I have long looked at buying a scale instead of measuring and guesstimating, I finally broke down and bought a boga #15 pound scale grip. I have long read about the negative effects of suspending fish by the grip and also by hooking in the gills. So how accurate could I be by putting a fish I wanted to weigh in a weigh in bag and weighing it with the grip that way? I planned on trying it by hooking a smaller in the lip and then putting him in the bag to check the difference, but I was wondering what you guys think would be the safest way to use the weighing system?

  Unless you keep the fish out of the water for too long, or lay it in the dirt, sand & gravel, carefully weighing it might not be a concern.

Especially when one considers the damage setting a 5/0 worm hook in the basses throat can do - or a nailing a bass in the grill with a crank or jerk bait with 2 or 3 sets of treble hooks with a Hollywood Hook Set. 

I have & use a Boga grip and It doesn't hurt the fish.  I also have one of these that seems to work well too.

Gaffy Shortstick

 

 

Awesome thanks a lot, I read a lot of controversy in the bigger sport fish world about boga grips. But I strongly dislike cheaper digital scales and I figured if I was gonna spend money on a set I might as well get what I wanted. Hopefully the scale will do me many years.

Weigh the bag and subtract that from what the scale says with a fish in it. Not the most accurate but probably the best you can hope for doing it that way. 

Dan if you use a plastic bag it probably won't register more than an ounce or two. I have been using a boga for well over 15 years & never had any perceived trauma from bass by hanging them vertically. You will learn to interpolate by reading between the lines to get weights rounded to the nearest 2 ounces rather than a quarter pound.