Gigged Rainbow

[oneshot]

I really wish I had taken a Picture.Heard of Guys catching Trout with Gig Marks but I had never caught one until today.Caught a Rainbow that had been Gigged all the way through.Seemed to be in Good Shape other wise,I just cut out the Bad Part.

I can't see it how in the heck do you accidentaly Gig a Rainbow?

oneshot

[FishinCricket]

They say that you shouldn't attribute too quickly to malice what can be explained by ignorance....

That being said.. I have seen a few gigged rainbow myself, or at leasted they look like they had been stuck.

I personally don't think that you couldn't know you were gigging a rainbow, they have a totally different swimming action.. I guess if you were gigging a hole that was packed with both you could slip or one could rush under your pole or something, but I dunno...

Any giggers wanna "take a stab" at answering this question?

[Wayne SW/MO]

You're just seeing the few that survive. The MDC has tried everything in an effort to stop illegal gigging, but closing the river, and a few others, would stop most of it.

[XP 590]

I saw some similar discussion on another board about a similar topic so let this be my ignorance not wanting to jump to malice as noted above, but is it possible some of these injuries could be from long beaked birds--herons etc--that the trout got away from? I've never gigged for fish before so I don't know what kind of injuries that would lead to.

[Al Agnew]

A single puncture in a meaty portion of the back could be a heron. Two punctures across the back an inch or more apart or a hole in the head through the bone (yes, I caught a big smallmouth one time that had that exact wound) is almost certainly from a gig. Old, well-healed scars on big fish could be from herons, new scars on fish over 12 inches or so probably not, since herons pretty much know how big a fish they could swallow.

[Randall]

I posted a picture of a brown that had been hit by a heron on the Current river thread. There's a pretty big difference between that and a gig wound.

[oneshot]

A single puncture in a meaty portion of the back could be a heron. Two punctures across the back an inch or more apart or a hole in the head through the bone (yes, I caught a big smallmouth one time that had that exact wound) is almost certainly from a gig. Old, well-healed scars on big fish could be from herons, new scars on fish over 12 inches or so probably not, since herons pretty much know how big a fish they could swallow.

Ok this is possible there is plenty of Herons down there.And it really didn't look right for a Gig it was all the way through,but it was more from the side instead of straight down.

oneshot

[ozark trout fisher]

Ok this is possible there is plenty of Herons down there.And it really didn't look right for a Gig it was all the way through,but it was more from the side instead of straight down.

oneshot

Lets just hope it was a heron.....................

Trout giggers make me sick. It seems like it would be pretty tough to accidentally gig a trout, you would have to be pretty bad at identifying fish.

I'm not against gigging, just against the ones who gig trout, smallmouth, etc. If your not sure what it is, don't gig. Better to miss one sucker than to gig a trout or smallmouth. Not being able to identify fish properly is no excuse in my mind. No better than doing it on purpose. The end result is the same... A dead gamefish that doesn't need to be.