A first for me

I've heard of this happening but never saw it first hand until yesterday. I had like 10 minutes of light left after work to fish a neighborhood pond. I was working my way along the bank and saw this (good) bass at the water's edge with the shad stuck halfway down its throat. I pulled it out for the picture. Ol' girl bit off more than she could chew. And yes, it smelled just as bad as it looks.

Happens more often than you think. I've found several 10+ bass over the years with big (3/4 to 1 lb) bluegill stuck in their throats. Especially in the spring when the females are guarding nests. If the bluegill gets turned sideways with his dorsal fins up and the bass can't get it turned head first, if he's big enough, he'll wedge in there and the bass will not be able to close its mouth and basically drowns pretty quickly. I've got a pic somewhere of a huge bluegill (still alive) that I pulled out of the mouth of an 11 lb bass on Lake Juniper one spring. I saw the bass laying on the bottom about 30 ft from the bed I had seen her on the afternoon before and netted it up. It was fresh, and the bass still had good color, like it had just happened. Ran water through the bass's gills for a couple minutes and tried to revive it but it was gone. Bluegill was still alive and swam off after I finally got it unlodged from the bass's throat. Never seen it happen with a shad though.

pretty cool pic. I have fished a few catfish tournaments and man they will slap dirty up a live well. I had about a 30 # blue puke up 2# drum once.nasty stuff.

Cool stuff

Back in the 70's I read an article about a guy that saw a huge bass on Juniper striking at water snakes. Only thing he had that was close was a spare fuel hose, so he rigged it and hung the bass, but it broke off. He went back and found it the next day, it had choked on the hose and died and floated up to the bank. A coon or some other animal had eaten some of it...what was left weighed something like 25 lbs...he had the head mounted and fed the rest of it to his dog, King. The guy was an instructor pilot from Eglin and seen the spot he was fishing from the air, then went there the next off-days he had.

I've only ever fished Juniper once or twice, but used to fish King's Lake a lot...some HUGE fish in there, and I can't imagine Juniper's much different!

I found two separate bass on Guntersville the same day, actually within about and hour, that had bit off more than they could swallow. One had tried his luck with a shellcracker and both lost, the other had a bluegill in his mouth and was still flopping around at the surface. Both the 3lb largemouth and the bluegill survived the ordeal thanks to a little intervention.