Interesting Catch

[the reel ess]

I went to my buddy's pond this morning and caught this bass, among others, on a Chug Bug. Its gut was stuffed like it swallowed a softball. My friend tells me to put EVERYTHING I catch in his basket because the average is pretty small, so I put it on a stringer since I was using the kayak. When I got back to the dock and was removing it form the stringer I noticed a fish tail sticking out its throat. I used my pliers to pull it out. It was a bass, maybe 8" long. I put it in the basket and kept fishing. I caught maybe 7 bass and a couple nice bluegill. I showed my buddy the pic and we were talking about it. I asked if he really wanted to kill that bass. He said it wasn't huge. I said "Yeah, but it's a stone cold killer. If it keeps eating other bass it will likely get pretty big and maybe help increase the average bass size." I went back to the basket and let it go. I wish I'd been able to tag it.