While fishing in Texas, Tarrence Gordwin happened upon an unusual sight— a bass eating a smaller bass. Surprisingly not only was the larger bass still alive, but when Gordwin separated the bass he found the larger bass had a mouthful of shad.
Gordwin revived the larger bass and it swam off.
“Sorry about you bro,” Gordwin tells the smaller, dead fish.
Bass eating other bass: more common than you think
While a bass half-swallowing another bass may seem like an extremely unusual sighting, this is hardly the first instance of apparent bass cannibalism. On September 18, 2023, just two years before Gordwin’s viral video, Casey Reed captured the exact same phenomenon on film.
In Reed’s video, a larger bass had a smaller bass deeply embedded in its mouth, but this time, both bass were still alive! Reed gently separated the bass.
At a cursory glance, it may seem as if the larger bass in both these cases were targeting the smaller bass as a meal. While bass have been known to have a wide and varied diet that doesn’t necessarily rule out eating smaller bass for survival, the shad in the mouth of Gordwin’s larger bass tell a different story.
It’s certainly possible that in going for the same prey, shad, the two bass found themselves in the unlikely, but perhaps more common than you might think, situation of being semi-swallowed and stuck.
A bass swallows another, slightly smaller bass. Feature Image: Tarrence Gordwin | YouTube
