Its not a question of hurting their jaws. Hanging a big fish displaces their internal organs, often leading to death, days later.Some studies have put the death rate as high as 25%.A sling like Zimmy posted will cure the problem.Otherwise I agree, anything that delays getting the fish back in the water is not good.

This is debatable.

What you are talking about is "isthmus injury". It has been shown to be a problem with snook, but studies in muskies have not shown an increase in mortality with weighing, even in larger fish. There is not much info one way or the other with big bass as far as I am aware. Certainly many fish that are weighed and tagged survive and are caught again.

Our club runs a season long C&R for the largest bass released alive. Simple rules are it must be weighed on a hand scale, witnessed by any person aged 16 or older, and released alive. No special prizes except the winner get the nicest trophy we award and the recognition of releasing a bass the size that most anglers would never consider releasing. Very prestigious award.

DZ

No awards gets my vote. Trophy plaque is good.

So who is the tourney going to benefit? It doesnt really matter, just curious.

Never heard it referred to as that before. But it has been demonstrated in may other species besides snook. Easy enough to avoid if you use a sling instead of holding the fish by the jaw. But you are correct in that I know of no studies that looked specifically at striped bass.

These explain it

Angler Handling Techniques Will Increase Survival for All Released Game Fish

Muskie Fishing | An evaluation of the injury and short-term survival of bonefish (Albula spp.) as influenced by a mechanical lip-gripping device used by recreational anglers

Here is the stuff about Muskies.....interesting because they intentionally were rough with radio tagged fish and found almost no mortality. Chippewa Flowage Muskie Study - Y1

To save you wading through it,

"Although no previous study, to our knowledge, has ever examined the validity of these widely-held beliefs, we too, shared concern for the survival of released Muskies, especially after reviewing tables 3 and 4 of the CFMTP. For this reason, we made the decision to subject the study Muskies to a variety of popular and unpopular holds, netting practices, and release practices, etc. Considering that the catch and release participants of the study have caught and released in excess of 1,500 Muskies; and, for the most part, practice the "proper" release methods, it was determined that it was necessary to expose the Muskies of the study to the same type of conditions, practices and treatment that they would receive while in the control of inexperienced musky fishermen. Only then could we make confident determinations as to the affects of such treatment, practices and conditions on musky survivability. The first year results are in. in terms of the types of holds: horizontal vs. vertical vs. diagonal-- there was no affect on mortality. The same was true of netting and release practices. We had four study Muskies that bled from slightly to profusely from the gills and all survived more on that later. in addition, two others were hooked during battles in one eye. They also survived. At the time of their releases we "experts" would have bet that at least four of these Muskies would have died. But none of these Muskies died! The good news is that Muskies are much hardier than previously thought. in fact, 95.6% of the Muskies caught, radio-tagged and released for the study survived the open-water fishing season! Only two out of the forty-five Muskies of the study expired. Now, does this mean that we should abandon the cautious release methods that most have come to accept over the past few years? Absolutely not. But, these findings illustrate that we must be careful to label something as proper" or accept something as "fact" without appropriate supporting research data."

Thanks! I guess that shows how much variability there is between species. There were also some studies done in Australia on one of their more popular fish, that showed even greater mortality than the snook study. I guess we won't know the real answer vis-a-vis stripers until someone does a similar study on stripers. Meanwhile, I still try to discourage the use of Bogas and similar devices for weighing, unless they use a sling.