TOPIC:

for those of you targeting perch early this spring, please strongly consider NOT releasing any fish you catch in water 45+ feet deep. The amount of fish with barotrauma increases rapidly as the depth increases

Here is a handy graph I made from some research out of Lake Erie (Knight et al. 2019)

You can see that once you are over 50 feet deep, 75% or so of fish have obvious signs of barotrauma
 

Nice graph.  Would a slow reel up to allow the fish to adjust to the change in depth increase the survival odds at all?

Probably not. The air bladder in perch is completely sealed. They cannot burp the gas on the way up. Some fish, like lakers, have a duct that connects the air bladder to their digestive tract allowing them to burp on the way up. This was the final fact I needed to learn to be completely against any argument for releasing deep water perch.

Reeling up slow wouldn't do much, you would have to be so slow it is impractical. Probably have to be like 30 minutes reel up, or maybe more

Taking a minute or two to reel up would still be way too fast

Thank you again for sending this reminder out Ben...definitely needs to be preached everywhere.  Hopefully with the start of the spring fishery almost upon us, law enforcement will be out there patrolling the perch pack again to try and proactively prevent this.  I'm of the opinion with just the CO boat floating through the pack, it's deterrent enough to make guys keep those small fish.

Buy one of these, watch a few videos & quit killing the small perch!
www.amazon.com/Shelton-SFD-Fish-Descende...d_i=B00C7UJYB2&psc=1

You must have a descender when fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, they work!  They should be required for deep perch too!

At the current pace of seagull feeding we will all be back to complaining about the DNR and telling stories of how it used to be soon enough. 

It is quite simple, be happy with what the lake gives you that day. Big or small take them home and enjoy the fruits of your labor. It does not do any of us any good to throw fish back into the lake that are almost certain to die.Enjoy this great weather, and be safe out there on the lake.