Wow...as you said very strange; please keep me posted.

Looks like a drug smuggling fish. Glad you were able to apprehend the perpetrator and issue a quick sentence.

Seriously, was that in the stomach AND the ribs? If it were anywhere BUT the stomach I don't know if I would eat it. Was it loose or attached to the flesh? Strange!

I'm with 242AB, I've seen your posts and you have plenty of meat in your fridge/freezer, I'd pass on this one! I've never seen that inside a fish.

I've never seen anything like that before. Looks like beef jerkey! I'd have to pass on this one as well.

Yes, it did resemble beef jerky, and yes again I did pass on the fish, just like a few years ago when I caught a nice striper with the circular sores all over it from the Delaware Bay, why take a chance.

It looks like tree bark. Was it hard or soft?

Hard...Maybe Jersey Girl will chime in he cleaned the fish and I think some of the stuff was outside the stomach on the rib meat...

That's the part that I can't get, stomach contents could be just about anything but the rib meat part is strange, almost like some kind of tumor. Was the stuff in the stomach floating like something it ate or attached to the stomach wall?

Looks like beef jerky. please save me a piece

must be one of those resident stripers from the plant huh? lol

If it smelled like jerky and tasted like jerkey... it probably was jerky. Did it taste like jerky?

The one piece up front looks like the glove I lost.

Thats a head scrathcer. Did you look at the meat to see if it was discolored?

Everything on the outside of the fish was normal..When I cut it open to see what was in the stomach it was attached to the wall of the inner stomach...Also a piece was attached to the outer wall of the stomach...Strange....It looked like it swallowed a piece of board floating..which I would accept...but what about the piece outside the stomach?..The meat smelled good and nothing else was discolored inside...Strange it was.....I felt like that Pathologist on "NCIS"....but don't look like her...lol....Yes it looked like "Beef Jerky"....

Did you happen to save it? I am sure the biologists over at Rutgers would love to have a look. I am going to forward the pics to a retired NJ F&W biologist and see if he has any idea, will post back any info he has on it.

No Joe, unfortunately we feed it to the gulls...

Rick, we had one about two weeks ago that was very thin and sickly looking. It was a keeper size but at the dock, my dad said he had a bad feeling about. It just didn't look right. Ended up going to the stray cat we feed...

Guy's could it be coagulated crude oil?

give it to your mother in law

yikes....cancer?

Tha stuff is disgusting!

Rick I haven't forgot about this...the guy I am trying to work on this with is away for the winter so he doesn't return e-mails as fast. Will hopefully be in contact with him sometime this week. In the meantime I will take copies of the pictures and posts with me to tonight's meeting and ask around.

Thanks Joe,