Cotton and Lewis at Grenada Lake Crappie Masters tournament

A method of keeping fish alive after they have been caught. A string or small nylon rope is threaded through the mouth and gills of a fish and is then tied off to the boat or dock allowing the fish to remain overboard in the water but preventing them from swimming away. With the advent of livewells and other more modern methods of keeping fish, stringers have become nearly obsolete, but can still be quite handy when fishing from the bank of a pond. The term 'stringer' is also used by anglers to indicate the size of their catch for the day (10-pound stringer = 10 pounds of fish).