Down the hatch!
May 20, 2007
When you take a close look at a pie hole of a bass, a few things immediately come to mind….
1) I’m very, very glad I’m not a shad, pond smelt, hitch, small bluegill, frog, crawdad or floating hotdog!
2) You can kinda see why bass are able to throw a lure…even one with three sets of trebles. A lot of that tissue in there isn’t particularly soft — in fact, the inside of the mouth is pretty tough, making it harder for hooks to penetrate. Lesson of the day: don’t skimp on your hooks! Buy the good stuff…and stay out of the water if you’re less than a foot long!
Bass rock. I like it when you poke them in those little sandpaper patches in their throats, like when you’re trying to get a badly set hook out. (Yep. I’m guilty of a few gill bleeders, unfortuantely, thanks to some royally crappy hook sets.)
The little sandpaper thingies, by reflex, close around your finger, grab the digit and try to pull it in.
Creepy, but goes to show that if you are a little bait-fish or a frog, as soon as you hit that point in Senior Bass, your extra-extra SOL. As if your day wasn’t going bad enough getting chomped by a bucket-mouth…
Like the gator at the end of this video (I love watching it chew on Mr. Bass as it gets et):
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/alligator-video-1.html
GULP!!