After watching a few old Al Linder fishing shows I noticed that when he lifts his bass out of the water he grabs it on top behind the head like you'd grab a ham sandwitch.  I was always taught to either net a bass or lip it to protect it's natural slime coating.  It's hard to watch, everytime I see him boat a fish I cringe.  Anyone else notice?  Maybe I'm just too carefull.

It doesn't bother me when he head grabs a fish because sometimes that is the only safe way to handle a hooked fish  with hooks flying. What I do have a problem with is when he or any other fishermen just rips the hooks out of the fish.

he lips 99% of them on all my videos

The slime coat is usually not harmed just by grabbing and lifting a fish out of the water.The most damage occurs when a bass is boated and it flops around on your carpet for a while.Thats when you need to lip it and get it off the floor and back in the water before too much harm is done.

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I usually like to lip land my bass, but I'll tell ya, with a big lure that has three sets of trebles on it ya gotta be real careful.  I will play a fish like that longer, wait till he's whipped pretty good then grab the lure.

I'd find it hard to knock on Al Lindner regardless of how he grabbed a fish in an old video. There's a real short list of people who have done as much for catch and release fishing as he has. His In-Fisherman magazine may have actually coined the phrase "catch and release". Maybe his bass headlock developed from too many years of messing around with walleye or something although I've never seen him do it. I've always looked at Al as one of the true good guys not only in the world of fishing, but in the world period.

What he is doing is squeezing the gill plates. This paralizes the fish and keeps those stinkin trebles from sticking ya. It's also a great way to get them out of the live well and into the weight bag. If done for a very short amount of time it doesn't harm the fish.

This may be a Raul question, but does the lateral line run across the gill plate? I know it does on a musky and grabbing smaller muskies across the gill plate like this can be very damaging to their lateral line! To me, the best way to land them would to be either lip them on belly land them.

You may be rite. Where is Raul when we need him.