In your angling experiences, which species of fish do you find swallows the hook / bait most often?
We are, as a family, pretty good at avoiding gut-hooked fish. Being strict C&R anglers, it is very important to us to avoid a mortally hooked fish.
However, that being said, the fish that are occasionally gut-hooked by someone (usually one of the little guys) is almost always a PERCH. I suppose 2nd place would go to PANFISH, like bluegills or sunfish. We rarely see rockbass swallow a bait, surprisingly.
I have had only 1 bass in the past 3 years of fishing swallow a hook. It made the table, in this case.
I've never gut-hooked a walleye, pike or tiger musky, though Brian had one pike succumb -- again, a meal donation.
Anyway, just wondering what you folks have encountered.
I try to teach the kids to "read" the line and to be sensitive to those sometimes-subtle indicators that a fish is hitting.
W.
