[Dry fly magic]

I know not all of you keep your fish and I don't keep all of them either but sometimes I keep a couple trout for the dinner table. (Please dont flame me for this topic). Now for us who keep a few fish for the dinner table, what do you think is the fastest, easiest, and most eithical way to kill your catch? Usually with little pan trout I catch I hit the back of their head over a rock hard or take my thumb and push on their neck until it breaks. What would you do for bigger fish that you intend to keep? What do you think the best way to kill your catch is? Any thoughts and opinions are apprechiated.

[FlyGal]

Whack the top of it's head on a rock...it doesn't take much force.......If I mortally injure a fish, I quickly put it out of it's misery and do the right thing - eat it.

[axle27]

I will always consider my grandmother a saint (as most people do) but she dispatched a fish one time that scared the be-Jesus outta me (being all of 9 or 10 at the time).

I had caught some small sunfish and my grandmother said if I caught 3 or 4 to keep them because my grandfather loved fish. We were downstairs in her basement and she had scaled and cleaned 3 of the 4. The fourth was still kicking pretty good. He kept trying to get away, so my grandmother finally said, "That will be enough of that" and sent the filet knife right down between its eyes. Simply dispatched....my view of my grandmother was forever changed.

[wfosborn]

I have an old Abercrombie & Fitch knife that has a big metal ball on the end I use to bonk any fish I want to keep with. Then I cut their gills and bleed them out right away. Occasionally I've had a large fish that I couldn't seem to knock out so I just cut their gills and put them on a stringer in the water to bleed out. I don't know if that's the most humane way or not, but it's what we've always done . . .

--W

[MrEsox]

there are a few ways...the humane thing is to take a bunch of ice and biologic salt add it to some water then put the fish in there. The salt calms down freshwater fish and the ice helps put them down in a calm fashin. Not everyone would take that time. Things to do is hammer to the head, cut the gill area, a nail to the back of the head (splits the spine), holding in no water, I can go on...point is there are many ways to take a fish out, but how you want to do it is up to you.