First off, sorry to resurrect a dead thread but my son and I have recently been watching a lot of fishing shows. He is 9 years old now and really taking a liking to fishing. We really like "Fish My City" with Mike Icanella and I see him whizzing fish out of the water from bridges, boats and various other areas. I thought it was really cool how quickly and swiftly he does it but went to google to see if this was a normal thing people or Bass anglers did. He even did it with a decent size redfish(I think) and the guy on the boat made a comment that they don't normally do that with that type of fish.
My son and I found a really nice fishing spot off a bridge that is anywhere from 6-8ft above the water depending on water level. We catch tons of large mouth, pike, perch, white bass, carp and catfish here. There is a little grass area with some reeds/cat tails at the end of it, when i get a fish on i set the hook and keep tension on the rod but i lift the rod over the bridge posts and run to the end of the bridge and real them in from there. If its a perch or smaller fish(under 2# or so) we real them in and then lift them up by the line far enough to get a net under them.
Is there something different we should be doing as far as lifting them up? Outside of getting an 8foot net or something crazy. We obviously don't want to do something traumatizing or detrimental to the fish but I have definitely lost a couple nice ones taking the time to run 20 yards to the end of the bridge LOL!
Thanks for the advice, very interesting thread to read through. My real fishing experience is limited to this month, outside of a handful of pond fishing for bluegill with worms.
