Fish Kill Bag Review: Reliable 30 × 60

I did a few upgrades on the boat recently, and one of the best was the Reliable 30 × 60 fish kill bag. The bag is 30 inches high and 60 inches long, with a 12-inch-wide bottom on the inside. It holds a lot of fish. In my experience, 300 or 400 pounds is realistic, and with four guys on the boat it has enough capacity for full limits of salmon, halibut and lingcod with room to spare.

I use the bag with a heavy ice slurry to get the catch cold quickly and keep it cold until we get back to the cleaning table. For more on catching and handling these fish, see the FishinBC.COM Complete Guide to Salmon Fishing, Complete Guide to Halibut Fishing, and Complete Guide to Lingcod Fishing.

Installing the Fish Kill Bag on My Boat

My Striper has a Volvo inboard, with the engine hatch sloping back toward the waterline. I installed the fish kill bag so it rests at an angle on top of the engine compartment. The back of the bag hangs slightly over the stern without any support underneath it.

I installed two stainless-steel cleats inside the boat above the battery hatches and use nylon rope loops to secure the bag quickly. This setup keeps it out of the way of the kicker motor, swim ladder and stern rod holders. On other boats, a similar bag could potentially rest on a swim platform or in an outboard transom well, depending on the boat layout.

Ice, Capacity and Fish Storage

At the start of the day, we normally put two or three 5-gallon pails of sea ice from the cannery into the bag and add some seawater. The gusseted bottom expands as the bag fills, and the drain makes this setup work well for an ice slurry. In my use, the ice lasts all day without a problem, with plenty of room to add fish and work the ice around the catch.

When I was deciding whether to buy a fish kill bag, I had a lot of practical questions. Would it be the right size? What would happen if part of it hung unsupported over the stern? Would it be easy to clean? Would spiny fish such as lingcod and rockfish damage it? Would heat from the engine compartment become a problem? Those questions are a big reason I wanted to post this review.

What Size Fish Kill Bag?

The 30 × 60 bag makes sense for the way I use it because I often need room for a large mixed catch and enough ice to surround the fish. With four people aboard, I would rather have extra capacity than discover that the bag is too small after a good day of salmon, halibut and lingcod fishing.

For one angler doing day trips, 30 × 60 may be more bag than necessary. Reliable also makes narrower and smaller models, including a 24 × 60 and a 20 × 48. I have not used those sizes, so I cannot compare them directly, but I would choose primarily by the length of the largest fish you realistically expect to keep, the amount of ice you want around the catch, and where the loaded bag will sit on your boat. The extra width of my 30 × 60 is valuable when the catch starts stacking up.

How It Has Held Up

After two years of use and thousands of pounds of fish through the bag, I have been extremely satisfied with it. The 30 × 60 size works very well draped across the back of my Striper. It holds a large catch, keeps the fish cold throughout the day and is easy to load.

Letting part of the bag hang over the stern has not caused a problem. Once the bag gets very full, however, leaving it on the sloped engine compartment becomes less convenient because fish can start sliding toward the opening when I unzip it to add another one. At that point I pull the bag into the boat and set it on the deck between the seats. With enough fish and ice inside, it stands there on its own and does not need to be tied up.

It holds roughly twice as much fish as the Costco XL Igloo cooler I used before it. Cleaning has also been easy: the inside hoses out well, including halibut slime, and the material has stood up to the fish we put into it.

One Drawback: Some Water Can Seep Through

There is one drawback worth mentioning. The Reliable bag I bought is sewn, which makes for a strong, durable bag, but the needle holes at the seams can allow some water to seep through. In my setup that has not been much of a problem because the bag either hangs over the stern or sits on a self-bailing deck.

If I were putting a kill bag inside a boat without a self-bailing floor, I would pay more attention to how watertight the bag is. For my boat, I preferred the Reliable design because the wide gusseted bottom gives the bag a lot of usable capacity, and I can easily deal with the small amount of seepage I have experienced.

Fish Kill Bag vs. a Hard Cooler

For my boat, the biggest advantage is simple: the kill bag does the job without permanently taking up the space of a large hard-sided cooler. When I switched from the bulky cooler to this bag, I freed up a surprising amount of deck space.

After using it for several seasons, I would buy one again. It has given me the capacity I wanted, kept our catch cold, been easy to clean and held up well. It also helped with a case of three-foot-itis without actually requiring a bigger boat.