20 The Life Story of the Fish 



balances that the angler has been so often told that he should 

 handle a fish only with wet hands if he wants to return it 

 to the water alive: dry hands would remove so much of 

 the mucus coating as to expose the fish to fatal attacks. This 

 theory has recently been undermined by an experiment in 

 which trout, caught on flies, were removed from the hook in 

 equal numbers with wet and dry hands, and retained alive 

 in ponds for observation. There was no significant difference 

 in the mortality of the two groups. The explanation seems to 

 be that dry hands need to squeeze a fish less than wet ones, 

 and that the slight amount of mucus removed by dry hands 

 during the short time needed to free a lightly hooked fish 

 is no more damaging than the greater pressure of wet hands. 

 In the case of a deeply embedded hook the physical injury 

 to the internal anatomy paused by its removal would be 

 more apt Co bring about death than the application of hands, 

 whether wet or dry, to its external surface. 



Let it be hastily added, however, that the removal of 

 large amounts of slime by extensive use of dry hands could 

 not be other than injurious. It is for this reason that mois- 

 tened woolen or cotton gloves, which give a firm grip with- 

 out undue squeezing or drying, are worn by fisheries workers 

 when taking spawn or scales from live fish. These spawn- 

 taking operations, when eggs and milt are stripped from 

 fish which are then returned to the water, offer excellent 

 opportunities for procuring the large numbers of scale 

 samples needed by the biologists in life-history studies. The 

 accusation has at times been made by fishermen that such 

 scale-taking injures the fish, but it has been proved again 

 and again that, if properly done, it causes no harm. I have 

 taken scales from trout, and then penned the specimens in a 

 cage for several- weeks afterward, until the skin had grown 

 back into place. No harm was done. And I know a small 

 stream on the Pacific Coast where the steelhead are stripped 



