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Casey Reed was competing in a regional kayak bass fishing match this September when he noticed one thing uncommon on the floor. As he paddled nearer, the 39-year-old angler discovered a cannibalistic bass choking on one other bass.
“I noticed one thing white on the floor that regarded fairly massive,” Reed tells Out of doors Life. “I obtained nearer and will see it was a bass, however it wasn’t useless. Two bass had been hung up after the larger fish tried to eat the smaller one.”
Reed recorded the video on Sept. 16 on Hyco Lake in North Carolina, which lies simply south of the Virginia state line. It’s an ideal instance of how a bass will eat something that matches in its mouth—together with some issues that received’t. Like different predatory fish, greater bass will oftentimes prey on smaller ones.
On this occasion, nonetheless, the larger bass bit off greater than it might chew and obtained the smaller bass caught in its throat. Each fish possible would have died had Reed not intervened.
“The bass are nonetheless alive, let’s see if I may help ‘em out right here,” he says within the video.
Reed then picks them up and tries to separate them. He slowly works the smaller bass free, and after holding them aloft in his palms, he revives and releases each fish again into the lake. He says it took round 5 minutes for the larger one to swim away.
“I attempted to revive each of them,” Reed explains. “The smaller bass swam off fairly good after I labored with it a bit. The larger bass appeared extra shocked than the smaller one. However I revived it, too, and it regarded okay.”
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As a result of kayak tournaments are catch, {photograph}, and launch occasions, no one would have been the wiser had Reed measured the 2 fish and claimed them as his personal. (No one was round on the time to observe, he says.) As an alternative, he simply estimated their sizes and went again to fishing the match.
“The larger bass I’d guess at 17 inches lengthy, the smaller fish at 12 inches,” he says. “I simply hope they each made it. Bass are too worthwhile to be wasted.”
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