Strange looking fish

[kslipsinker]

I was fishing for crappies and sunnies this morning. I had a minnow on one rod. I had a nice hit that was more than a crappie. I landed a fat little pike that had his top jaw split almost half way back to his eyes. It was healed and the fish seemed very healthy, just extremely odd looking. Looked like someone must have really valued a hook and did a number on the fish go retrieve it.

[Captain B.R.K]

Really to bad to see fish being mutilated to some extent just to get a .20 cent hook back. Sad, very sad!

[The_Duckslayer]

Could have been propeller lip to I suppose? N Joy the Hunt././Jimbo

[LocalGuide]

Could have been a hook when the fish was young and it just got ripped through its jaw on a fierce hook set?

Or could just be a birth defect...? Who know's?

[Bob_D]

That is really odd. I got a pike today that had chunck of it's upper lip/mouth that was missing and healed over. Still seemed to be feeding fine.

[T-Rex]

Where did you catch this fish? I caught one on Minnetonka about a month ago with the same type of split lip.

[Chris Haley]

Sounds like it got off a stringer to me!!

[icehousebob]

I've caught a few oddities over the years. Caught a Pike out of the river last summer that had only one eye. The other was healed over with skin. It was fat and healthy and had no trouble hitting my lure so he had adjusted well. One Sunny had two healed propeller cuts on its back and another had a healed over bite-sized chunk out of its back. Some fish are amazingly resiliant.

[LocalGuide]

It kind of makes a person realize how tough these fish are. They can take a beating and still come out ahead. lol

Its a tough world under the water.

[Maximum12]

Caught the weirdest fish ever a couple of years ago in the metro, a northern bent into the shape of a boomerang. When we pulled it up, it had a massive prop mark across the middle of its back, which had clearly been broken & healed up. Thing was thrashing & obviously feeding & healthy.

[bigbucks]

I might have posted this before. I caught a walleye this summer about 18", that was a humpback. He probably should have been more like 20" or so. There wasn't a mark on it, just a big bend up in the middle of it's back & back down. Looked like somebody bent it so a pipe could run through underneath it. My brother-in-law said it tasted like walleye...

[hip_hop_fisherman]

I got a pike with the same thing up on Rainy. I got some pics of it but they aren't developed yet. I'll post them when I do. The hump was more towards the tail of the fish rather than the middle, but it was obvious.

[Bobb-o]

i caught a northern with a hump on its bacl like that in the mississippi last year, i had never seen anything like it, but i figured it had just been injured when it was younger

[McGurk]

Funny, we caught a walleye with a similar hump back in Ottertail county, probably more like 22". It still had fight so we let it go. Interesting to hear others catch the same looking defect.

[The Grebe]

When the fish are little, it would'nt take much of an injury to impair them and then nature takes it's course.

The slightest miss from a toothy predator, or a slight pinch from anything else, would set them on their course and the larger they grew, the more pronounced it would become.

You see fish all the time, that have been hit by a bigger fish and left some major wounds on it, yet they survive. I got about a 6 pound pike out of the river last fall, that something with about a foot wide mouth and very sharp teeth, tried to take! He was still kicking and fought as hard as ever.

I have also noticed deformation of the spine in more then a few hatchery trout. I have heard it is from crowding in the rearing ponds? There are lakes where some of the panfish have damaged spines also and it does'nt seem like they would have been crowded?

I can't remember the name of the lake off hand, it was years ago, but a high number of sunfish we caught, when filleted out, showed spine deformation? I was thinking it might have something to do with fertilizer, or some other substance that was introduced to the water? Just a guess and I can't remember the lake, because we did'nt go back there!

[hip_hop_fisherman]

this is turning out to be an interesting topic.... the northern we got was 23 1/2" and FAT.