Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Unusual catches while fishing?

A couple come to mind , once I was waiting on a friend to drop a canoe in the water . He was late , got bored and walked out on a dam and was jigging a motor oil power worm between some broken concrete slabs below me . About twenty feet straight down into the water .
All at once I hooked into something like deadweight .
Thought I had snagged some trash , no action just a dead straight crank up .
Then I saw what looked like a black hole coming to surface , about the size of a coffee can .
As it was about to break the surface I saw two eyeballs and then realized it was a bucket mouth .
I thought now ain’t this a bitch , I done caught a dead fish , and a nice one .
As I cranked up it hung motionless on the line and was waiting for the funk to hit my nose .
But realized it had a perfect body for a dead fish .
Got it up face level looking it over , no movement , no stench .
So I grabbed it by the lower lip and removed hook . Then I noticed the gills moving ever so slightly . The water level behind me was about six inches below dam wall , so I turned and gently set him in the water . He just sat there motionless . Slight gill movement . So I grabbed his tail and swished him back and forth gently and turned loose , he sunk a little and very slowly swam off .
Weird as hell .
Kenneth

Few years ago fishing for winter steelhead in the Oswego River behind the Bridie Manor when someone hooked a large beaver. It made quite a run down the river.

Friend caught a bat on a 6” Rapala while night fishing for browns on the Delaware River above Hancock. Didn’t realize that a bat had hit the lure and he got bit.

True, and not just gulls...

Some bats, a couple ducks and coots, and have hooked two beaver. First beaver was on trout gear and immediately broke off. Second was on my steelhead rig and the remote release came when I had him within about 20 ft and contemplating a landing procedure. Anyone other than Trump know of a safe method for grabbing beaver without enduring injury.

Cookie lost the fish and her wedding ring while attempting to land a tuna off the Oregon coast. A year later to the day and in near the same spot, she landed and nice albacore, and we took it home and ate it.

Had a few surprises but not as much fun as you fellas. Funniest tale I’ve heard happened in the Gulf Stream off the South Floriduh coast. Long liner working deep snagged a sub, thought to be Russian. They were in a large craft, somewhere around 50’ long, making 20+ knots northbound. When they first hooked up they thought it a fish and tied the line to the bollard up in the foredeck. Towed them several miles before they grabbed a knife.

During March at Toledo Bend, we once caught so many crappie that we ran out of live minnows. Then we caught em’ with dead minnows. Then we caught em’ with cigarette butts. Then we caught em’ with boogers. No schit.

caught a duck when i was a kid. i think it was in the currituck sound.

Hooked a mallard fishing in the park near home when I was in grade school. We were targeting carp with bacon.

Not much of a fisherman edcept for trout. I have caught a couple of water ouzles and a Kingfisher in freshwater.

In the ocean I hooked a thresher shark. That was an impressive but brief tussel.

Spearfishing for ten plus years we got a lot of unusual things. Having Ling cod attack smaller ones already on your stringer is pretty exciting. I did shoot one dog shark with my pole spear. It is in a big glass jar at the middle school my kids went to.

My son and I were bottom fishing for rockcod off Pt St George, and he got hung up...but we were using really heavy halibut gear, 100 pound braided line, well he would gain a few cranks every time the boat would recede from a swell, so he kept pulling until he was exhausted, I took over, fought "it" up for a while, the kid is standing by with a big 6 foot gaff, he backs away to the port side to ease the list in the rough water...he lets out with screech, "Pops look, Jesus it's an octopus or something". I looked to the port gunwale and sure enough it's a big old slimy tentacle probing over the gunwale. About that time on the starboard side the body was just about to break water. We both panicked then, I forgot all about eating it and just wanted it to go away, reached for my belt knife and slashed my line...in the meantime the kid is just whaling billy hell out of it's arm with the gaff, but it is sucked on tight. He screeched , "fire it up, let's get the hell out of here". I said whoa, what if it's tough enough to thrash the prop or outdrive? We look out to the horizon, there isn't another boat to be seen. OK, let's take the filet knife to that arm, surely it'll let go. About the fourth wicked slice "it" let go finally and sunk into the depths. Measuring the boat later, it had a 70 inch beam and a 32 inch deadrise...so that arm had to be 8 1/2 ft long. Fish & Game checker at the boat ramp really raised a doubting eyebrow at our story but one of the commercials says it happens that they come up out of the deep occasionally with cold water up wellings.

5lb channel cat on a fly rod fishing for bluegills in less than an ft of water.

Lots of wood bass, rock bass, and weed bass.

Damn gulls. Gotta hide that bait.

A buddy and I were drifting with the ocean current just off the north coast of California jigging lures off the bottom for rock fish and ling. Buddy's rod suddenly doubles over and he starts fighting this big fish that was fighting funny. It was an epic battle. He finally got it to the boat and it's a big red abalone. Huge. His hook dragged the bottom and stuck just perfectly under the lip of the abalone shell and pried it off a submerged rock.
It was big one, and legal to keep.

Once caught a lawn chair with a catfish attached to it.

Cormorant...

Got a opened up umbrella once , it fought the whole way to shore, my buddies thought it was hilarious. It was pretty tough to pull through the weeds.

Bottomfishing with my buddy a few years ago in my little 18' river boat on a flat day on some nearshore reefs. He gets hung up on the bottom, so I reel up and circle back around trying to get him loose. Eventually he starts to gain some line, but something is very odd.

Eventually he comes up with this girl:



Near as we can figure, the octopus grabbed his jig, then grabbed onto some rocks. Only when it eventually loosened it's grip could he pull it up. It was fairly docile intil I decided I wanted to get my jig back, like a dumbass.

The water jets and ink shots were pretty cool to see.


Another occasion about 50 nautical miles offshore in my Grady on a tuna run, off in the distance we see some sort of splashing. Thinking it's a school of tuna feeding, we pull up gear and head farther out to see what's going on.

Turns out it's a pretty damn big shark rubbing alongside an ancient log. It would rub alongside one direction, then turn and come back and rub along the other side. Guess it was rubbiing parasites? I dunno, but was cool to see.

It was not afraid of us whatsoever, and came over to where we were drifting and started rubbing alongside the boat.

Cue the music...






My boat is 25' plus an offshore bracket, so around 30' altogether. This dude was not quite half the length of the boat, but close. OK, maybe only a third, but I'm a fisherman. I lie.

Makes you realize you aren't the top of the food chain out there.

Used to catch a really good buzz back in the day while soaking bait. Wasn't unusual though.

On two occasions I caught bats while fly fishing at dusk. I also caught a big snapping turtle on a local river. Caught a 2' alligator while fishing for bass in a Florida pond. Also caught a eye full of boobs attached to a beautiful yet very embarrassed woman as I passed an anchored boat on afternoon. She must have dozed off sunbathing and didn't know I was there until way too late.

Was fishing for bluegills as a kid at my grampa's farm. Went to throw one into the bucket and an water moccasin came out of my bucket with one of my bluegills in it's mouth. Caught a seagull in Alaska. Got to remove a wooley bugger from an idiot friends ear. Used to catch bullfrogs with a fly rod for my grampa that loved frog's legs.

I've reeled in a handful of these things but the state has a minimum 250lb limit on keepers so I have to throw them back.