Thread: I couldn't believe what I found deep in this bass's gullet

Originally Posted by DockShootinJack

The redfish were running pretty good, there were some big ones moving up and down the peir. You would hear someone holler they had a fish on. Then a few minutes later it would wrap a barnacle encrusted piling and break off. This went on for 30 minutes. A fella down on the end of the pier hooked up, walked off the pier and onto the beach, fought the fish away from the pier. He pulls out a monster redfish that looked like one of those goth teenagers. It had 8 hooks in its mouth. That was one heck of a site

That was a good story, and a funny analogy! We don’t see as many of those teens as we use to, but they’re still out there!
Bob

you fellas need to try the "red" run in Alaska , lots of the big ones go by with multiple "flies" stuck in them from head to tail ,they break off so much it is hard to imagine , the good news is we target the ones with multiple flies to restock our shrinking inventory when we hammer them up there ....

A lot of years ago in Florida Sportsman magazine I believe, there was a story about a man that found a largemouth flopping around on the surface as he headed out one morning. The fish was ultra skinny and clearly in need of help. He got to feeling around on the fish and felt something hard inside. He looked in the mouth and couldn’t see anything but the object was moving so he did his best to persuade it back out the way it had come in. A few moments later he was able to get ahold of the end of what turned out to be a sizable piece of wood that it had eaten and swallowed , unable to digest or pass. He pulled on it and it came out without much effort and he revived it for a couple of minutes and it swam off on its own. Nothing found in a fishes stomach surprises me since reading of this. My thought was that it struck the wood thinking it was food in low light conditions. That fish was blessed with a Good Samaritan.

It's happened to me twice this year. First time was at Normandy and I caught a two pound smallmouth. He had a large plastic crawfish sticking out of his stomach. There was no hook attached and I was able to pull it out no problem. Few weeks later on the Cumberland River same thing but this smallie did have a hook attached to plastic worm. I was able to unhook him/her also. So sad to see this stuff. While i'm rambling i'll tell a true fishing story. Hooked a smallie about a pound on the river and fought him up to the boat before the ned rig came loose. No kidding but I saw him immediately grab it again and get hooked! He had a fresh hole in his mouth right next to the hook! I would never of believed it if I had not been the witness.

Cool memories! Fish want what they want when they want it no doubt!

I figured out why the hook came out easily from deep in the gullet: the circle hook was too small for that diameter worm plus it was hooked through a hard plastic sleeve at the center of the stick that reduced the gap even more. No way I would have been able to extract the rig with a larger hook embedded that deep. Amazing the fish was even caught in the first place allowing it time to break the line. Course the other thing was the mono used. Braid rarely breaks - even 8# test - and the fish would have been c & r'd at the boat minus the large lure blocking its gullet.