Strange Smallie Catch

[BIG BOPPER 0]

After a weekend with friends in Western Maryland, My wife and I stopped @ Harper's Ferry on our way back to Baltimore. We took a cooler (for her ha ha) and went down to the river(Potomac) I fished while she sat on a huge rock.(Looked like a natural easy chair. We called the Flintstones' couch). Anyway, I was drifting and jigging an olive beadhead crystal bugger along side a rock when I hooked up. I yelled to her to get a picture of me challenging this little fish. As it surfaced I noticed what first looked like some tangled line around the fishes mouth. As I drew it nearer I noticed my fly wasn't even in the fishes mouth.

This fish had been caught before and had swallowed the hook. Coming out of it's mouth was about 6" of line with a loop @ the end . My fly was hooked in the loop! :dunno: Am I good or what? This is no :bs: Before I released this ambitious 9" smallmouth I looked down the throat and I didn't see the hook. The line had algae on it so I figured he'd been swimming like that for a while so I just snipped the old line just inside his mouth. I then took the beautiful Mrs. Bopper across the foot bridge into town, sat on the deck of a quaint pub. Listened to a guy playing Celtic music while we drank Pumpkin beer :cheers: Autumn in the moutains...Beautiful!

[Bud Guidry 0]

sounds like a nice afternoon with a little surprize thrown in for remembrance

 

 

Bud

[Joe Hard 0]

Belive it or not I had a simmilar experince with an old girl freind. We used to camp and fish on a bend of my "home waters" I had just caught and landed a 23 inch brown and told her to get her line in there. The very nexy cast she hooked a brook trout , in the loop of a leadered hook. There was a gaint ball of worms on the hook. Bowth fish were released and the brook trout had the hook removed. Now I now someone else will belive this story, as people I tell it to say yea right.

[bentflyrod 0]

I too had a similar story with a girl friend! I threw her back! :hyst: :hyst:

 

Nice story Bopper!

 

BFR

[Guest]

Good man!

[BIG BOPPER 0]

We must be part of some sort of fraternity. "Looped Leader Hookers" or something.

[day5 0]

I saw a buddy hook the eye of a trebble hook in the back of a steelhead with a no 10 egg! And land it!!! But just fyi next time leave the leader long when you cut a leader in its mouth the hook can fold back and block the throat of the fish making it very hard to eat. Leaving it long keeps the hook from doing that. Sounds like a nice day.

[appalachian angler (tn.) 0]

I caught a big smallie one time (a legitamite bite) on a clouser. The fish had a big deep diving plug in its mouth by the tail-end treble hook. The lure was still tied to some 20# mono which gave him about 15' of running room. The rest of that mono was all bird-nested up and snagged on some bottom brush. I got another fisherman with his heavy duty catfish rig to tie on a big treble hook and he got a hold of the snagged line and then we both landed the smallie!

 

AA

[jschmidt63 0]

Interesting story. Looks like a bait fisherman caused the initial problem. Glad you could land him it cut the line.

 

I caught a nice LMB this summer with a metal jig stuck in his lip. As I battled the bass all I could see in the water was this large white dot dancing around. It was the jig in his mouth. For a few minutes I had no idea what was on the end of my line.

[Guest]

i saw the same thing happen a few years ago while steelhead fishing here in michigan. dont remember if the guy actually landed the fish or not, but he had hooked onto the line coming out of the steelheads mouth