Great topic, anthropic! We talk about how to handle lunkers out of the water on the forum. Let's find out the least damaging way to actually catch lunkers.
Perhaps you should watch some of the videos of large bass violently inhaling their prey/lure. That may provide some useful insight?
My experiences on bass mortality. (FWIW)
I have caught many small bass (9-14") on crankbaits that managed to get the back treble hook into the gill-rakers or gill arch. No matter how delicately we tried to surgically remove the hooks, this resulted in severe bleeding of the gill filaments. Those fish would float when returned to the lake, and presumably died shortly thereafter.
I have never gill-hooked a large bass with a dual treble hook lure (although that is a much smaller sample size). Considering how violently a big bass inhales the lure by flaring her gills, would gill hooking a large bass be more likely?
Our other "catch" mortality was "gullet-hooked" bass on Texas-rigged plastic worms. Once again, I only did this on smaller bass, and never on a 5#+ bass.
I actually think this problem was most common on spotted bass (Kentucky bass). (Do they attack/eat baits in a different manner than LMB?) Sometimes these bass pick up the worm and start swimming. If you set the hook immediately, you would only recover the front half of the worm. If you waited for a subsequent "twitch" while the fish was swimming with the worm, then you could hook the fish. However, a small number of fish caught in this fashion would be gullet hooked.
I speculate that the small bass were picking up the worms by the tail. At some point, they would then inhale to re-position the worm completely in their mouth. A few of these fish did get the tail of the worm down their gullet and the hook set would pierce at the very top of the gullet soft tissue.
I would think a large bass could inhale the worm to that degree on the initial strike, but I never have gullet hooked a large LMB. Once again, perhaps my sample size is just too small.
I personally have never fished for giant LMB with large live fish bait. However, I believe that in Texas some people fish for 10#+ LMB with large gizzard shad, and in California they do the same thing with rainbow trout as bait.
Perhaps there are some articles on the best way to rig your live bait to catch those very large LMB? The way they rig might yield some info on how the very large LMB hit the live baits?
I am glad your pond has finally reached your goal of double-digit bass!
I look forward to some future reports of people successfully "sampling" these bass - with pictures!
