legal fish or not....you be the tournament director...

years ago was fishing a Hydrasport tourney on Lake Lanier...was hopping a jig dopwn a steep bank and boat was sitting a long cast off the bank probably in about 40 ft of water...get a "tic" set the hook and feels like a pretty good fish....about halfway to the boat,I can feel the fish on there but can't pull him any closer...
kick trolling motor on and get over top of the fish in probably 20 ft of water and was able to pull fish to the top and my partner nets a 2 1/2 lb bass....with an old rusty spoon hanging out of his mouth and line stretching off into the depths....I get the spoon out of his mouth,hook was almost rusted through...thought maybe there was a rod and reel on other end of the line and there may have been but line was hung on something probably 30 feet away when where I was able to drag the fish to the surface...whatever line was hung on,I couldn't get it loose and ended up breaking the line
from looks of the spoon and hook,I'm guessing the fish had the spoon in his mouth several months....don't know how long the fish had been on a 40 ft tether either but apparently it was hungry enough to bite my jig when it got within reach...
is this a legal fish or not?

I guess I'm missing something. What at all could have been questionable about it? You caught and hooked a fish that had someone else hook in it?

If your lure was in the fishes mouth I don’t see the issue. If you caught the old line with your lure and pulled him up that way I could see a possible issue

Ya did you snag someone else's old line or caught the fish in the mouth?

fish bit the jig and was caught in the mouth....oddly enough 20 years later almost same thing happened on lake champlain except wasn't in a tournament...2lb bass had an almost new spoon in his mouth and bit a jig...spoon had probably a 100 ft of what looked like 10-12lb mono that wasn't hung on anything...

if the fish bit your lure, it doesn't matter about what else is going on, under the water.

Your description says you caught the fish and has a broken off lure still in him so you weigh him. Change the hook and split ring and now you have a new bait also.

agree with you and that includes fish that break the line,swim to surface and are netted or the hook comes out when fish is jumping and partner catches in the net or the line breaks and you come back later and handline the fish in....the important thing is that the fish bit your lure.....IMHO as long as you stay in the boat,it don't matter how you get that fish in the boat...
but there are those who will disagree....

I think you get to include the weight of the spoon too when you weigh in.

I hope you really didn’t debate this.