On my pitching stick and frog rod I winch them in. I do play the biggest ones a little on the pitching stick once they are clear of cover. On anything with trebles or light wire hooks I play them out. If you don't you'll rip the hooks out or straighten them. I have straightened a standard EWG hook out on a possible PB. On the other hand I have landed a big bass that had one point of a treble on a Chug Bug in its nostril. The proximity to cover plays a part in the decision as well.

2 hours ago, king fisher said:

While I greatly appreciate your concern for the long term survival of the bass, I'm not too worried about lactic acid build up. If a bass can survive being skied on top of the water, boat flipped into a boat, drove around in a live well all day, transferred to a tank, held up high, weighted showed off to a crowd of spectators, transferred back to a tank, then released miles from it's home, and live to be caught another day, I think it can survive an extra couple of minutes getting tired enough to land without making a big show of it at the boat. I do agree very light tackle, making for an extremely long fight resulting in complete exhaustion is not helping the survival odds, but backing off on the pressure, while lessing the chance of pulling a hook and insuring a quieter experience at the boat is not going kill the bass.

I can’t save every fish I catch and obviously some must be sacrificed for the spectacle of the weigh in - but I am just making people aware of the fact that fish caught out of hot water die much faster and fighting the fish objectively does them no favors. No judgement here. Just facts that people can choose to do with that which they please.

1 hour ago, Susky River Rat said:

I try to follow what @Pat Brown stated. I try to get them in as fast as my gear and fish will allow. I won’t skim them across the water but, try to land them quickly.

Fish have a very very hard time getting rid of lactic acid build up. This is why they say to land a musky as quickly as possible. I am very against BFS for bass.

@king fisher there is a higher morality rate than we will ever know. The whole swam away it will be fine is old logic. It has been disproved through science.

I believe there is a big difference between fighting a bass to total exhaustion, and taking a little extra time to make sure I successfully land the bass. If a bass has to use an exceptional amount of effort to escape from a predator, does it then die of lactic acid build up? I have witnessed large trout that were landed on very light tippet that had to be revived in order to swim away. Those same trout were caught dozens of times that summer. I know trout are not bass, I can't recall landing the same bass after a few days, but I never have played a bass to the absolute end of a fight like I have a trout. I believe camera's kill more fish than over playing them does. If the science proves me wrong than I'm wrong. I am not familiar with any studies that prove one way or the other on how much stress a bass can take. I do know when lactic acid builds up in my muscles I become tired and my muscles will become week. I recover with rest and am soon back to normal. I have pressed my body to the absolute limit, and did not suffer any long term effects. I realize a fish may not be able to rest, and still has to hunt something to eat, where as I can go lay down on the couch. I'm not saying to fight a bass to it's absolute limit, I'm only saying there is no need to be in a big hurry to land a bass.

The world of a bass is violent and tough. They have evolved to be able to survive more than just a normal day in the water. Many natural conditions can put a huge amount of stress on them, and they have adapted over time to be able to take stress themselves in the water. They have not adapted to being lifted completely out of the water for photos, or being boat flipped on to the deck of a boat. Fighting hard in the water is something they can handle, abuse out of the water is totally foreign to their normal way of life.

3 hours ago, king fisher said:

While I greatly appreciate your concern for the long term survival of the bass, I'm not too worried about lactic acid build up. If a bass can survive being skied on top of the water, boat flipped into a boat, drove around in a live well all day, transferred to a tank, held up high, weighted showed off to a crowd of spectators, transferred back to a tank, then released miles from it's home, and live to be caught another day, I think it can survive an extra couple of minutes getting tired enough to land without making a big show of it at the boat. I do agree very light tackle, making for an extremely long fight resulting in complete exhaustion is not helping the survival odds, but backing off on the pressure, while lessing the chance of pulling a hook and insuring a quieter experience at the boat is not going kill the bass.

I agree with you in spirit. But the dirty secret about tournies is that many of those fish do not survive, especially in the hot summer. That's one thing I find hypocritical about the tourney anglers who tell you not to eat bass because they want to weigh them in. They're disproportionately, unintentionally killing larger bass.

@king fisher - you have good logic but some of the key details that make lactic acid build up fatal for a bass and not for you and I:

1. Closed vs. Open System Clearance: When you exercise intensely, your body shuttles lactate to the liver to be converted back into energy via the Cori Cycle or oxidizes it. In a bass, the lactic acid is dumped from the muscle directly into the bloodstream, where it drastically drops the blood pH.

2. The "Bohr Effect": As the bass's blood becomes acidic, the oxygen-carrying capacity of its hemoglobin drops significantly. This causes oxygen deprivation in their tissues.

3. Lack of Air Breathing: While your body can keep taking in oxygen from the air during intense physical stress to help your metabolism recover, a bass is severely limited by how much oxygen its gills can extract from the water—especially if it is already exhausted or in warm water.

4. Temperature Sensitivity: Largemouth bass are highly sensitive to warm water temperatures. Higher water temperatures accelerate their metabolic rate and lactic acid production during a struggle, while also lowering oxygen levels in the water, making it virtually impossible for the fish to neutralize its blood chemistry before dying.

To the OP - in hot water especially - it’s best to land largemouth bass as quick as you can! It’s always good for the resource when you are able to hurry them in and land them without injuring you or them and let them go. One should never make a habit of boat flipping bass or long arduous photo shoots. Nobody here is advocating for those practices that I can see in this thread. Nobody is saying hurt one’s self or behave recklessly or rush - just saying it wouldn’t hurt if people added “get them in as quick as you can” to the fish care and stewardship database.

If you enjoy the fight on lighter tackle - that’s fine - it just might kill fish. Something I consider when going into a gunfight with a knife so to speak. If that is something you want to avoid - proceed accordingly. Also agree that we should all do our best to handle and release fish considerately - not trying to exclude other good fish care practices - just addressing what the OP asked.

4 hours ago, king fisher said:

If a bass can survive being skied on top of the water, boat flipped into a boat, drove around in a live well all day, transferred to a tank, held up high, weighted showed off to a crowd of spectators, transferred back to a tank, then released miles from it's home, and live to be caught another day, I think it can survive an extra couple of minutes getting tired enough to land without making a big show of it at the boat.

Don't many bass not survive exactly what you've described? I've read accounts of big bass floating the day after at the release spot of tournaments.

As far as fighting fish, I'm in Al's (@Lottabass) shoes in that I just try to hang on. I hooked a couple bass in this grass two days ago that immediately started bulldozing through the grass. There was two lanes in the grass where they'd ripped through the grass. I lost them both as the hook popped free, but managed to land this small one:

This bass, which I caught this morning, ran behind me, taking drag. I landed her by simply hanging on. No tactic. No skill. Just luck:

I'm assuming I'm the weakest angler at Bass Resource and I catch many bass in the weeds, so hanging on is often the best I can do. @T-Billy, on the other hand, looks like he could winch a tuna out of reeds!

Looking at the two pics above, the reeds, grass, and lily pads can all free a bass. Note that they're everywhere.

Now, give me open water and I can land a high percentage of bass. Some still pop free, but I use the drag, the rod, and my decades of experience to fight the bass with far less drama. Like @Crow Horse, I don't want them too frisky by the boat, but I also don't want them exhausted.