My son was fishing last night and came to get me so I could help him pull out what he thought was a dead LMB. It was dark and we didn't have any success snagging it as it was hard to see at that point. He grabbed a flashlight and I was able to illuminate the fish well enough that he was able to get a treble hook into it and reel it in. As soon as it came out of the weeds, we both realized it was two fish but still couldn't figure out what we were seeing till we got them near the shore. Our LMB are just starting to get their nests well established and I suspect this was a case of overly aggressive nest defense. The "eatee" was an underweight 13" fish and the "eater" was probably only an inch or so longer but was still alive. Because we weren't sure how long she had been locked up like that, we put her back in immediately after getting them separated and were able to watch her with the flashlight and saw that looked totally fine after a minute of swimming around. She was moving really well later when we looked at her nest again and looks no worse for the wear. The other one, well, not quite so much on the healthy bit. It was dead when we got it out of the winner's mouth so we left it on the bank and put a game camera on a nearby tree to see if anything cool happens.

That's the first time we've ever found something like this on our ponds and it added a really cool element to the evening last night!

New data point for the mouth gape studies.

A 13" LMB can ALMOST eat a 12" LMB!

Great post Todd. I am glad you were able to save the momma. She sounds like just the kind of LMB that you want to reproduce in your pond!

Gotta love science research and empirical data! LOL!

Yep, I agree - she's got the genes we want to encourage!

Brutal.

Thanks for the laugh Rod!

Thats pretty wild!
We caught a 20lb FH catfish on the Missouri river one day that had taken our bait, which consisted of about a 1 lb bullhead catfish on a bank pole, and mostly swallowed it headfirst but just got it down far enough toe where the barbs on the BH I guess wouldnt let it regurgitate it, when we got the FH into the boat we pulled the hook right out of the BH with very little effort, the FH never had a hook in him at all.

I'm betting "she" is a "he". That the pond by the house?

Wow!! That is one heck of a image.

Yes, the one by the house. Lots of spawn activity going on in that pond. I don't know if it's been warm enough yet for the spawn to occur but lots of beds are showing up.

Boy, is it ever! My son and I were both amazed!

That happens spawn or not. They sometimes make a fatal mistake on what they can swallow.

I think the fatal mistake in this situation was one thinking what COULDN'T swallow it! And while the deceased was technically correct, it still didn't work out too well for him/her!