My 4 year old son hung a huge bass this weekend on a tiny torpedo. When the bass dove under the boat he broke my son's line. Question is: does anyone know if the bass will be able to get the lure out of his mouth and live to fight another day or is there a chance that he will die ?

it really depends on how deeply the fish was hooked. i seem to remember about one in ten bass that are hooked and improperly handled die even if released. i would think the bass will probably not survive if it was a hard bait because it probably has barbed hooks and it will be hard to get out. if this happened in your pond look for the fish soon you may be able to see it and retrieve the lure at least.

i disagree 100%,the only gear i use in my lake is 6 lb. line.we have fish brake off all the time and somebody will catch the same fish 3-4 days later with the bait still in his mouth are 5 days later we see the bait floating in the lake.i bet i have not seen 2 dead fish in the last 2 years.

If the fish is hooked in the mouth, it will most likely get it out. You may even see it jumping or rolling on the surface shortly after the break. I've had that happen a couple of times and successfully retrieved my lure. However, if it hooked deep, then there's a good chance it won't make it. But you said it was a small torpedo. Likely it wasn't hooked deep since it was topwater. (Not saying that it couldnt of been.) So he'll probably be alright.

well it seems there are always two schools. i hope for you that the bass makes it and your son has the chance to land him one day.

I read somewhere (Field & Stream?) that the mouth of the bass will eventually open and the lure will fall out. Then the tissue around the damaged area will regenerate.

That being said, I was fishing in Huntsville, Alabama and caught a bass with 3 different lures stuck in it's mouth. I didn't see the point of returning it to the water so it wound up on my grill.

I had a bass snap off on a flyrod for someone fishing my pond. Everytime I went down to the pond to feed the bass (feed trained bass) I saw that popper in it's mouth. One day while I was feeding the popper just floated to the surface. The hook was not corroded etc. so apparently the hook had made a hole large enough for the hook to pop out.

I have heard that the acids in the fishes body will eventually corrode a hook. It sounds plausible but I can't attest to that.

Last year, I caught a LMB at my pond that had a hook in it's mouth (not gullet hooked). It was a larger bass and had broke someone's line.

For about 1/8" radius around the hook, the bass's mouth tissue had decayed to a reddish brown color. The hook was a little rusty. I was able to easily remove the hook out, & all the decayed tissue came off with the hook. The decayed tissue was very flakey like a scab.

After removing the hook, the bass had about a 1/4" diameter hole in his mouth.

Other than that, he looked healthy. Obviously, he was still feeding as I caught him on a shiner.