What Size Panfish Do You Harvest?

[Bruce Tomaselli]

I never thought about this until I read a recent post. What size pan fish do you harvest? I believe most of the gills I keep are 7" and the crappies have to be at least 9" in PA.

[jim cosgrove]

i pinch the barbs down or you could file them off .i still have a lot of barbed flies and will use them when i dont have a barbless version but go with the barbless ones whenever i can.my bass flies all have barbs tho and probably always will

[dick tabbert]

I would think barbless hook would cure most of that.

[jim cosgrove]

i'm with carl on the longer shank hooks.light wire hooks do less damage and are easier to remove.all my flies i;ve tied lately are on barbless hooks.easier on the fish ,me,and the flies last longer as they are 10x easier to extract.problem is you cant tip a barbless hook with bait of any type

[Leo Nguyen]

Long shanks are indeed much more useful in extraction. But as Tony pointed out, J type hooks do cause quite a bit of significant damages, and still can be deep hooked. As long as the long shank paired up with barbless, you can minimize damage in the long run.

[carl hendrix]

TONY; AND LEO;; THANKS FOR THE INFOMATION GUYS !

[Bruce Tomaselli]

Thanks everyone who has participated in this post so far. It's turned out to be very informative.

[bait_guy]

Bluegills / sunfish 6-9", do a good bit of perching on Erie, don't keep much under about 8" because there's not a lot to eat on those size ... occasionally catch a crappie or rock bass, they have to be big enough to get a decent fillet or back they go ... a lot of the perch from Erie die from bladders expanding when being pulled up from 30-40-50 feet