I've been passionate about fishing for about 45 years now. I was just thinking about some of the oddball things that I've been a part of while fishing and thought it'd make for an interesting thread. What are some of the unusual things you've hooked when fishing--those that you weren't necessarily targeting or expecting to catch?

For me, freshwater:

An enormous snapping turtle with a shell about 30" across. I'd say it went better than 80 lbs. I was fishing for LMB in a small backwater MA pond with shiners. Thought I was snagged, as I couldn't budge the line. I decided to break it off by walking backwards, and with that, the line started coming in, but very slowly. Dead weight, no fight. After I got it started in, I was able to pump and reel it slowly in. About 30' from the bank, saw that I'd caught the proverbial car tire. At 15' feet off the bank and getting into a couple feet of water, I saw the old car tire sprout two front feet about as big as my hands. As soon as it was shallow enough to touch bottom, it dug it's claws in the mud and began thrashing aggressively. Had a buddy hold the rod and I went around the back of the thing and hoisted it up by the shell, which was covered in all kinds of aquatic vegetation. I plopped it on land and it started hissing and being generally uncooperative. I cut the line and sent him on his way. Spoke to an marine bio some years later and described the turtle and he said that it was likely more than 100 years old.

Fooling around fishing for panfish, hooked one and was just fooling with him when a large northern pike came up out of nowhere and ate him whole. Busted me off shortly after.

Salt water:

Hooked, fought and landed a shortfin mako almost 11 feet snout to fork. Bottomed out the 500 lb scale right away. With rough dimensions looked at a table and the estimate for the fish was 742 lbs. Fighting that fish showed me why some call the mako the most powerful fighting fish in the world. Never before or since seen any fish every damned inch of 20' and probably more in the air doing backwards somersaults. That was off of Jupiter, FL. We were fishing for king mackerel and the like when that beast jumped on a goggle eye on the surface.

Striped bass fishing off of Monomoy at Chatham, Cape Cod, bouncing metal jigs in rips. Set the hook on something and pulled in a 2+ pound lobster hooked through the crusher claw.

Trolling squid bars south of Martha's Vineyard for tuna and unintentionally hooked a humpback whale. The fight didn't last long but it sure had us all a-giggle.

Fishing for blues and bass out of Barnstable with TN Ken and Jimmy H, and Ken lays his expensive rod and reel down, with the plug hanging over the side dragging in the water while he was grabbing a drink or something. Yep, fish jumps on plug and over the side his outfit goes. Maybe $1000 setup gone in a flash. We're in a channel with moving water about 25'-30' so didn't even bother to try snagging for it. TN Ken is mighty displeased, but we continue to fish. Hours later, on the way back in, now dark but we're still fishing. Kenny sets the hook on something. It's a decent striped bass. Weird though, we see as he lips the bass that it has another line wrapped around the one his fish is hooked onto. Want to guess what was at the end of *that* line? Yep, old TN Ken's rod, reel and the OTHER bass that pulled it overboard hours earlier. What are the chances?

A buddy of mine seems to be the king of all kinds of bizarre things hooked, to include a dead girl's body in Boston harbor and a huge bottlenose dolphin that he hooked on a mackerel while tuna fishing. Said that thing was 800-1000 pounds and ten feet long and fought like a demon. As the story was related to me by him and a witness, the crew were able to get it to the boat after an hour or so where they cut the line close to the hook. They said that the thing stayed around the boat a bit after they cut the line. They both swore it was saying 'thank you'. I of course offered that it was more likely saying 'F you', but then I wasn't there.

There are others, but I'd like to hear/see what other weird stuff folks have hauled up from below.

I snagged and landed a large snapping turtle which I hooked underneath his shell somehow. I have no idea how I got him in, I was fishing from shore.

I also snagged a muskrat that wasn't very happy to see me.

While casting a Dardevle in a backwater of the Little Sioux at Linn Grove, I naturally spun up a backlash on an old direct-drive casting reel (steel rod as well). While I was untangling it, the lure settled to the bottom. When I got things straightened out and reeled in, there was a very dead, mud-encrusted carp carcass attached to the treble. It was snagged right outside the mouth.

My buddy caught a bat on his fly rod. We were watching the trout below Camp Sherman bridge on the Metolius. Was dusk. His fly was dangling off the rod over the water. Next thing a bat was bouncing off it. Few good slaps on the ground and the flurry of WTFs(!) was over.

I caught a Pico Chico by the rear treble hook while casting a Mepp’s #3 for bass one afternoon.

I snagged a 200lb sea turtle one time from a pier. I fought it for a while and didn't know what it was until it wore out and came to the surface near the pier. I wasn't happy. My Dad caught a water snake on a fly rod once.

Ha, been there. Not the Metolius but the McCloud. Good times

Caught a barn swallow on a small spinner bait. He plucked it out of the air mid-cast.

Tube sock full of rocks while trolling for walleye.

I caught a hellbender in E Tn one time. About 18 inches long.

A buddy had his salt water rig pulled overboard in about 300 feet of water one time. Thought it was gone forever until someone else brought a fish to the top that had A line running through it’s mouth. Pulled the line and brought the lost rod to the top and the fish was still on the other end!

Most guys fishing surface plugs on Cape Cod or Long Island Sound have likely caught or just missed catching a diving gull. It’s a great airborne battle.

Bob

Caught a bird one time while trolling for salmon in Puget Sound on a "hoochie" with the down rigger ball set at 70ft deep. Best guess is that it was Marbled Murrelet, yep it drowned. Oops!

My lifelong fishing buddy caught me, by the ear, with a tiny Torpedo, casting for bass in a small boat.
Caught a renegade hornpout that must have said to itself “I’m done with bottom feeding” and came up to hit my arbogast hula popper.
Caught a loon on a Sutton trolling spoon and lead core trolling Rangely in ME.
Caught a pelican trolling off the keys.
Caught a large mouth that was pooping out fishing line. A broken back Rapala I had lost about a week before was at the end of this line. About 30’ feet of it. I can’t get my mind around around that either so will not attempt to.
Guy I know hooked into a dead girls hair, smelt fishing, the Piscataqua in Dover area.
Know another guy that caught a S&W 60 ice jigging. NH.
All I got.

Know a guy that had a brand new Casio G shock watch. He was fishing off our platform and broke the strap and it fell overboard. Couple of weeks later someone caught an amberjack and it had his watch in it's gut.

Last year caught the largest crawdad I have ever seen while trout fishing. Fought hard enough I was sure I had a fish on.

Nothing very large or too unusual in Idaho waters.

My brother and I did have a seagull pick up our bait from the surface of the snake river one day. He was pretty funny flying around at the end of 150 yds of 6 lb Stren. We eventually reeled him in and cut the line.

I had a nice trout break off against the dam face in a high altitude Idaho reservoir. We ran back down to the dam face the next day and I caught that same fish with my green 6# Trilene still hanging from the bright red hook in his mouth.

And not so unusual but a surprise to me. On my first salt water experience, fishing for black bass (rockfish) on a reef a couple miles off the Oregon Coast. We were on a 24 foot charter with twin Honda 200s. I had caught four of five black bass, and a nice cabezon. Then the rod got very heavy, and I was grateful for the 30# mono. When I got it up from the 250 foot bottom, I had a ling cod at almost 36 inches.

That is still the largest fish in my life. although there was no actual fight, simply drag it up from the bottom. I preferred it to catching or eating salmon.

Caught a seagull on the wing on a topwater plug in VA. Damn thing grabbed the plug when I cast it out and got a treble hook in the beak. Bit the hell out of me when I was trying to unhook it.

Snagged a big cottonmouth once. Put that on my list of things to never do twice. That was one pissed off snake.

I caught an expensive pair of sunglasses while banging crankbaits of the bottom one time at a nearby lake.

As a kid I caught a sculpin.
Weird fish.
Didnt know wtf it was, maybe an exotic dumped.
Learned 20 yrs later it was a native critter.

Snapping turtle and seagull.

As far as seagull, it was an epic battle to the very end. But I got my hook back. I was 13 years old and didn’t have many hooks to spare or money to buy more.

Had watersnakes latch onto fish when reeling in.
Overload my ultralight damn near.

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.

best catch and release, less headaches.

Best friend caught a drowned man that the Coast Guard had giving up looking for , many years ago .

Broadwater Marina central Biloxi , where Pirates Coves Casino was before Hurricane Katrina .

Wolf fish in PWS, scariest looking sucker I’d ever seen brought up on a line.


Add me to the folks that have caught a gull while fishing for Pike in lake Minchumina

Nothing too unusual for me, but some memorable stuff...

Caught a few of what they call "scorpion fish" down in Guaymas when I was much younger. Said to have poisonous spines, and we'd just cut the line. Caught about a 3-foot hammerhead down there.

Once caught a snapping turtle out of the Rio Grande down at Black Gap. I cut the line and let him keep my hook.

Once while trolling for sand bass with my father-in-law on Lake Kiowa with a slab, we went into a turn and the slab must have sank because I caught a nice catfish. That wasn't at all expected. Crappie fishing at that lake was sometimes exceptional...one day we caught nearly 100 crappie.

When I was about ten years old we'd fish Doane Pond near Mt. Palomar in southern California. Long time ago but it seems like most of the fish were rainbow trout. One day I saw a fellow catch a stringer of fish that had gotten away from somebody. As I recall all the fish on the stringer were still alive.

I guess I'm not that great a fisherman...can't come up with any spectacular lies.

Jig fishing below a dam on a float on the Mighty Mississippi, I hooked something that fought like hell in the current.

Finally got it to the surface ready to net, and it was just an old boot.

I thought that only happened in the cartoons......

Doane Pond,

Now there's a name I haven't heard in ages.

Being a commercial fisherman by trade I've caught a lot of different things a couple of the notables. While I was trolling for kingfisher I snagged a square grouper while bugging and dang near got pulled out of the boat. I was visiting a friend that moved from Florida to NC to manage a trout farm. So after closing time we went to get us some trout. I had a 15' cast net and made one throw and tucked the net when it hit the water and still couldn't lift the net. Figured out real quick that a 2 - 3lb trout will gill off in a 2" mullet net.

Was scuba diving and see a Northern swimming around, and not thinking anything about it I see a fishing pole. I think cool, this looks like it hasn't been here long and then it starts pulling like crazy and start pulling me. I reeled it in to the end of the pole and cut the line, gave the pole to a kid on shore.

I caught a muir in Southeast Alaska with my downrigger set at 70 feet so with the blow back I would imagine it was around 65 feet down

Holy Crap! That beak looks like it could do some real damage.

Friend of mine caught a railroad spike once while we were fishing in the Duluth harbor. Hook snagged in a rust scale and it stayed on all the way to the boat.

Jerry

When it’s comes to fishing shirt happens. We have a term for it FM it stands for effing magic. It’s the only explanation

Did it jump any??

Coolest one for me this year, seeing a good size thresher crash the spread while trolling for tuna.

Watching that tail slice through the water, getting bigger and longer as it approaches to the point of near absurdity, only to see it wielded like some pelagic bullwhip, was beyond cool.

Now I have to catch one.

Yesterday on the river we stop for lunch and a customer peeled his skin off his chicken and put the chicken in tinfoil to warm and placed in the pizza oven in the drift boat. He threw the chicken skin in the river and an hour later and a 3/4 mile down the river we caught his piece of chicken skin while drift fishing for Steelhead. FM

Size 13, couldn't quite clear the water.....

Let's see, nothing really "strange" but a lot that was unexpected. A few turtles here and there of course. I grew up near a tidal creek in eastern VA and as kids we used to dip-net herring, the roe is a delicacy. During the day, herring was all we'd catch but at night on a high tide, no telling what would come in. We caught herring of course, white shad, smelt, catfish, eels, and the occasional chain pickerel and largemouth bass. That was a lot of fun for a kid.

Probably 20 years ago I was surf fishing in Frisco NC. We were catching pan-sized whiting, good eating. Then I hooked something that was not a whiting. Couldn't do a thing with it, it was huge. It started down the beach and all I could do was follow. I had a pretty stout rod, a big Penn spinning reel, and 30-lb. test and I had that thing on for 45 minutes. Being at the beach during summer, a crowd gathered, probably 75 people. Everybody had an opinion about what it was--big cobia, shark, and so on. But the way it sat down on the bottom, my buddy and I knew it was a big ray. It settled down about a hundred yards off the beach and I couldn't budge it, definitely couldn't bring it in so I handed the rod to my buddy, and borrowed a boogie board and mask. The water was pretty clear so I wanted to paddle out and at least get a look at it.

So I got almost out to it, reached down and grabbed the line to pull it up and see where it went and that was all she wrote. I must have spooked it good because it popped the line without even thinking about slowing down.

We caught a 671 Detroit diesel engine in the Mississippi Sound when I was a teenager. Technically we were shrimping and got hung up real bad. One of the gas wells we were working around sent down a diver. He radioed back and said he didn't have to unhang us since it wasn't rig property, but for a basket of crabs still in the net, he could help us out. He got us loose with minimal damage. We sent him back to the rig with a couple baskets of crabs and a basket of very fresh shrimp. The engine belonged to a shrimp boat that sunk in a fire some years back.

A sealed 55 gallon drum with a body inside. Lake was low, barrel was exposed with a hazardous materials label. We reported it to the Game Warden. He took over with other law enforcement. They discovered the body inside.

Snapping turtle while bottom fishing, N.Pike while reeling in a bluegill, Seagull on a plug.

BTW, Those damn seagulls are frigging mean!

When I was a kid, we used to spend part of the summer with family in Camden, ME, and would regularly catch dogfish while fishing for stripers in Penobscot Bay. One day I hooked a dogfish and when it was about 10' from the boat a shark that looked nearly as big as our skiff came out of nowhere and bit the dogfish in half. I don't think that anyone would have believed us if we hadn't kept the front half of the dogfish. Scared the crap out of me.

I end up catching a lot every fall and the easiest way to deal with them (totally hypothetically) is to get them between your legs and stretch them tight. If you grab them by the neck and choke their chicken 😜until they pass out from lack oxygen they are a lot easier to deal with. In theory they wake back up with a headache Excedrin will not fix. 😂

Caught a fossilized turtle shell out by isle royale bottom bouncing for lake trout.

Great thread L,

Fishing the Lower Colorado R, AZ side near a drain outfall during a bass tournament pre-fish. Some other club members said they had caught some stripers in the area, and my partner and I already had our plan figured for the opener the next morning. What the heck, lets run up there and see what we can do. I had on a silver Kastmaster, 3" or so, cast into the bubbles from the outfall. Whan, get a good strike and it seemed larger than the bass we'd been catching. Fought it for a bit, got it to the boat...............about an 8 lb carp, and it actually tried to eat the lure, not foul hooked.

Same trip, next day during the tournament. Partner and I were slaying them, but the oddest occurrence was he could only catch fish on plastic worms, I only on spinnerbaits. We started that way to see what might work. Switched once to try it, casting to either end of a downed log in the water. Neither of us got a bite after switching to the other bait. Switched back and we both got nice fish off our end of the log. Weird.

A little later that day, partner pulls the boat into a very small "cove" on the side of the river. Small enough the back of his 17' boat was almost hanging out in the river. I decide to try a cast with the spinnerbait right where the water of the cove meets the cove. Got a backlash, spinnerbait sinks to the bottom. I'm stripping line off to clear the birdnest, I look up and my line is moving...........................upriver! Get the knot out, reel in the slack, set the hook. A 3 lb bass had picked up the spinnerbait off the sand on the bottom of the river and made off with it. A plastic worm or crawdad, no problem, even a soft swimmbait or something lying there, but a pile of hard metal with big blades on it? Kinda weird again.

Not mine, but a guy in our club, fishing the concrete pilings of a freeway bridge over the lake during a tournament, using a Shad Rap, caught a 12lb largemouth that still had a 2.5lb catfish in it's craw. Needles to say, he won the tournament. Big fish for the year too, as I recall. The bass must have decided it wanted some dessert?

Have caught coots that were eating the corn we chummed for carp and trout. And more than one gull was hooked in flight going after a lure.

Had a big (maybe 12lb, bass smack a stocker trout I was reeling in, follow it to the dock I was fishing from, swim under the dock and wait for me to grab a big hook and a live trout from the stringer. OK, that was illegal, I was all of 16 and didn't care, I wanted to catch that bass, after all I'd only caught one up to around 6 lbs so far and she ruined that trout we were going to have for dinner. Dropped the bait over the side, she swam out and took it for a run. Little kid with about 6" of line with the hook tied right next to the drop weight hanging from the end of his rod comes up with the rest of the crowd of kids on the dock to watch. The dock is bouncing around, his line wraps the end of mine, line goes tight, bass dropped the bait before she could swallow it. It took all my friends to keep me from chucking that kid in for a swim.

Caught a smallish, 12lb maybe, snapping turtle in Raystown Lake in PA on a minnow while fishing for other stuff.

Caught a good size carp in the Allegheny River on a tube jig in a spot I just new a big smallmouth would be eating crawdads after ice out.

Not going to complain, but I won the jackpot on a 1/2 day cattle boat out of San Diego with about an 8-10 lb sheepshead. Usually takes a surface fish, large bonito, kelp bass, lingcod, or yellowtail but the trip was a bummer in that respect. We caught some smaller sand bass and whitefish, a few sculpin, but mine was the big fish for the trip.

Have caught a big bullfrog on a plastic worm. Heard the splash in shallow water at a kind of famous bass lake in SoCal, thought maybe a spawner or male guard was chasing sunfish off the nest. Nope, must have spooked the frog as I walked up the bank and he thought he had scored the biggest worm of his life.

Have seen lots of other stuff, as I worked around fish for a long time. Things like a 12" coastal cutthroat dead from trying to eat a big stickleback, which was still caught in its gullets.

Caught a mantis shrimp in San Diego harbor once while bass fishing. Nothing one wants to handle carelessly

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I'm sure there's more I can't remember. I guess I need to get out fishing this spring and start some new memories.

Had a “small” whale wrap up in the cork line of a purse net. I parked the skiff right on top of the dumb bastard and did my best to convince him to dive. It finally worked. He did a number on the net though.

I was really tempted to hop out on his back, ride it around. They feel kinda weird to touch.

Caught a racoon once, he was pissed. One bat, several snakes and hellbenders.

Weirdest catch, was actually a smallmouth. I was fishing the local river at a spot i frequent, hooked a big one on a jig, and she broke my line. I could tell it was a good fish, easily 4lbs+. About a week later, was at the same spot with a friend of mine, telling him about the big one that broke my line. I said she was laying right there as I casted toward the same rock. As soon as my jig hit the bottom something took it. Another great SM, 22" and fat. Picking her up, something stuck in my palm. It was the wire weed guard from the jig the week before sticking out the bottom of the bass. Way too deep for me to dig out, and figured it'd be pretty hard on her. I don't keep many bass, but she got fileted.

Blue Crab on a Mirr-o-lure once fishing for Reds.

You were fishing too slow😜😜

I watched a friend snag a 45 pound spoonbill with a crappie jig and 4 Lb line. It took 45 minutes but we got him on the bank.

Yeah? You mentioned another lake in southern Cal of some repute.

In the early 60s, my uncle was a Border Patrolman in southern Cal, and he knew the dam keeper at Barrett Lake. It was closed to the public at that time, if I understood what was going on back then, but my uncle had access. We cleaned up on some good largemouth and a lot of bluegill and other panfish. I was too young to realize what a paradise we were privileged to enjoy in those days.

does a pike while beaver trapping count?

Indubitably

Fishing for salmon at the South end of Camano Island I snagged a old crab trap that looked like it had been on the bottom for years. It had two crabs in it.


Off Tatoosh Island [Duncan Rock] I hooked into a rockfish that got swallowed by a 4' long ling cod. It took an hour to real them in.

Well, if you read my story about the bass and the dock and being sixteen, you might perhaps guess that we may ( I can neither confirm or deny) have fished a closed lake or three. Chollas lake near College Grove shopping center was a favorite for large bluegill. The bass were snakes as there were so many big (hand size and better) bluegill in there I guess there wasn't enough food for the bass.

Loveland and Sweetwater reservoirs got hit on occasion also. Maybe Barret too. I didn't go on some of the night fishing trips out there with some friends as I was already working nights then. The dock bass story was from the "Kids Pond" at lake Murray. Only supposed to fish there up to age 16 I think. That didn't stop us as we had been fishing there since we were 12 or so and knew where the hotspots were. My best friend's dad bought our bait, we'd ride our bikes there, and he'd help feed his family of 9 kids.We almost always limited out, sometimes our little brothers would come along so we could get more fish. We ate an awful lot of planted trout.

Some folks I knew fished Upper Otay, I never did that I recall. I did fish Lower Otay there with some success at times, never anything huge though. 5 3/8 pound bass one time on a homemade mini-pole with 4lb test.

If the place wasn't so crowded I'd probably be there still, but when I left permanently in '91 there were already way too many folks for me.

I caught some kind of psychedelic looking purple and orange sea slug out in Prince William Sound on a dart I was bouncing for halibut. The bite was hot so we chopped him off the hook with a bait knife and got back to fishing, wish I’d have snapped a pic. Wife caught a 4’ octopus about 5 minutes later, we didn’t know how good eating they were at the time so we turned him back.

I snagged, landed after a 30 minute battle, and released a huge beaver in a mountain lake in CO when I was in high school. About the 10th trip he made by in front of us I grabbed my big rod I’d been fishing for lakers with in another lake and hucked a 3” Daredevl over him and ripped the treble right into his tail. Somewhere there’s a pic of me smiling and giving the thumbs up next to an exhausted beaver before I slid him back into the lake. Amazingly he didn’t bite my hand off when I grabbed the hook and popped it out of his tail.

We catch bullfrogs all the time while bass and crappie fishing. See them on the edge and flip anything that won’t sink up beside them and twitch it, they’ll hop over and latch on. This one swallowed a live perch about 3” long while we were catching catfish bait.

Happy lookin' little feller.


The kid, not the frog, that is.

Back in my motorcycle days I took a cute Mexican gal bird watching in Huntsville State Park over by East Texas. As per usual on those occasions I brung along a blanket and a bottle of wine. Before long we was on the blanket in the woods along the shore of the lake.

Nothing pornographic going on but we weren’t paying attention to the surroundings. Come up for air and there’s these two guys trolling silently by on a bass boat not 30ft offshore.

“Well hey!”, I said, “looks like I’m having better luck than you guys.”

“Maybe”, says one, “but we ain’t hit any snags.”

Best I got.

The three weird ones I've had on but not landed...last summer had two different dall's porpoise floss themselves on our halibut rigs offshore of LaPush, about a half hour apart. They can empty a halibut reel pretty quick, but I always thought they were smarter than that. Fishing a 2lb jig in 600ft of water and having the porpoise floss at the surface, man that must have burned a bit while they made their way to the lure! Then a few summers back, up at Winter Harbour (eh?) the starboard rigger popped off and the rod was peeling line steady as if attached to a log. The log surfaced and breeched a bit...it was a big MolaMola. I've seen them as big as a dinner table. Figure that the line flossed him as well...the hook came out right after the breech. Neat to see them do something other than lay on the surface waiting to be hit by a prop.

Had an Asian lady down the street when we lived in Anchorage. We offered her anything weird that we caught up there: wolf eel, skate wings, octopus. She was always very happy.

Living in SE Texas, there is not a lot of healthy things to do, but fish. I've fished 11 times in the past two weeks. A lot of the things we catch would probably seem "unusual" to people that don't have more water than land. The only thing this week that was a little different was a puffer fish.

Alligators are a royal pita when they're feeling frisky and you need to use topwater baits.

Oh FFS Pat, ease up and tell the one of how you chased a perp into the bay and while in hot pursuit swimming underwater with a grapple hook discovered a Jap mini sub or something. Blowfish bycatch? C'mon, man, you can do better...

Living within walking distance of the tallest bridge in Texas, there's almost always a person to fish for.

One thing I always enjoyed about the salt was that you never really knew what you might drag up. I’d bounce a jig for hours catching all kinds of little fish, most of them I never knew what they were but they were all cool to look over before I put them back in the drink.

Nothing really strange caught.

Method? Yes


I’ve caught red snapper bottom fishing on the rig with weed eater string by hand.


Did go fishing in a State University research pond. Worked the bass over. We weren’t greedy since we caught so many. Only kept 10. Got back to my buddies place to cook them. Another guy came over and asked where we went. He eyes got big we we told him.

He said you know that’s off limits??

Well. No signs. Gate was open. 🤷

Chum?

Fishing off shore in about 40 feet of water I caught an 8S Danforth anchor with 6 feet of chain and 150 feet of 1/2 inch rope. It wasn’t hung up so I figured someone forgot to tie it to the boat.

Back when cohos were in Lake Erie, I caught one casting off the beach with a 15” lamprey attached to it.

What is a “hell bender “?
I honestly don’t know

Salamander thing.

Hellbenders are big salamanders.

I've never seen one in the wild, but I've seen them sold for catfish bait along the Missouri River.

Thank you

This was a great thread, thank you for starting it

kamo gari;
Top of the morning to you my cyber friend, I hope that the last day of January finds you and your wife well.

Thanks for the interesting thread and of course thanks to the rest who've answered to help make it that way.

Way back in the day when we were on the salt chuck off Vancouver Island trying to catch ling cod, my good wife caught what we were told was a trophy class sea cucumber. There's a photo of it somewhere, but I recall it as being purple?

A few years back when I'd been enticed back into ice fishing by my long time hunting and again now fishing partner, we were sitting staring down through the ice one morning - in a tent as usual - when suddenly he let out a yell and began to kick the ice around his hole. Apparently a muskrat had come up and it wasn't happy - which matched buddy's mood pretty much as well I suppose?

That's about it for odd things that I can recall off the top of my head this morning kamo - well I mean I've caught myself fly fishing a few times and many folks consider me if not odd, then somewhat seldom, so there is that too one supposes as well?

Thanks again and all the best to you folks sir.

Dwayne

While fishing for Lakers in a deep water lake in Montana this past summer I reeled in a drone with a GoPro attached to it.

Camera and drone were 100% trashed from water damage.
Was hoping to at least get the ka-splash file off the cameras data card but it didn't happen.

It's hangin' on my shop wall in Montana, only trophy I got that day.

There's a small lake about 40 miles from here. Some years ago a fisherman reeled in a dead Mexican.

My kid reeled in an albino catfish last spring. He was pretty excited about it.

I was fly fishing a creek with a rock cliff on the other side that rose about a 100 feet. Shortly after arriving at that spot, I noticed a huge Great Horned Owl perched on the face of the rock wall, watching me with intent interest. I swear I could hear him mumbling to himself... "as soon as he pulls in a trout, I'm gonna swoop on down there, fuq him up and snatch the fish". A few minutes later I hooked a trout, keeping a keen and nervous eye on the owl as I reeled him in. And sure enough, as soon as I went to net the fish, that [bleep] came dive bombing at me. I threw my fly rod at him and took a flailing dive into the bushes miraculously escaping an azz kicking by the bird. The fish somehow escaped as well and the owl returned to his perch, continuing his observation of my activities. I found a new fishing spot.

While I had joked to myself about the owls thoughts and intentions, truthfully I didn't think the bastid would actually do it.

Unusual for me has been catching squid on long range boats off Baja California late at night.

They come into the boat lights shining in the water, and you fish for them deliberately using squid jigs the business end of which are a series of barbless hooks. The squid envelop them and then its a fun little tug of war to get them into the bat and the livewell. when you pull them aboard thay squirt their ink everywhere.

Anyway, unusual, and kind of cool.

And great for bait or just eating!

My buddy and I were trying to dip smelt near Wilderness State Park in Northern lower Michigan last spring. We ended up catching 3 lampreys in our dip nets. That was 3 fewer lamprey in lake Michigan than before.

I was fishing in Munising Bay on Lake Superior back in the 80's. I think I must have been jigging because what I snagged would have been close to the bottom. Anyway, I snag something and start reeling in. It turned out to be close to 100' of steel line and a full set of brass cowbell and a brass dodger with green prism tape.

Any kin to my usual Large Moss Bass ?

Fishing in a local river I snagged a pile of tangled wire that had a blasting cap at the end.
Stuck the blasting cap into the ground and ran the end of th two wires up to my car battery..

While Fly Fishing I caught a small Trout and was pulling it in and all of a sudden my line started running away and had to hold my rod with both hands.... a Loon had somehow become attached to my line. It was quite a ride for both of us.
He managed to get away unhurt. I went back the next day and the Loon was there on the small lake, I could tell it was him because when I went to his end of the Lake he would start squawking, lol.

Was fishing at lake Corpus Christi when I was about 16 had been up most of the night and finally went and crashed in the back of the truck, head on the tailgate, always been a light sleeper, all I remember is opening my eyes and someone was bent over me. I grabbed them by throat, turned out to be Robin whose parents ran the store/bait stand in the state park, she crawled in with me, one of my more enjoyable catches.

At the South end of Whidbey Island in a 14' Livingston doing a white knuckled 30 mph, I had Dall's porpoises passing me right under the boat. It looks like small killer whales swimming at 35 mph. That was scary.

Crabs!

Caught a 38 pound carp on a flatfish while trolling for steelhead on the White Salmon River in Washington...

Raid works.

I have cut the line a couple of big stingrays in brackish water and out to Chandeleur islands . Seems like they are getting more plentiful and makes wading shallows scary .

When I was a kid, trotline fishing with my grand parents on the Rio Grande... Took a lunch everyday.

One day it was leftover fried chicken. tossed the bones overboard. The next day we caught a catfish that had one of the chicken bones in it's stomach.

Another time bass fishing in a great bass lake by the Sea of Cortez in Mexico...

We'd troll with our bass lures to locate pockets of bass. When we'd catch one, we'd circle around and start fishing. I was holding my rod, and Wham! Must have hit a log, because it had no give to it at all... When it snagged, it twisted the rod in my hand and rat nested my reel like you wouldn't believe. Started messing with the rat nest, and the rod nearly got pulled out of my hands!

Wasn't a log, but a large bass instead! And there I was with a rat nested reel!

Had to pull that fish in hand over hand.

Biggest bass of my life, ...over 12 pounds. Didn't get to fight it. arrrrgh!

Could be. Or the body it previously weighted down on the bottom had simply come apart with the passing of time...

A salmon brought in while fishing Lake O out of NY with DVD had this gruesome bastard attached. I'm pretty bold as far as eating all manner of things, especially things out of the ocean, but I won't eat parasites.

Gannett. That one took a CD-18 (8" diving plug) in a mackerel pattern. And yes, they're no joke. When they dive bomb they hit the water at around 60mph...

Fishing. For small mouth bass out in chest waders years ago, thought I hooked a big bass, I reeled in a chain stringer with 2 ,14 inch bass and 3 big perch on it still alive. Still have that stringer!

Almost caught a water skier.

Fishing with a bobber for sunfish when I was a kid. People in ski boat tried unsuccessfully to ski close enough to the bank and spray us with water. When that didn't work, the next time, they skied close and grabbed a couple of our bobbers and broke the line. Laughing all the while at us.

Next time around we tossed a bobber out as bait. We tied on a weighted snagging hook and when the SOB came round reaching for another bobber, he saw us casting at him. We missed, but the ensuing crash was spectacular and they left us alone.

Once had a dead seal come over the gunnel in a net.

Must of been floating around the surface for a bit as it was quite bloated.

The deck hand grabbed a gaff with the thought to drag it back over. We all saw what he was doing and before anyone could scream NO!!!!, he sank it home.

Putrid doesn’t begin to describe the smell of a rapidly decompressed rotten seal carcass.

In my case it was afish.

I snagged a beaver in Paxson Lake fishing for lakers. Didn't land it

Fishing. For small mouth bass out in chest waders years ago, thought I hooked a big bass, I reeled in a chain stringer with 2 ,14 inch bass and 3 big perch on it still alive. Still have that stringer!

Friend of mine snagged a large cage with a dead snapping turtle inside of it. He said the smell literally hit him in the face and he almost got sick.

Let’s see, seagulls, yeah, beaver, yeah, seem to recall a fish of some kind in a conibear; mud puppies, couple of times; snapping turtles (on purpose) ; big friggin stingray once on Hatteras; most impressive critter I ever saw in the water I wasn’t fishing, I was hanging out the door of a Navy Sea Stallion shooting what we called “ship ID” of an oil tanker in the South China Sea; mission accomplished, ready to head back to Cubi Pt, when the pilot comes over the intercom, “What’s that behind the tanker? Looks like a whale.” He swung the hello around, aft of the tanker and we could see a big dark shape down deep, following the tanker. It started coming up, got close to the surface, it was a huge manta ray, following ang keeping pace with that tanker. From “wing tip to wing tip” that ray was just as wide as the tanker.

Didn't they call them mud puppies?

they get huge buddy, buddy snagged one off of bob hall pier a few yrs ago stripped his avet 80 quad drag like it was nothing lost a couple of hundred dollars of the line by the time he able to cut the line. looked about 14 ft wingtip to wingtip.

I was night fishing the spring walleye run on the Wolf river in Wisconsin many years ago, hooked a small walleye on a river rig. Reeled him to 10 feet of our boat and a 38" Northern pike grabbed it, my buddy was already holding our lake Michigan landing net and scooped up the Pike and the smashed walleye. Never had the Pike hooked, it just wouldn't let go.

Bald Eagle grabbed my togue while reeling it in. Chamberlain Lake. A short but spirited fight.

A small thresher shark from the south side beach at Block Island. On a mackerel chunk.

A slightly bigger blue shark from an east side Block beach on a needlefish.

Nah, that would fall under "strange things you caught while hunting beaver."

Which could go in a couple different directions......

Fishing in Baja my son hooked what we thought was a huge yellowtail or white seabass as we slow trolled mackerel. Couldn't stop it so we had the guide chase it. Finally got closer and saw it was a porpoise. Hell of a fight!

Hooked a big manta in the GOM when I was a kid. I’m sure it was foul hooked.

No chance of stopping it but it did breach a couple times close enough to get a good look at it. Super cool animal.

Heck, I forgot about that. I had my little rowboat out in the Colorado R below Hoover Dam a ways, snagged an old piece of rope, pulled it into the boat to get my lure back, then pulled the rope out so I or someone else wouldn't get stuck on it again.

Up came 100' or so of rope with 15' of chain and an 8lb anchor.

I still use it today.

Had a friend I fished with a few times off San Diego, once at the Coronado Islands he goes up to the front of the boat, digs out the anchor out of the locker, drops it over the side, then we watch it going, and going, and going, and there goes the end of the line. Probably 300' + of anchor line plus the terminal tackle.

Pretty sure I caught a tackle box off one of those docks in Lake Murray too, kids were always careless with their stuff.

Don't know about gannets, but brown pelicans diving close to you when after bait is pretty "thrilling".

I wasn't fishing, but boogie boarding, just South of Imperial Beach pier. Lying on my board about sunset, waiting for a good wave. All of a sudden, the water around me started shimmering, the best word I have for it. I thought "WTF?". Moments later, giant pterodactyl birds started hitting the water all around me. Them things ain't small, and they make quite a smack when they hit the water inches from one's head.

One of those shake your head, thank you Neptune, only happens once in a lifetime type of things. I'll never forget it.

Please, I'm getting ready for another cup of coffee.

A neighboring boat had one of those little Scotty capstan electric pot pullers, and we could tell he was tripping it out pulling something heavy at the end of his shrimp pot line. We'd hung up gear there in the past, so I volunteered to pull it for him with the gas capstan puller on my boat. HEAVY. Ended up pulling his pot (with 100 nice prawns or so) and three huge rotted commercial pots that had been on bottom for a long time. He was appreciative, and we were happy because he was camped out on the little postage stamp I like to drop my pots on. I knew what was up with him, because I'd hung other gear there before.