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Pike damage

Gary Downie

Senior Member
While fishing in a local pond my daughter caught a pike with some pretty severe damage.
Any ideas what could have caused this?
IMG_5247.JPG
 
Very strange. Initially I’d say such pronounced De gloving would be due to a bacterial infection. However looking at the pelvic fins, also frayed of say that it’s been grabbed by a predator and been lucky to escape. The question is what. Judging by the grass scale it’s quite a small jack isn’t it? A foot long at best? As a guess I’d say that the perp is Avain. Truth is you can’t know for sure.
 
I have seen a pike get damaged like this from getting wrapped and wrapped in braid while the chap was trying to net it. It almost skinned the whole back end of the fish
 
Possibly two separate ailments there - the fin looks to be an old wound that has healed, whilst the angrier body wound looks very "fresh", and I would agree with Stephen C's guess of some sort of bacterial thing which is gradually eating away at the flesh - you can still see the natural markings just under the dorsal fin. I think if it was a predatory attack or careless angler, it would be more of a case of a chunk missing for the former, and a less defined shape for the latter.

Having said that, I did catch a small barbel on Saturday that had a VERY similar looking wound, and I'm 99% sure that that was caused by a pike attack, so it's possible this jack had a narrow escape from a bigger relative's jaws.
 
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