Thread: What is this ?

Fish worm!

http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ec...g_red_worm.htm

that's a nice article CanePole. Don't think I'd be too eager to eat the fish that had the worms!!! Too many to be had that are worm free

Thanks for the info. I threw out the two fish they were in. Luckily they were in our smallest 2 keepers. They were both males about 10.5". Didn't want to take any chances.

Minnow sushi comes at a price!

Quote from the Article:
Relationship to Humans:

The Big Red Worm is not usually a problem for humans, but they can be infected. There is a case where three fishermen became infected after eating their bait (minnows). They had to have surgery to remove the nematodes

fishermandan,

You will catch a few a year on Old Hickory with those things. The more you fish OHL you will sooner or later encounter a few more nasty oddities such as jelly-like blisters/lesions around the forward half of the fish and black "spots" in the meat of some fish once cleaned. The black spots are worms too if you dig one out. The jellyish lesions are some sort of bacterial infection that the TWRA swears is not harmful to humans. All I know is 100% of fish with that stuff get tossed back regardless of size cause I don't want to take any chance of getting a worm or having one of those lesions pop up on my forehead. I can only imaging trying to explain that to my girlfriend.

I fish OHL a lot during the post-spawn up until deer season, but I carefully inspect each fish I clean out of that lake. I have stopped frog gigging out there altogether because of the presence of those worms in around 75% of all bullfrogs I come across.