Ever "caught the one that got away" ?

[big jay]

2 seasons ago we were jigging wire on Billingsgate and got a decent fish that had tangled with another broken wire. Put our fish in the boat, and then handlined up about 200 ft of wire - there was a lively 34" fish still there. Figuered it was good luck, so I released the fish, took the wire home in the trash can, and got a nice jig that caught plenty more fish.

[DZ]

I've caught a few over the years that had an old chunking rig in the gullet. The most memorable was a nice 25 pound fish I took on a 4 1/2 inch redfin. The bass struck the redfin and I set the hook. When I landed the bass my plug was nowhere near the mouth of the bass. One of the hook points on the redfin's back treble had gone right into a barrell swivel connected to a leader and chunk hook that was hanging out the bass's mouth. Sometime's its good to be lucky.

DZ

[JeffH]

About four years ago in mid June during a stormy night I caught a 46" 35+lb striper on an eel on the Connecticut shoreline. The fish had a 6/0 bait hook in the roof of the mouth with 2' of at least 80lb test frayed leader coming out through a hole in the side of the jaw. Not what I would consider a fish of a lifetime but I'm sure someone was miserable losing that fish. I removed the old hook, the eel hook and sent her on her way...................Only fish I caught that night.