circle hook but still gut hooked

[Liv2Fish]

Never had this happen before.

Last night, fishing eels on Gama 7/0 circles, I got slammed and within 2 seconds was watching line peel off the reel.

I have read all the "eeling" 101 threads on here and all about "how long is too long" to wait for hook up, etc.

The scenario was:

Cast, eel hit the water, rod pointing up at that awesome moon, put the line under the roller on my VS. Immediate very hard "whack". I didn't even have time to point the rod at the fish. It almost pulled the rod down and started peeling off line.

I was concerned that it may be just an outer lip hooked fish so I went easy on the battle. After a decent battle, I reached down and grabbed the fish by the jaw and was shocked and saddened to see she was gut hooked.

Two questions - is this common while fishing the surf? Never seen it from the boat and I'm still a self admitted newbee in the suds. Maybe something to do with the angle??

Will a gut hooked fish live? I spent almost 15 minutes trying to revive her and every time I let go of her, she went belly up? I would take her back and work her around, she'd bite down on my thumb pretty hard and make a slight push with here tail, but would always go belly up.

I didn't want to chance just letting her go to waste, so I laid her on the beach while I fished out the tide.

When I cleaned her, I wanted to see what she'd been eating so I gutted her. I noticed that the hook had only penetrated here throat lining and didn't hit an organs? Could she survived? Her gut was totally empty - maybe the reason for such aggression on the take.

I am a huge fan of catch and release but not devout. I'll occasionally keep one for the grill but not over 36" or so. I have no problem with other's ideals regarding keeping vs releasing. Just curios if I could have done something different to prevent killing this fish.

Sorry for the lousy photo - cell pic.