Need some help. I fished Bellvue 4/2/03. We caught a lot of fish, but they were all short. Half the fish we caught were walleyes and half were saugers. Now for the question, half the walleyes we caught, were jig hooked in the belly. It felt like a normal hit, but when the fish came up the jig would be snagged in the stomach of the fish. Has anyone seen this before and any ideas why? Thanks in advance. 
Any time you congregate that many fish, in that small of an area, you’re going to have “foul hooked” fish. Even as that is, half of the fish sounds like a-lot. If it happens again, maybe try a slower lift and drop technique instead of a snapping motion. Probably the best thing to do is to move to another area where inadvertant snagging isn’t a problem, especially if the fish are “dinks” anyway. I see lots of people fish the scour holes below the dams, and you can always pick up smaller saugers there. The problem is that lots of these fish are “foul hooked” and people yank the hook out, throw the fish back and don’t think about it again. What they don’t see is that the fish probably makes its way back down only to eventually die from those injuries.
Hope this helped you out a little. Good luck on your next trip.
SEDNERB
i agree with the last post, foul hooking congregated walleyes and saugers does happen frequently, especially when people are ripping blade baits, if a person properly fishes a blade bait, the chance of foul hooking goes down, what has worked for me is fishing a blade bait similar to a jig, eliminating the erratic motion and still getting the desired vibration to trigger fish
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
