Depends…. I had a nice 48"er that crushed a soft plastic 20-24 feet down and within a blink of an eye shot up and out of the water like when you see those sharks on "shark week" smashing seals. She kept launching out of the water. I finally got her netted and thought for sure I had a much bigger fish because her girth was massive! Well, it wasn't girth, she was bloated bigtime and must have not had time to regulate her swim bladder. She was strong and healthy but after nearly 2 hours she would not go down. Me and two other avid Muskie anglers worked on her for that long. She'd gain strength and we'd send her down watching her kick her tail as hard as she could only to resurface floating. We did this countless times and it just wasn't meant to be for her so I had several choices to make:

1). Let nature take it's course and leave her to decompose for the birds
2). Knife her and send her to the bottom
3). Get her mounted
4). Give her to someone who could use the meat and has experience eating high mercury fish.

Well, I didn't want her mounted considering it just wasn't worth it in my eyes and wasn't the best memory of that fish dying on me. I also couldn't stomach to knife her and send her to the bottom. I made a few calls and decided to keep her and give her and guy who's an avid sportsman and enjoys eating fish and could use the meat. A family member who understands why CPR with Muskie is important as well as the warning on eating large predators with high levels of mecury. He was very thankful and knew I felt horrible. I put her in my livewell and was done fishing for the day after catching her in the 3 hour out and my day was ended much earlier than planned. I left the lake, picked up close to 100# of ice and filled it in my 50" livewell and took her home. It totally sucked but that's gonna happen from time to time if you fish as much as I do. I and two others made every attempt to get her back healthy and even though it was my decision to make we collectively agreed on the same outcome. My guess was she was perfectly fine but just could not regulate her swim bladder and after 2+ hours she was exhausted and done with trying to swim away. We made a few calls on the water to "respected well known guides" asking about "phizzing" fish like done is saltwater. We didn't have to right tool on us and with zero experience of this technique we were risking sending the fish back down with possible infection setting in or killing the fish ourselves. I guess if the fish is gonna die anyway it could be a absolute very last resort but I've questioned another very experienced angler who maybe has done it once in the 20+ years of Muskie fishing so it's not something that happens often and shouldn't be attempted unless the other option is death. In the end it's still just a fish and as long as you have the right tools, gear and mindset to let'em go properly then your off to a good start on giving that fish a chance to live. If you fish a lot it's gonna happen and if it's a legal fish then you'll need to decide what your gonna do. It's your call…..

Fish are going to die for one of two reasons:
1. Injury (gills, heart, etc)
A severe injury to the fish generally results in severe blood loss and the fish will eventually die in your hands – there’s nothing you can do about this. However just because there’s some blood from a deeply hooked fish or damaged gill don’t just assume the fish will die. Take great care and get them back down and off the surface as quickly as possible. A minor gill injury can look pretty severe but in reality the fish will recover.

2. Expanded swim bladder
This seems to happen at the strangest times and there never seems to be much rhyme or reason. It seems to happen more if the fish is being hooked in depths of 20’ or greater yet still this is no guarantee there will be a problem and 99% of fish will be fine.

It is possible to push air from a swim bladder and burp a fish but you could injure other organs in the process.

As mentioned above, fizzing can be used as a last resort if you can’t burp the fish but is has a couple inherent problems:
– Once fizzed the fish is going to sink and you’ll never really know if it recovered
– Unless you know fish anatomy this should not be attempted because you may kill a fish that was going to recover.

Another less intrusive method…
There is another method for fish with an expanded swim bladder that I had read about being used with saltwater fish but I had personally never used it, until a few weeks ago. We had a fish that was healthy and uninjured but she couldn’t get herself to stay down. I was able to burp a small amount of air but not enough to help her. The fish had great color and was breathing well so I wasn’t going to fizz her. After about a half hour she seemed to be getting exhausted and I was worried that she might not make it. This seemed to be the perfect time and perfect fish to try this method…
The method consists of attaching a heavy weight (8oz to 1#) to your fishing rod then attaching that weight to the fish with a light section of line and letting the weight take the fish to the bottom at or near the depth they came from. This should eliminate the expanded swim bladder and the fish should be fine. Instead of using light line I attached the fish to the weight with a small #6 Aberdeen hook through a thin section of skin at the end of her snout. With weight attached I lowered her to the bottom and let her sit with weight holding her down for about 1 minute. At the end of this minute I attempted to lift the fish and got her about 2’ off the bottom and she pulled herself back down. Satisfied the method had worked with a quick snap of the rod the Aberdeen hook straightened and the fish was free of the weight. Just in case I waited around the area for a few minutes to see if she came up and went back about a half hour later just to be sure she was OK. All in all it seems to be the best method for handling these bloated fish.

Very cool Idea Will. Im going to add that one to our bag of tricks. We have poked a couple before out in Lake st. clair. Michelle has a syringe that takes the air out without damaging the bladder. I have found using this method that the bloating is not in the bladder but in the belly cavity itself. We have used a very small surgical scalpel and gently expunged air bubbles in the live well until a fish could right itself. We had to be very careful not to rupture the swim bladder just piercing the belly cavity. I have cleaned many Pike in my days and know the layout of the bladder pretty well.

However I like this method of using a weight to get one down. If it ever happens to us again Im going to try it. Mike and Michelle