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Injury - what do you make of this ?

Ian Grant

Ian Grant

Senior Member & Supporter
I'd be interested to know what you all think of this injury.
I caught the Barbel last night, i would estimate give or take 7lbs.
As you can see the other flank is clean, apart from obvious redness around the anal fin.
My first thoughts were that it had likley collided with something tubelular, or maybe the stub end of a broken branch.
After thinking about it i wonder whether the original injury was probably much smaller and had become infected and ulcerated.
The wound appeared to be healing nicely, and was completly covered in new skin which was smooth to the touch, though it appears to me the healing process had definatley not yet finished given the redness under the injury itself, and around the anal fin.

I've seen many injuries on Barbel over the years, but never one so evenly circular as this ..... What do you think ?

Ian.


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Infection? I've caught barbel with almost idential wounds from the Trent and Ribble - can't find the pics at the moment but will keep digging.
 
I caught one with a similar though much smaller hole behind a pec, didnt look clever at all. However, caught it again 9 month later and it was just a scar - had healed very well indeed.
 
Is it lying on something? It looks almost kinked.
I would think it would be difficult to ascertain but I would hazard a guess at a sore or cut that penetrated the skin then spread to consume the it.


Damian
 
Certainly looks like something that has been infected, maybe a heron stab form younger which has festered for a long time.........

More to the point, what are you doing catching sub-double figure Barbel Ian, you said that didn't happen any more :)
 
Ian Crook said:
Certainly looks like something that has been infected, maybe a heron stab form younger which has festered for a long time.........

More to the point, what are you doing catching sub-double figure Barbel Ian, you said that didn't happen any more :)
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Why did i know you would divert the subject matter Crooky ? - and i never said that ! :rolleyes:

Keep this on subject mate !

Ian.
 
I agree with Rhys in that it looks like a Lamprey attack. I had a Pike a couple of years ago that had a perfectly round , deep holed but well healed wound. That looks just like a start , maybe he didn't like the taste of Barbel :rolleyes:
 
My guess is a wound that became ulcerated by bacterial infection, probably made worse by secondary fungal complications as time went on. Whatever size and shape the original problem was, the wound has probably grown to what you see now purely due to tissue necrosis caused by infection. By the sound of the new skin on the wound, the poor critters immune system has now won the battle and all will be well in time.

Cheers, Dave.
 
Lamprey. Here's another example.

sUVLx.png


Anyone else notice that the barbel appears to only have one, very stubby barbule?
 
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Last March caught a chub from the Sussex Ouse with a very similar wound. However this wound was close to the gills, and it bled badly. There are lampreys in this part of the Ouse, so I reckon a lamprey wound is a good bet.
Shaun of the dead
 
It could well be a Lamprey wound, hadn't really considered that. With this fish being 7lb that would have to be quite a Lamprey - something i wouldn't have believed until recent years when i've seen some whoppers in the Lune and Ribble - amazing things, wouldn't want one attached to my leg while wading in the summer though. Even so - i've seen wounds like this measuring over 2" in diameter - how big do these Lamprey get?
 
My first thought was lamprey and that was reinforced by Nigel's example.

I've seen lamprey in the Teme a metre long and thicker than my wrist so a 2" wound would be fairly typical.
 
Shaun Morris said:
Last March caught a chub from the Sussex Ouse with a very similar wound. However this wound was close to the gills, and it bled badly. There are lampreys in this part of the Ouse, so I reckon a lamprey wound is a good bet.
Shaun of the dead
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No idea if it's still alive but there was a barbel that hung around the confluence with the Uck back in the mid to late eighties that went arond 5-6lbs depending on when he was caught. He had a perfectly healed lamprey scar on his head and just above his eyes. Amongst the few of us chasing barbel on the Ouse system back then he was known as the Druid due to the position of this perfectly round scar on his head.
 
That is absolutely disgusting :eek: I have never even seen a lamprey, but looking at Nigel's picture, there can be little doubt that this is what caused the wound on Ian's fish. Obviously I have seen video footage and pictures of the mouth parts of lamprey, but had no idea that their ring of teeth could produce such a neatly defined wound.

I have seen ulcerated wounds in carp that are almost perfectly round, some fish with numbers of circular ulcers of various sizes (these can be helped by copious flushing with Klin-ik or similar) but such wounds tend to have a more conical pit form, before they heal, which was what I thought may have happened with Ian's fish....but Nigel's picture is too similar to leave any doubt.

To think I get annoyed by mosquito bites...and the poor fish have things like that to contend with :eek: makes me feel vaguely sick to imagine parasites that big :(

Cheers, Dave.
 
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I once foul hooked a lamprey on the severn a few years back. Horrible looking thing - about 12 inches of pure muscle, couldn't believe how strong it was!
 
I did fleetingly think of Lamprey, but dismissed it because of the size of the wound, i've only ever seen them in the flesh in sealed pike bait packets, after reading some of the opinions on here, i googled ' Lamprey bites ' - i never realised they got so big, or that they could inflict that sort of damage, i wonder though if Daves original theory was in part true, in that after the attack the wound became infected, explaining the 2'' diameter wound.
Having said that it's obvious that Lampreys are capable of inflicting a wound that size on a fish, so a later infection may not have caused the size of the wound, though i think it would have had to have been a pretty big Lamprey to do that.
I know Lamprey are present in the Loddon, and i assume that the reason they are so rarely caught is because of the way they feed, but make me wonder - just how common are they ?
Disgusting creatures ! looks like something from a horror movie.

Thanks for all your thoughts chaps :) It's certainly enlightened me a bit !

Ian.
 
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