1. Regardless of being weighed or not the fish is going to be better off swimming away.
If the fish could not survive being held in a vertical position out of water, there would surely be dead fish every time a fish jumped out of the water, just saying...
Oh man that fish came right out of the water and missed that plug... Now it's going to die because its weight wasn't supported for the 3 seconds it caught air
Congrats on releasing a very very large fish
cheers!
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device