I have to agree with Emotion. If you use artificals you will catch as many, and a great chance of, larger fish without the trash fish.
The best lure in your arsanal is the one you use the most. Learn to use something that takes skill and out thinks the fish.
I get more excited when I catch a fish because I outsmarted him.
Artifical bait is cheeper in the long run and it really does produce fish without the worry of the fish swallowing the lure. If they do they will still live. Attached is a pic of a lure I took out of the stomach of a large Red Fish this Spring.

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Wilderness Systems Ride 135 Angler Sit-On-Top Fishing Kayak

Hey titan, I can empathize, I love to fish for ratties in the spring at Guana. The schools are usually pretty young, but large in numbers. On light tackle they can and do make some long runs but I fish with spinner baits and usually get and early hook set with small wire hooks. Rarely do I have a casualty, but it happens. I feel just like you did and either leave that area or target trout.

careful with that fish, he may be my dinner one day, C.

I don't agree with advising a person to fish either way(artificial or bait). Whichever way puts a smile on your face and gets your blood pumping is the best way to me. When I plan to keep fish for dinner I put my fish on a stringer. You can tie a knot about 1' down from the float and when you string your fish, string them from the top lip down. This does several things. It keeps the fish upright, it allows them to open and close their mouth freely which will allow them to push water over their gills(breath) and by tying a knot atleast 1' from the float it keeps them out of that nasty hot surface water. Now having taken these steps, if I run in to the situation that you experienced I can unstring one of the fish on my stringer and take the one that will die anyway and release the one that is walking like a dog next to me. I have fished all day with redfish on a stringer and had them jumpin on the table come cleaning time. Long post but I hope it helps.

I thought the problem was with the fish swalling the bait. Sorry for my confusion. I did not realize that he was talking about stringing and releasing the fish after they were caught unharmed.
My Bad

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Wilderness Systems Ride 135 Angler Sit-On-Top Fishing Kayak

Your confused? I'm confused.... who fishes around here with a stringer? Nothing but alligator/shark bait

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Pinch your barbs. You won't lose fish--try it and see.

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"The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. Any faster would be dangerous"

GEEZ!!! I guess that Shell Mound Al and IslandSpeed2001 and I are ALL CONFUSED!!!

I also thought this was about preventing fish from dying after swallowing hooks....?????
(Research shows that the hooks will rust out, and pictures/posts show that jigheads will "pass" thru their systems and out their anus....OUCH, but true!!)

There was some very good input on this thread, which is the reason I had not posted until now, about using artificials (Hmmmm??) or using circle hooks (True!!) or pinching your barbs (Commendable), and using heavy enuff gear to shorten the fight times for reds in the summer and the 90 degree water in our creeks!!

Several PMs and phone calls about this thread indicated that "the less you watch your line or ignore your fishing rod" the more chances that fish, especially REDFISH and flounder, will get "deep hooked", but this new angle is too much to ignore....

Newbies, PLEASE DO NOT TROLL FOR ALLIGATORS OR SHARKS by putting your fish on a stringer!!!
Enuff said??
Thx....JohnYaksJax

PS: Also, I am pretty certain that only Tournament Anglers are "permitted" to "Cull their catch" and that is only in certain tounaments!! The theory of releasing a fish to put on a fish that might die, is a good one, IMHO, but the FFWCC regulations do not subscribe to that theory the last time I read them!! "The man" probably thinks you are only stringing a BIGGER fish, and it is very difficult to fault that thinking!! They do a great job for being so understaffed and overworked!!

I'm glad this had turned into a lively discussion because that is how I (we all ) learn. To clarify things, the discussion started mostly about fish just dying after a fight and a long time trying to revive them. Of the fish that were released, the one that definitely died was not deep hooked but hooked in the lip. The one that took a long time to revive was deep hooked. So I dont think where they were hooked was a factor, but from reading everyones replies, I would guess the water temp and length of the fight had something to do with it.

I use 20lb braid with 25lb flourocarbon, but our drags were probably set too light, extending the fight time, and hurting the fish. I also did not know not to move the fish backwards. I don't think I did it much, but did do it some so that did'nt help either.

So I've learned alot from this post and thank everyone for their input. I have not been back out yet but have circle hooks and a dehooker now in my arsenal and hopefully that will help

Now, about artificials vs live bait........ No wait, I'm not gonna go there again

Not moving the a fish backwards when reviving it is very important. I thought I would just write a condensed version of why you always revive a fish by moving it forward, in case anyone is interested in a quick fish bio lesson... ok so it is a long version... but is the best I can do without drawings of the process:

Fish remove oxygen from the water with their gills. By moving water past capillaries (small blood vessels) in the gill, oxygen will diffuse across the surface of the capillaries and into the fish's blood stream. The rate of this diffusion is dependent on the relative concentrations of the oxygen in the water, and the oxygen in the blood. For example, if the blood has 5% oxygen and the water has 10%, the oxygen will diffuse much more quickly than if the blood has 5% oxygen and the water 6% oxygen. If there is more oxygen in the blood than water, the fish will pull NO oxygen from the water.

To maximize the efficiency of oxygen consumption fish employ something called "Countercurrent Exchange."

In essence, the deoxygenated blood (blood with a low oxygen concentration) enters the gills from one side, and fresh highly oxygenated water enters the gills from the other side. This means that the deoxygenated blood entering the gills first encounters water with the lowest oxygen concentration, as this water has already passed over the rest of the gills. However, there is more oxygen in the water than in the blood, so the blood can pull out that small concentration of oxygen.

As the blood makes its way through the gills, it gets closer and closer to the fresh, highly oxygenated water that is just entering the gills. At the same time the blood is getting more oxygenated, but there is still a higher oxygen concentration in the water. Thus, using countercurrent exchange maximizes the time the blood in the gills spends in contact with oxygenated water in a ratio that allows diffusion of oxygen into the bloodstream. So the entire length of the capillaries in the gills are actively removing oxygen from the water.

If you move a fish backwards, you have highly oxygenated water hitting the lowly oxygenated blood first. This is a high gradient, so the fish should get lots of oxygen from this exchange, but this is only a small section of the entire length of the capillaries. As the water moves through the gills, its loses its oxygen, and encounters blood with lots of oxygen. Since there is now more oxygen in the blood than water, no oxygen diffuses into the blood stream. This leads to extreme inefficiency as only a short length of the capillaries are actively used for diffusion.

In simple terms, moving a fish backwards would be akin to only breathing with the first ~20% of your lungs, instead of their entirety. Certainty added stress for a recovering fish that needs lots of oxygen, and is already in warm summer water which inherently holds less dissolved oxygen than during the colder months.