check out this poor fish
 

we were loading up on macks early in the season and caught this guy. don't know if it was a seal or a shark or whatever else. he seemed to be in good health otherwise. nasty bite though

ouch, never seen something like that before.

Can't quite make it out, but it looks like the wound is healing over and new skin growing?

Almost looks like a prop mark it's pretty shallow for a bite?

yeah the curve of it....scooped by a prop- wow

the wound was definatly healing. it didn't look or smell infected. as far as the prop idea - the only prop marks i've seen on critters have been a series of slash marks not scooped out flesh. but maybe - who knows

let's pray it was a great white niko :hee:

Agree with Niko. all the prop marks I've seen are consecutive slashes. Seal or shark I'd guess...

when I was younger and used to do alot of bottom fishing, occasionally a cod fish would come up with a dogfish tearing it up.

The dog fish would leave a wound very similair to that, they seem to target the belly more often than not though.

Ouch! Good new is it looks like he was in good health.

makes you wonder about the whole mortality issue because your not holding it properly.........it survives fine with a 6" chunk of meat missing :shocked:

bluefish. they can cut a 28" bass in 1/2 no problem.

the fish was caught late may/early june at the nwc. the wound was pretty jagged and seemed to be fairly new. usually a blue leaves a pretty clean cut and i'd be surprised if a doggie could damage a striper like that - i've seen them tear apart cod and pogs but not like that. prob a fn seal

I got a 25 # bass SE of Monomoy with a similar mark like that, but it was on its' underbelly, just aft of the gills. Healed up pretty good, my guess is it was one of those fat Monomoy seals.

When I was a kid, I remember my father would go out on the Trader Five, out of Harwichport, for swordfish tournaments. One year he was the angler for what would have been the tourney winning fish. Unfortunately the fish got dinged by one of the wheels (propellers), which disqualified the fish. I remember the pictures, and they did not look like that scar. (I also remember the owner blaming the captain for allowing the fish to get under the boat.....)

Seal, Shark ?

Makes me wonder also.This past fall I caught a striper [another stupid one] in the 25# class. It had a hole in its gillplate about 2" round exposing beautifull bright red healthy gills.I turned it over to see another hole only about the diameter of a silver dollar.These 2 holes were on the edge of the gillplates and had healed beautifully.I thought it might have been shot with a speargun and some how got away.
I released that fish and hope it is swimming somewhere right now.

most likely a bluefish.
dogfish don't have teeth sharp enough to do damage like that. you can stick your fingers in their mouth and they don't do any more damage than a bass does.

Doggies will eat a live bluefish right off a hook when giant fishing. Dogfish will eat anything they can get their mouth on. They do a ton of damage albeit they don't have the protoypical teeth associated with ripping and tearing flesh like a bluefish.

That wound I would say is from a seal attack.