unhooking mat?

Hi all. I plan to return most of the fish I catch so was wondering if it is worth buying one of these? You can get 'em fairly cheap off ebay?
Or is there not much point as most fish I catch are only around a pound or two anyway. Has anyone ever used one for sea ( or course ) and what do ye think? Would appeciate any comments.
Col

A good idea for anyone taking decent sized pollock or wrasse off rock marks, where you have to put the fish down on the rock to unhook it. Probably not necessary on the beach though.

I use one all the time for pike fishing and have thought about it for sea fishing. I think it's an excellent idea for beach fishing. I'm not 100% sure, but if a fish is returned covered in sand wouldn't this be damaging to the fish, especially small fish that are more delicate :?:

Just a though,

Kev

On a beach I usually swing the fish to hand from the water's edge, unhook and release - which is easy enough with the tiddlers we have up here.

I suppose if you had anything with meat on it (or spines), it might be easier to put down to unhook, so in that case the mat couldn't hurt.

Fair point, MAC.

As if there was not enough gear to carry already............looks like a good idea - can't hurt from the fishes' perspective.

In theory, if you're on a beach, even plonking the fish on a plastic bag would help. You'd usually have at least one of those with you. The mat would be better on rocks though.

Personally I don't think a unhooking mat has any place on a beach, simply for the way we fish as apposed to the freshwater guys, we walk down to a place where we land a fish and that could be different every time, a Carp angler say, would play the fish into the same place almost every time.

More harm could be done by not having WET hands, the fact that the fish is touching sand or rocks that's more than likely would be wet anyway should not do it harm.

Freshwater anglers don't seem to have the same problems we do regarding strong winds, I'd hate to get back to the car park and hear someone bragging about the mat he just got for free, knowing mine had blown away :cry: :cry:

On the whole I think we don't do to bad of a job in getting released fish back to the sea in good condition.

One final thought I always take with me, is even if a fish is put back into the ocean dead, it was and still is part of the food chain that God intended it for.

Tom.