u/elmariachi304

I last posted on Sunday when we finally caught our first fish after going out 7 times. Well, we went back today and caught another 6 pumpkinseed sunfish today in around an hour. It was so much fun! Unfortunately one of the fish swallowed the hook pretty deep and I couldn't get it out :( I felt like I was mutilating the poor thing and it was thrashing so hard. I wound up just cutting the line and throwing it back in with the hook in :( My lack of skill killed a fish today, I feel bad going back again until I'm sure I can handle it next time.

I have needlenose pliers attached my belt loops at all times but the darn mouths on these pumpkinseeds are so small. Before I left I saw some muuuch bigger fish swimming around in that pond, so on my way home I felt a little better thinking maybe I made it a bit easier for them to get dinner tonight if they found the fish I injured and threw back. But maybe not, that'll just mean the big fish swallows the hook too.

Anything I can do to prevent this in the future?

My 6 year old son and I made every rookie mistake you can make. It took us until today, our 7th time going out, to catch our first fish. We ended up with 6 bluegill in only around 2 hours. It was such a feeling of accomplishment after spending every weekend the last month getting "skunked" and doing so much research & learning. I think I'm gonna go out every weekend all summer long now!

In retrospect our biggest breakthroughs were figuring out to use hotdogs as bait, and using the right size hooks. We used tiny #3 size hooks today and they worked great. Every time before this we were apparently using hooks way too big for panfish. And with the hot dogs, every time I cast the fish swarmed. I would get some bites on every single cast. Previously I was using soft plastic worms. The bluegill often got away with my hotdog without getting hooked, so I need to figure that out. It seems like the hotdog is held better if I bury the entire hook in it, but that lets them nibble at it without getting hooked whereas having a hook sticking out of the hot dog makes it easier for it to come loose but to me logically seems like would give me a better chance of getting a fish on. What's the better approach?

The first fish I landed I didn't know how to grab, I wound up unhooking it in the grass and throwing back. I caught and released all 6 fish today.

The third fish was the smallest and hardest to unhook. When I threw him back he landed on his side in a shallow. Seeing he wasn't gonna make it, I grabbed my net, scooped him up and put him back in the water in a deeper area. He swam right away.

By the 6th fish I was holding the bluegill with my hands while I pulled the hook out, then throwing directly back in the water without the fish or the rod ever touching the ground. I felt like a total pro!

It was disconcerting to me how hard the fish bucked when I started pulling the hook out. You really feel their pain in that moment, so getting better at unhooking to do it as humanely as possible is the next thing I want to work on getting better at.

One more thing for newbies to try that helped us. We went out to the same pond 5 times and never got a bite no matter where we stood. Then we tried another pond and got bites immediately. If something isn't working don't keep doing it, try for 10-15 minutes and then switch it up.

All in all, an 11/10 morning with my son. I never thought we would have been this successful.