I have been recently starting to use soft plastics and caught my first bass off of a strike king new plastic brush hog. Great lure in my opinion. Well the last two bass I have caught have literally swallowed at least half the hook. one of them I had to cut the skin from the hook to free the fish. The second fish I had to cut the hook because it had swallowed half of it. It was the only way I could have released the fish. Am I doing something wrong or are they just inhaling the bait.

Read this thread and you'll see the only thing you're doing wrong is cutting the hook instead of doing what Glenn suggests in it.

http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1128002349/22#22

You might be waiting too long to set the hook. There's not a lot of time between setting the hook right, the bass swallowing the hook or spitting it back out! Work on feeling ANY changes in your line. Until you've got it down, pay attention to removing the hook the best way ...

skillet

Try to keep tension on your line most of the time and as soon as you feel anything unusual or see your line move drop the rod, reel up the slack, and set the hook. If you do that you should stop hooking them in the gullet, i mean its gonna happen occasionally but that should slow it down.

    Don't let the bass run with your bait, that gives him or her to much time to swallow the hook.

Nature of the beast, it happens.

I find that fish that are inhalers like bass, snook or tarpon, suck that bait in and can swallow it deep.  Toothy fish like muskie, pike, mackerel and barracudas attack as to cut that fish in half and often times go back for a second hit, they don't swallow the bait or lures.