bleed my catch in a bucket of cold sea water which I then keep in the shade. After bleeding, I place them in a portable cooler bag (with a shoulder strap), in which I also pack my bait and a few freezer packs frozen the night before. I tend to hike for a short distance between fishing spots so it's a convenient and easy way to transport my catch. I then clean my fish at the end of the trip and they still taste fine. For larger fish (like salmon), which I still have relatively less experience with, what I have done so far is dispatch and bleed the fish in water like what I have done with smaller fish. I then store the fish in cold sea/river water before cleaning and then transferring to the cooler in the car at the end of the trip. Fish still tasted great.
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I then store the fish in cold sea/river water before cleaning and then transferring to the cooler in the car at the end of the trip. Fish still tasted great.
I do the same thing. As I understand it, the fish have to be immersed in water to bleed out properly or the blood coagulates. I see way more people not bleeding their fish.
Now pinks. I agree, next year I'm putting them on ice ASAP. The water is way too warm to have them submersed for a day of fishing.
BTW, does cutting out it's gills bleed out as well as just tearing/cutting the gills and letting moving water through them?
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I just knock them on the head and then cut or tear the gills. The blood usually comes out in a forceful spurt. Other may do different as I have heard varying reports on how necessary it is to bleed out a salmon or trout. For me it's more of a cleanliness thing as there less of a mess when I fillet the fish at home.
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In terms of preserving the roe, would killing then submersing the fish in the river allow for water to penetrate the cavity and damage the roe?
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After a fish is killed, if the fish is still whole (hasn't been gutted yet) water will not enter the cavity and will not affect the roe when submerged. I always put my fish in the river after bonking and bleeding. I have never ended up with water in the stomach cavity.
In terms of preserving the roe, would killing then submersing the fish in the river allow for water to penetrate the cavity and damage the roe?
:)
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My experience. You can often tell if you have done a poor job from spits in fillets and discoloration in the meat. If the skin is wrinkled that is a poor sign. It is much easier to fillet a fish that has been kept on ice than one that is soft or bent in half.
Best practice large cooler filled with crushes ice or cubes. Fish cleaned immediately and packed in ice with blood and slime allowed to drain to the bottom much as some of the commercial boats do.
My normal method is to bleed and store fish in a kill bag with as much ice or frozen packs as one can handle.
I will bleed and leave a fish outside if the air is cold enough for a short time. I will never put fish in water although leaving it in sealed bag would seem like a good idea if the water is cold enough.
I once made the mistake of leaving a fish in a pool of water in August and had the flesh melt off the bottom after a couple of hours.
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This year we've started eating nearly all our fish as sashimi. I can tell you, with 100% confidence, I know right away if I have left them too long at this point. It may not matter cooked, but eating it raw, it needs to be handled properly, or it comes out rather gross and it IS noticeable.
This year, anything left over an hour after killing it without ice, went straight into a freezer bag labelled smoker fish. This was even up until a week ago, on a rainy day at around 10C, and the fish were kept in the water. Even if the fish were identical looking, I could tell which one I killed first and let sit, and also which side was down in the water, and which was out of the water. If it gets too warm, the meat will start separating, even if the fish is a bullet and otherwise has "firm" meat.
I now have a cooler in the back of the truck, and if I'm close enough, I'll quickly clean the fish and run up to the truck to throw it in the cooler. I always buy those Costco water bottle packs, and once I'm done drinking the bottles, I'll fill em 3/4 full of water and turn them into ice packs. One bottle on the inside of the fish's cavity, and a few bottles surrounding the fish, made a considerable difference in the meat as far as I could tell.