Caught A Nice Blackie

[arpie]

Hi guys

Yesterday, fishing with Glenn & his wife, I hooked into this great blackie, and whilst it was still in the water, we could see that it had something red in or near its mouth & thought it may have been a gill hanging out or something.

He was a lovely fish in top physical condition, apart from the injury!

Upon pulling him in, it was evident the fish had been attacked by something much bigger & he had a huge gash/slash under his mouth, towards the gills. From memory, there was another bit of damage near the tail, too.

the whole fish

Close up of the gash

What do you reckon could have caused this???

Roberta

Edited June 28, 2008 by Roberta

[brickman]

hey roberta good to hear you had a good session but you are the blacky queen lol

as for the bight on the blacky if i hadent seen the picks i would off said a jew but after seeing the picks i would say one off 3 tailor,pike,or hair tail

i don't think it was a tailor as the rips are to far apart to small for a jews mouth

i dont know if the hairys are up your way so i would think a pike having a narrow mouth anyway that's my stab in the dark would be good to see what the gaffer thinks

gary

[arpie]

Thanks for that Gary - there are obvious teeth slash marks, eh??

Haven't heard of hairtail ever being caught up here, but I do know there are a lot of Moray Eels ... but they usually attack dead fish, don't they?

It'll be interesting to hear what JG & others may think!

Cheerio

Roberta

[jewgaffer]

Hi Roberta, Gary. It's a nice old flesh injury, more like a deep scrape than a hard bite out of and no sign of crush marks despite being a pretty big blackfish in trouble that a jew wouldn't hesitate to whack all the same.

Not being up there your struggling blackfish could have well been latched onto by a big crab and the grip being pulled away caused the flesh under the throut to look like that, and is more of a heavy laceration, so I'm calling for a big crab and maybe the crab had another go at the tail.

Cheers

jewgaffer

[slinkymalinky]

Hi Roberta,

I reckon that you were using a new rod that is so snappy it almost ripped his head clean off when you struck. Either that or the other blackfish were sent into a shark-like frenzy by your pizza impregnated weed.

Amazing that a fish with that sort of wound would still be interested in feeding. They're certainly hardy little blighters.

Cheers, Slinky

[Ray R]

Hi Roberta, I think that this may have been caused by a largish squid.

[arpie]

hehehe I don't think so, Slinky! Tho the bloke that gave me some weed there may have been annoyed when I pulled in the next 3 fish & dropped a thumper!!! Like you, I was also amazed he was still actively feeding with such a fresh wound.

Hi Byron & Ray - I reckon it could be either! The damage to the tail could be the other arm of the crab - some major ripping/tearing of the flesh was going on there!!!

Hadn't thought of either of them!! We have a stack of squid in the system just now, too, so who knows???

Cheerio

Roberta

[donjuarez]

Perhaps he got attached after he'd been hooked? when whatever attacked it saw him struggling?

[jewexpert]

Hi i with jewgaffer big crab,or eel