Friday night report

[carl schenk]

After 40 hrs of catching nothing but walleyes and a bass for my effort I finally caught a hard fighting 43"er on Friday night. Started fishing at 8:45. Called Tommy at 8:48 to let him know I had a nice fish in the net. The fish was ugly. I first thought it was blind but as I was unhooking it I could see that the one eye was almost hooded and wasn't visible until I turned the fish over to cut a hook point. The other eye was covered in a thick bluish film and I doubt the fish could see out of it. There was a healed over gash on the underside of its jaw probably from a hook. It also had what I would describe as bruising around its head and gill area. The area was completely different colored than the rest of the fish and had black and blue marks. I've never seen this before and wonder what would cause this. Can a fish bruise??

[John Miller]

I'd guess that angling caused these wounds