If a bass swallows your Neko rig, is he “screwed”?

[Tom Rust]

Yesterday I twice had bass pull my Roboworm out of the rubber o-ring when I tried to set the hook. I use #6 wood screws in the head of the worm. That got me wondering, is that going to kill that fish? What are your thoughts??

[Team9nine]

Maybe, maybe not - but likely not because of the screws. Will depend on whether he can either regurgitate or pass the plastic. I would guess the screw would stay embedded and go with the worm either way. A recent study determined most bass eliminate ingested plastics within 9 days, though normal feeding is often messed up until the worm is expelled (varies by shape, size, composition, etc.).

[WRB]

You use a circle hook to prevent gut hooking and reduce the hook set force by reeling to set the hook.

Using the standard drop shot hook try inserting the through the plastic under the o-ring and lower the hook set force, it’s not needed for exposed hook.

Tom

[Big Hands]

I have an offset long needle nose pliers made by Booms (with the blue/gray handles). It actually has two offsets (hard to tell from their internet pics) that are nothing short of amazing for removing hooks. The first thing I do though is to pull any plastics out of the way to see exactly what is going on, and to make it easier to grab onto the hook. I can reach in through the gills and grab and rotate to free most hooks, even when I have to pull a little on the line to get the top of the hook out of the gullet.

 

Long hooks swallowed deep are the hardest to get out because there may not be enough room to rotate them. The right pliers go a long ways to aid in removing hooks.

[ElGuapo928]

I carry a long (10”-ish) hemostat for this very purpose. I picked mine up at a local medical supply place, but just about every hardware store on Earth has them anymore.

[VolFan]

Some of you aren’t reading the question - it’s not a gut-hook; the fish took his plastic with a screw head.

 

Those fish will almost certainly be fine. More than likely they spit the plastic after they realized it was plastic. Even if not that should pass through them fine, if maybe slowly.