I can definitely agree on the poking the hole thing and I never do it any more. When I used to do it with my Stren scale I had it sharpened to a point that was as sharp as my hooks so I could just pop it through really easily. I think people get in to trouble when they use an unsharpened hook and have to punch it through. That's totally not good.

The thing I see a lot in tournaments that really kills me is guys putting cull bouys in the soft skin behind the mandible and then weighing the fish by the cull boys, thus ripping a 2 or 3" long hole behind the fish's upper jaw. When you catch those fish with their upper jaw missing, you can bet that's what happened :(

I have all my cull bouys sharpened just like I used to do with my scale and I put them through slightly thicker skin. I also never use the cull bouy to lift the fish. When they're sharp like that, it's not much different than a hook hole in the lip, but I doubt many people do it that way unfortunately. If I fished more tournaments where I actually culled fish, I'd look into some of the non-invasive type cull bouys.

Chris' self taken photo article is at:
http://www.trophybassonly.com/id53.htm

I think it's just not linked into his index of articles.

Another great article to check out on C&R of big bass is Chris' article here:

http://www.trophybassonly.com/id50.htm