Craziest fishing experience

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s2kskibum

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Feb 19, 2010
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Mine was just north of Key West - fly fishing next to one of the bridges. Hooked a small barracuda, which promptly cut the leader. Fly gone. Tying a new one on, the fish jumped right in front of me, spit the hook, which landed on shore a few feet away. Fly recovered.

What's yours?
 
I was sailing east just past the NW corner of New Providence in The Bahamas.  I was trailing my favorite, a yellow feathered lure on the dropoff, about 100'-120', when I got a hit.  It was about a 3' barracuda, not my favorite fish and a sure reminder I was fishing in water that was too shallow for the larger pelagic fish that I sought (dolphin, wahoo, mackerel). 

As I was reeling in the cuda, another cuda came out of nowhere and hit my cuda, the pair rolling and thrashing in the water, putting up such a fierce fight that I couldn't make any headway reeling in what I thought was now a pair of cudas.

Suddenly the line went limp and I reeled in 2/3 of a cuda, his mid-section missing, his tail hanging on by a thing piece of skin and his backbone.  I let him go and felt sad as he started sinking, his mangled body trying to move back and forth to propel him somewhere, anywhere...
 
Don't know about 'craziest', but I've had a number of crazy fishing experiences.

In the 60's (the 1960's for the young folk here) I fished for sewin, the Welsh name for a migratory trout, on the River Teifi in West Wales. I was camped in a trailer at a nearby campground. I'd go out just before dusk, plant myself in the river among a row of other fishermen, and wait for the sun to go down.

Sure enough, just as it got dark, there was a "mad hour". I couldn't see a thing, and had to rely on the sound of the splash of the sewin, fresh from the ocean, trying to knock the lice off their backs.

I was fishing an Alexander, and would hit a fish virtually every cast. Occasionally, the fish would break the line or I'd flip the fly off during the back cast. That was fun, standing in the middle of the river in the pitch dark with the fly rod under one arm, a flashlight under the other arm, and attempting to tie on a new fly &/or leader. 
 
Caught a bat fishing a fly at night - most of my friends have! And some huge rainbows.
 
Several years ago before pollution and over fishing, I was fishing by myself in the Indian River lagoon. It was called the Indian River at that time. I was north of Titusville and had beached my boat on the west side of a spoil island. Rather small just a couple hundred feet long by 30 or 40 feet wide.

I was using a Zara Spook. My favorite was the nearly clear one with some yellow.
I hooked a fair size salt water trout. It jumped thrashed and broke my line. I tied on another and kept on fishing. I hooked several more and some were keepers.

Finally when it was time to go, I started back to my boat. Just as I was getting back to the beach my boat was on, I saw a thrashing in the water near my boat. I immediately ran to get closer and lo and behold there was the fish I had hooked earlier. It had thrashed around enough trying to get the plug out that it had hooked itself in the tale end. It was almost a perfect circle. It had made its way from the east side of the island all the way to the west side.

I was surely grateful as even then the Zara Spook was an expensive lure. The fish was good too.

Jerry
 
I like to wade fish and we had just moved to Houston and I found a place to fish close to where I was working, a fairly large reservoir.  I asked the guys fishing on the banks what kind of fish, could I wade the shore line, etc and they were nice saying there were bass and it was shallow enough to wade. 

The following week I put on my waders and walked past the guys on the shore exchanging pleasantries.  There was a sign in the parking lot no fires, no camping, no wakes, etc and on the bottom of the sign it stated "caution and the rest was shot out by shot gun blasts.  I went to the boat launch thinking I would enter the water there and there was another sign again stating no fires, no camping, no wakes, etc and on the bottom of the sign it stated "caution alligators"!

Well I stepped back, quickly,  and I swear the dozen guys on the bank were all looking at me and had a big smile on their face.  I always wondered whether they would have let that "yankee" wade in those waters or stopped me. Any bets? 

As an aside, I became friends with the ranger at the reservoir and in the following years and he took me on the air boat several timesand we saw 8-12 ft alligators on the islands that I was going to wade! 
 
Back in the 90's when I was living in California, I took my friend from work, who had never been fishing before, bass fishing at Castaic lagoon. He had brought some live crawdads with him, and asked me what to do with them. I showed him how to tie on a hook and how to put on the crawdad. Then he asked me where to throw it. I pointed out a spot on the shore, and he threw it there. Next thing I know, I look at his pole and it is bent to the water. I told him to set the hook and start reeling in! Well, he reeled it in alright. It was a 17lb. 8oz. largemouth bass! It was the lower lake lagoon record bass until quite a few years later it was broken by world-famous big bass hunter Butch Brown, whom I still believe holds the record.
 
tdst51 
this is off subject but thought you should know
"A sure sign of maturity is knowing the volume control turns to the left" ;D
Howard
 
Sometime back in the '70s we were trolling for King Mackerel about ten miles off shore of North Carolina.  It was customary to have one line running fairly deep on a down rigger or planer to try to catch the occasional Wahoo. 

Something very big and strong hit the bait on the planer and the line went screaming off the reel.  We immediately reeled in the other lines to clear the way to fight this monster.  It didn't fight like any other fish we had ever hooked, so we were all curious to see what broke the surface when, and if, this creature decided to leap.  The struggle continued for several minutes while we fought both the fish and the large ocean swells.  The "thing" finally broke the surface about fifty yards behind the boat and we saw, what appeared to be just the bill and jagged head of some species of bill fish.

We surmised that some large shark had actually bitten the remainder of the fish completely off.  We continued to reel in the carcass to retrieve our tackle.  You can imagine our embarrassment when we realized that what we had caught was a rather large, and water logged, MOP with the words "Property of the United States Navy" stamped into the handle.

NO, we did not filet it, but I've often wished I had had it 'mounted'.
 
I was trolling off the eastern shore of Puerto Rico one time, trailing a wedge-shaped silver spoon about 4" long about 50 yards behind my boat on the surface of the water.  I noticed several large sea birds eyeing my skipping spoon so I decided to reel it in, a bit too late perhaps, one of the large brown seagulls hit my spoon and somehow got snagged by the foot as he tried to release it. 

I reeled in the bird and set him on the aft deck, his wings flapping and obviously very agitated.  I covered him with a towel as I spoke soothingly to him.  I picked up the towel-wrapped bird and removed the hook from his foot.  I was amazed at how big this bird was yet how light.  I removed the towel and let him fly away. 
 
Steve, I've had many Sea Gulls, and the occasional Pelican, fly into and get tangled in my line while surf fishing.  They are both very large birds, and the "towel over the eyes", is about the only way to control them while setting them free.
 
Just Lou said:
Steve, I've had many Sea Gulls, and the occasional Pelican, fly into and get tangled in my line while surf fishing.  They are both very large birds, and the "towel over the eyes", is about the only way to control them while setting them free.

I don't know if I would have thought of the towel over the eyes, but luckily my girlfriend had enough intelligence to suggest it.
 
Foxysdad said:
tdst51 
this is off subject but thought you should know
"A sure sign of maturity is knowing the volume control turns to the left" ;D
Howard

Gee, thanks! I guess since I'm pushing 60 that means I can't listen to my music (of course without bothering anyone) the way I like it. Again, thanks for the info!  ::)
 
I was spearfishing underwater for Sheepshead off Anacapa Island (Channel Islands NP off the California coast) during the 80s when I speared a fish. I reeled him in and removed him from the spear. I set my goodie bag (a large nylon mesh bag divers use to hold game) down on the bottom and opened it up so I could put the fish into the bag. While I was doing this another Sheepshead swam into the open bag and stayed there. I would guess that it would be the aquatic version of suicide.
 
Some years ago (about 10) me and a friend went ''cat fishin'' down to Tucker Town lake over in davidson county.  Tuckertown is famous for big catfish and I mean REALLY BIG CATS some of them will go over 100 pounds and one that is 50 pounds is just a ''ho hum'' catch.
We took big rigs and went down under the bridge in really deep water to fish.  We tied off to the bridge pilings and set six rods deep with large bream hooked in the side for bait.  We set the clickers and setteled back.  In a few minutes one of the rods started to take line against the clicker ..........  click click click  ..... real slow like a big cat toying with the bait.  My friend took hold of the  rod and with a might jerk he set the hook deep because big cats have a really tough mouth.  Immeidatly the line went sideways to the boat and started taking drag........  I grabbed the other five rods and pulled them in to give him room to fight the monstor.
The fish would break right and then left and then run with the current under the bridge.  The fight was on.....  The rod was bending to the breaking point and we were afraid the line would fail.   

Time passed and he finally started ''winning the fight''..... I grabbed the big net and stood by to net his trophy.  As it neared the surface we were both very disappointed.
It was evident that he had hooked the cast iron door off of a old wood stove.  The kind with the ''adjustable eyes'' in the front of it.  The old cast iron door must have weighed twenty pounds and was very large.  We decided it was probably an old door off of an oven due to its size.  We decided that the ''action'' he was getting was due to the current of the river passing under the bridge in the narrows and it was pushing the door all over the place. 
We had a good laugh and the door is hanging  in his garage with a tag and pix of him holding it up as a trophy.....
We fished the rest of the day and caught some small ones and turned them back to grow some


 
dawn on opening day at a little lake in central Washington. The planted trout were rolling in the shallows, waiting for us. We got about 6 in very short order on our fishing stringer. It  was a shallow and muddy bank, and I stuck the pointed end of the stringer into the mud and found a big rock to pin it with. A few minutes later I hook one, and it is really odd. Big, slow, ponderous.
It was the last fish on our stringer, they had worked it out from under the rock and got away!
 
I was trolling a small lake in central B.C. with a fly on an ultra light and a spoon on a trolling rod, being alone I was allowed two rods. I had my fly rod with me, the tip was hanging over the stern with a fly swinging in the breeze. A splash and a small trout jumped for the fly :eek: I quickly brought the rod fully into the boat in case there was a CO in the area. ;D
 
Caught a few good size bass up in the 30000 islands area in Ontario.
Fishing got slow and were dozing off when we were disturbed by a mink that had swam from shore, climbed up the swim ladder, through the hawser hole and was not leaving our boat without his or her fish.
It was not even bothered by our barking dog.
The only way to get the determined mink off the boat was with the deck wash down hose. Later in the evening after a fish diner he made a return to the boat and tried to gain entry through the port holes.
 

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