Well I went out today, and caught about 6 bass on a jig, 2 decent fish about 3-3 1/2lbs each. Ok now heres comes the bad news, and I know you guys are probably gonna yell at me for this, but hey.. we all make mistakes.. My friend called me and was going to come right when I hooked my 3lber, so I wanted to show it to him, I took about 2-3feet of line off of my reel (cause I didnt have a stringer with me), and tied it thru his gill plate and made a regular knot (3 times). I then tied the otha end to a stick, and as I was tying it to the stick he managed to break free, and swim away with the 2-3foot of line.

The line was about 10lb test flurocarbon, and it was tied to his gill plate, not hitting the actual gills, just around the plate. What I wanted to know is do you think this fish will live? I hope so.. I hope to catch him sometime soon, and be able to cut it off of him. What do you think the chances of him living are? Please say high.. I'd hate to know I killed a decent fish  :'(.

No one knows?  :-/.

I'd give low odds.

If you're lucky you won't get too much of a beating and perhaps some good advice as to how to handle the situation differently next time you cath a nice one that allows you to show off your catch and return the fish to the water to be caught another day.

My advice would be to always carry a camera, you never know what can happen!

Well this may or may not answer your question.  I grew up on a fairly decent sized pond that i fished quite often after school.  Bass mainly but some catfish and sunfish also.  My dad at the time had stocked it with some fairly nice bass from other lakes.  Well i caught a 6lb bass and i wanted to get a pic with him cuz at the time that was my PB.  So i put him on a stringer so i could run up to the house to get a camera.  When i got back down to the pond he had pulled the stake out of the ground and was gone.  A week and a half later i caught him with the stringer still through his mouth.  Me being able to catch him let me know that he was still able to feed with a 4ft stringer dangling from his mouth.  So if i had to guess i would think that your fish will be fine.