Wearing gloves can protect your hands and allow you to land a fish without danger to yourself. Some gloves with special gripping surfaces are made especially for landing fish. There are even gloves that will stop the sharp teeth of fish from penetrating to your skin. Work gloves are good for grabbing huge catfish by the mouth.

Good Things about Gloves

Gloves are cheaper then most other fish-landing devices. You can purchase work gloves for just a few dollars, and they don't take up much space, either. You can purchase several pairs of gloves and keep them with your tackle.

Wearing gloves and landing fish is as close to hand-landing as you can get and still protect your hands. You retain most of the positive things about hand-landing without exposing your hands to injury. And they keep your hands clean, avoiding the slime that makes it necessary for you to wash your hands before starting to fish again.

Big saltwater fish are often released by pulling them alongside the boat with the leader and then removing the hook without ever bringing them into the boat. Gloves allow you to hold the leader without hurting yourself and also help in removing the hook without exposing your bare hands to teeth or rough skin on the fish.

Bad Things about Gloves

Gloves remove slime from fish much worse than bare hands do, which exposes the fish to greater infection. And you lose some feel through gloves, meaning you may squeeze harder than necessary to hold the fish, which will likely injure it even more.

Gloves are awkward to put on while fighting a fish. If fishing alone you would have a hard time holding the rod and controlling the fish while trying to put on a glove to land it. Wearing a glove can make handling the rod and reel very hard to do, meaning you're more likely to lose the fish before landing it.