Oh man! When fish totally inhale a lure

Lure with two sets of trebles looped around fish's gills

We all like to catch fish but we never want to see a fish hooked like this -- the entire lure with two sets of treble hooks inside a fish's mouth.
I was the unlucky guy who caught the pike in the photo above. The lure is one of Dwayne Kotala's handmade wooden lures, in this case a wooden Red Belly Dace in a shallow diver model.
This is where a lot of people would get out the jaw spreaders before trying to extract the hooks from the fish's gills. I didn't have jaw spreaders in this instance and might not have used them even if I did because the fish was quite small. Instead I turned the fish over on its back and flared out its gill covers. The lure was plainly visible from that angle. I pulled it gently backwards out through the gills until not only the lure but the entire leader had cleared the fish, then I cut the line.
This is often a better technique when dealing with two sets of treble hooks rather than going down from the top of the mouth. No sooner do you get one treble set unhooked and begin working on the second than the first has hooked into something again.
This fish was released unharmed.
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