On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:22:25 -0500, "Steve @ OutdoorFrontiers"
wrote:


"bill allemann" wrote in message
.net...
The other day I landed a nice smallie that got gullet hooked, but the hook
rotated out quickly. As the fish was taken out of the water, though,
there was some bleeding, probably from a gill, but it was hard to tell.
There was no bleeding in the gullet area during the hook removal. After a
few seconds back in the water, he took off with considerable energy.
Was the fish likely to survive after showing some bleeding?
Is the bleeding sometimes a hemorrage from the commotion of the fight?

If the hook came out easily and there was no tearing to the internal organs,
there's a very good chance that the fish survived. I've caught walleyes
(which are a less hardy fish than a bass) with an entire gill raker hanging
out, gray and lifeless, yet the fish was actively feeding and apparently
healthy.

Last summer, a client caught a smallmouth that had swallowed the 5/0 EWG
hook on a Zoom SuperFluke. The fish was bleeding heavily and not wanting to
waste a good fish, decided to keep it in the livewell and take it to a
taxidermist friend of mine to have a replica mold cast. I totally forgot
about the fish by the time I got home and went to work at the firehouse the
following morning. Halfway through a 24 hour shift, I remembered the
gut-hooked bass. Now 36 hours later, I approached the livewell with dread,
expecting to see a dead, bloated, stinky and possibly fuzzy bass. What I
found was a VERY healthy smallmouth bass quietly finning in some pink water
with a fluke and hook lying on the bottom of the livewell. The fish was
released with no apparent ill effects.

Think about it for a moment. Do you die every time you bleed?
Awesome!! "Do you die every time you bleed?" This is a heavy question.
I don't think Winston Churchill or Alice Cooper could have asked it
better. And the dread you experienced with such empathy......it is
magnanimous. One can only hope to rise to such level through the
ingestion of SPAM.