Fish Selfies

I have dozens of buddies that love to flyfish which for the most part is catch and release, which is the noble thing to do. But almost 100% of them, before the release comes, Will try and etch their epic achievement into the annals of social media history by taking a selfie with their catch. All of that is well and good, of course, but the question is how long does it take to frame up their photo memory and snap a picture which is in focus and crisp. Well the dynamics of the selfie include time out of water for what I will typically described as fragile fish, all kinds of trout, steelhead, etc. And here's the rub. Time out of water is not the best thing in the world for any fish particularly when you add in handling the catch. Idaho Fish and Game public information supervisor Roger Phillips has some thoughts about selfies and the time Fish spend out of water: "The challenge is always and this is where it gets really sticky and into a gray area. When we start trying to quantify how long is too long. That's just almost impossible to answer because first I guess I should say ideally don't take him out of the water because that is going to reduce the risk. But at the same time I'm a photographer lots of other people want to take pictures of these fish. So what is a reasonably safe way to do that and you can't really put a time limit on it but you obviously want to keep them out of the water as little as possible and treat them gently through this whole process."