A couple of my spots on the river I almost always catch one big one at each.  I can’t help but wonder if it’s the same ones? Is it possible there is only one big smallmouth in each hole or are there usually at least a few? One I can tell is the same for sure by the way it fights and his striping.

I have absolutely caught the same fish this fall. I weighed it and it was the exact same weight as a fish I caught 3 days prior. I caught it less than half a mile away from the spot I caught it thE first time.

 

Pic revealed it had a distinctive mark in the same spot behind it’s fin.

 

First time caught

 

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Second time caught

 

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I've caught the same fish numerous times.  Some years back we had a drought on the Chain that dropped the water level over six feet exposing a lot of underwater stuff I didn't know was there.  One of them was a sunken boat dock.  It's almost impossible to find unless you know where it is. There is a big fish that lives on those pilings.  The first time I caught that fish she weighted about six pounds.  It's the same fish as she has some unique markings that you can see in this photo.  I caught her again three more times.  The last time she weighed a little over nine pounds. 

 

 

I believe that I‘ve caught the same fish before. I know my son caught a fish that had taken my lure a week earlier.

I've 100% for certain caught the same fish more once on more than one occasion. Pretty sure it just happened recently when I caught a fish just over 4lbs from the same tributary creek. Caught it about a mile away from where I caught it the week prior. First on a Hoodaddy, then on a squarebill. Both had gill wounds on the same side, and the exact same dorsal fin damage.

Definitely. Since I photo my fish I commonly ID the same fish by markings, as Bb86's photos above show. Some fish are more vulnerable to fishing than others, and this appears to hold true.

Here's a graphic I put together for a vid, that I'm not sure I ever used. Will hopefully get to that topic someday.

 

could be twins ?

The smaller the body of water, the more frequently I believe this occurs. It kind of just makes sense. In the case of smallies, I know tagging and movement studies they have done here show that most smallmouth stay in the same pools year round in our smaller rivers. They move more in our larger ones on a seasonal basis. In green fish, the ongoing study in Texas currently has less than a 3% recapture rate of the same fish by fishing even though they pretty much know exactly where that fish is sitting.

 

I know I've had several instances this year of catching the same fish. The pic below is just one example of the same fish caught 22 hours apart back in January.

 

Last year I was fishing this little pond with an indentation along the dam.  Every time I would bring the crankbait past that indentation I would catch a little bass that weighed maybe a pound.  I did this four times and finally moved.  I was getting worried that if it was the same fish, and I kept catching it, it would end up getting hurt.

maybe you bought your bait from jack, American homemade 

 

A friend told me his wife was fishing crawdads and broke off a fish. I fished the spot a couple days later and one of the fish I caught had a hook in it. I took the hook (and a short section of line attached to it) to him and he said it was the type she was using. 

 

I once hooked what I believe to be a pretty big fish for as few seconds in a small nook in the bank. I was prefishing for a tournament, so I just left the area. I returned to the area the morning of the tournament, and right in that small nook in the bank, hooked a dandy. We fought for a while, and then it snapped my 4 lb test line. I don't know how many green meanies could hang out in a cut in the bank the size of a dining room table, but I would wager that it was the same fish both times. That was the last time I used 4 lb line fishing for bass.

 

There are some interesting telemetry studies coming to light here recently that track bass after they have been caught and they are finding that many of them immediately swim right back to the same piece of cover they were caught from.