Nice article Rob. However, I have to disagree with you on one point.

My personal opinion is that it is never a good idea to poke a hole anywhere in any bass, no matter how small the hole (except when fizzing, a needle is small enough). The only thing that does is creates a "portal" for potential infection. If a scale has a hook that is too small to allow weighing where you insert the hook between gill plate and last gill arch, then you need to either buy another scale with a bigger hook, or better yet, replace the stock hook with a much larger one.

How do we know that those holes heal quickly? I have caught many bass that had holes in their lower jaws from either scales or cull clips. Often you can tell those holes have gotten bigger and you can see signs of infection (Clear Lake is horrible with this, I have caught bass that were absolutely torn up from being "poked"). I cringe when I fish tournaments, just watching how other fishermen constantly poke cull clips into fish is something I just dont like. They do sell non-intrusive clips, I wish more people would use them.

On a lighter note, I need to figure out a way to take photographs when Im by myself. My biggest fear is catching a fish of a lifetime and not being able to document it. Sure, I know what I need to do, but I just havent done it yet (i.e., rig a pole in back of boat, and practice with height to be able to get a good, self taken photo). Maybe you could find a link to that article that Fish Chris wrote years ago for In-Fisherman that addressed this issue.