Jim Berry called to tell me about a fish taxidermists J.R. Akin brought back to Berry’s Sporting Goods. Mr. Akin picks up fish there to be mounted and returns them to customers. One he mounted held a surprise when it was cut open.
Inside this bass’s stomach were some plastic worms. Not a few, but 19 different pieces. Many were full size worms and lizards, and two still had hooks in them. I went by the store last week and got a picture of the fish and its strange stomach contents.
Bass have the ability to regurgitate things from their stomach, but this one had not done that. It looked very healthy and it seems the gobs of plastic clogging it up did no harm. Maybe it did not throw up the worms because they gave the fish a nice full feeling. I guess you would not be hungry if your stomach was full, even if it was from indigestible plastic!
A few years ago I caught a bass at Lake Martin and it was extremely skinny and poor for its length. When I cleaned it there were four plastic worms in it. The fish was starving to death even though its stomach was full.
That was when I quit throwing torn up plastic worms into the lake and kept them for the trash can. I think a lot of the plastic worms a bass eats are ones it finds floating around in the lake. They can do a lot of harm to fish so save your used worms for the trash can on the shore.
