Anymouse suggested a nice thread. It was spawned from the Crappie post a few days ago.
Here was his comment-
IL no size or number limit. You can make a first class pigs of yourself if you get into them.
Actually found them great as bait for Mr. Flathead that I’ve wrestled with up to around a hundred pounds. When I was young and stupid I “noodled” for them. I’ll send Mr.big a picture to back up my claims. After losing the skin and some flesh of a couple of fingers I stopped playing that game. Not to mention that there’s big snapping turtles and sometimes snakes to contend with… Again, young and STUPID!
Some of the turtles we caught could have taken a hand off. But that’s another story altogether. Alligator snapping turtles that I have no idea on weight but as big around as an old galvanized wash tub that probably held 15 gallons or more. Scary critters when they get to that size…
Ah the stories…
Here’s the promised pic.
So what fish stories do you have?
That’s bigger than both my dogs put together!
I’ve got so many I wouldn’t know where to start, most have pictures, all involved alcohol.
I don’t fish, don’t eat fish. But I have a story. lol.
Over in Lake Mead, divers train/do work there and they have told stories about gigantic catfish. Big enough to mess with divers. They have no predators there, so they run amok. I’m guessing the catfish there noodle YOU. Heh.
Anymouse says this is one of the little guys. 46 pounds.
I love the smell of fish in the morning
Fur- Is there a picture to go with that?
If it smells like fish, eat it!
I have lots, a couple of the most memorable:
My buddy Bill Jackson and I used to fish most every day, before school, after school, before work, after work and on weekends.
Sometimes we would fish for rock bass just because they were good fighters and great eating and we would catch north of a hundred rock bass some days. I think they are actually a variety of sunfish and there was no limit on them back then.
Bill and I were recognized as the go to guys for catching big rock bass and so when I read in the paper that some interloper had just submitted the State record rock bass and that it was about a pound and a quarter we just couldn’t let that stand.
So we went out the next day and fished for big ones and the other guy’s State record was done for just like that.
I took a look and Bill still holds the record. We caught bigger ones that were never weighed in the years before and after the official State record was recorded.
https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/washington/Species/1712/
Bill and I were fishing for largemouth bass on Silver Lake about 30 miles from Mount St Helens on May 18, 1980 and were not having any luck when all of a sudden the water started to ripple and quiver and the fishing went all kind of great. We had been fishing the far side of Walden Island from the mountain and just came around the south end of the island when all hell broke loose.
Fishing stayed pretty hot and we were killing them in the next hour and then a bunch of busy bodies with a badge and a gun told us that we either had to evacuate on our own or they were going to evacuate us by force if necessary.
It was lucky for us that they told us to decamp when they did, about a half hour after we crossed the Toutle River bridge on I-5 the bridge got a bunch of crap piled up against it and washed out and we would have had to take a hell of a detour to get home.
I’ll perhaps make another comment from work later today…
Had the mother to the one pictured on and lost it in a rather fun story. Like what MJA was referring too. Is that the correct “to” Claudia?
It will be a VERY long post even with trying to keep it short…
Oh yeah; well I caught one this [________________] big!
Rule of thumb with “fish stories”: first liar doesn’t stand a chance.
As a kid/teenager i spent A LOT of time fishing. I was always the first kid tan in school. My grandfather was retired, and loved to fish, as did I, and he took me all the time. I have caught every known type of fish that is in Ohio waters. I loved it, and him for it.
I was particularly good and bass fishing in and around the many marinas we fished near Sandusky harbor. I had found the #1 lure (at that time) that would produce bass there through trial and error over many years. You might beat me on a particular day, but if we fished 7 days in a row, i would prolly win 6 out of 7.
My grandfather got the biggest kick out of guys (often in tournaments) coming through in their fancy bass boats, and expensive gear. As soon as he would see them coming he would holler at me and point. We had a routine. Wherever the boat started at, i would go behind them and fish where they had just fished. 90% of the time i would just make them look silly. A lot of the time the guys on the bass boat would flag me down and ask what I was fishing with. I would show them, a 7S floating Rapala, with a split ring added to eyelet. Maybe 10% even had one in their boat.
I was a kid. I had little to no money. But i Always had 4 or 5 Rapala’s, hooks sharpened, and split rings added. Over the years i prolly sold about 20 of them to guy’s on bass boats right off my rod for $10.00 a pop.
My grandfather would witness it all, sitting on a chair or bucket, bobber fishing. When i worked my way back to him he would ask 2 things. How many did you catch? How much did you sell it for? I love that man, and the older i get the more a realize how good he was to me.
I also happened to grow up across the street from lake Erie. I made a lot of money selling white bass for 10 cents each to the weekend warriors at hotwaters in Lorain.
I never went in for the kind of fishing you all are likely talking about, but I do have fond memories of family vacations on St. John USVI back in the ’80s. We’d rent a house on Dever’s bay (windward side) for a month and go snorkeling twice a day over and through the most gorgeous reefs teeming with all kinds of life large and small. It’s largely gone now, a tragedy, due to development runoff and a few nasty storms.
As for the fishing part, morning snorkeling gear for me included a Hawaiian sling, the simples kind of fishing spear: just the spear itself and a heavy tubular rubber loop. Put your hand on the loop and spear shaft, stretch the rubber and then just grab onto the shaft with a good grip. Point it at your prey and just let go.
I’d bring home two or three Nassau grouper and a few langosta (lobsters) and we’d have them for lunch and/or dinner. Gooooooood eating!
Edit: I forgot to mention that after bagging lunch/dinner I’d head back to shore right away because all that sea life included sharks of all sizes and the occasional barracuda.
I helped my grandmother with smelt, we had to bite the head off.
My other grandmother’s recipe for fried smelt was……. first you steal a basket of headless smelt.
I h8 fish.
Know the difference between meat and fish?
You’re not suppose to beat your fish.
When I was little we would ice fish for crappies in a little shack with one of my dads friends. Whenever he was catching more than me he would tell me his secret was to salt the minnow and he would pull a little salt shaker out of his coat and sprinkle some on his bait and let me have some too. He was a great guy.
My father and I used to go fishing in Canada for 8 days, flying in Northeast Sask. just about in NW Territories. Those were some amazing trips that I treasure to this day. We had fished 3 years at a certain lake and then he decided to try another lake the outfitter had further north. We flew in and there was ALOT of ice on the lake yet. There was a small patch of water for the float plane to land on. We had a very small area to fish because any of the deep water was ice covered yet so we were just trolling around and I hooked a huge lake trout in about 10 feet of water, lakers fight up and down, not running out away from the boat like a northern. Anyway I stood in the boat looking at this fish keep my line at the bottom of this 10 foot deep channel for about 25 minutes. I finally boated him and it was the biggest fish we had ever caught and looked as large as many 50 lb range we would see mounted in lodges. So our scale topped out at 25 lbs and so we couldn’t weight her. We packed her in the muskeg for 7 days and when we weighted her at the base camp 7 days later she weighted 43 lbs. Not sure how much weight was lost during the week but it is a wonderful trophy now and always makes me think of my dad who died a few years ago.
Proof sent to Fur, because who wouldn’t have pictures of that! Plus I was on the brochure for the basecamp!
I used to fish with my brother and friends a few times a year in Irondequoit Creek in Mendon, NY. My brother and I visited my grandparents in Carlisle, PA in the mid 60’s. They had a neighbor who raised trout in a stream that ran across the front of their property (screened off the stream at a couple of points, fed them a couple of times a day, etc.) My brother and I were invited to come pull a few trout out of the stream. I just happened to pull a 3 pound trout out–the neighbor’s kids went out of their minds because the largest trout they had ever caught in years of fishing was 2 pounds. I think they wanted me to return the trout to the stream (and made many subtle hints about it), but all I could think about was how good that trout would taste for dinner. I didn’t have a clue about “catch and release.”
The next time we visited my grandparents there was no fishing invitation forthcoming.
Anymouse, the word “too” that you used in this sentence, “…MJA was referring too.” is incorrect. It should have been “to”. “Too” is just another word for “also” and is proceeded by a comma. 🙂
I was pond fishing once, large mouth bass.
Caught a pretty nice one, reached down and grabbed him by the jaw, there was a snake coiled up inside his mouth.
Shocked, yep, I was shocked, dropped it. When I gained my composure he was still on the line.
It was a corn snake, the head was down the throat and when I pulled it out the digestion had begun.
Probably was a 4 footer, the snake, the fish was maybe 4 pounds.
Biggest fish, Manta ray, I don’t know what he weighed, we cut the line. Got him to the side of the boat, he was bow to stern wide, 18 foot boat.
We pulled the anchor and reeled us to it, there was no turning it, took a couple of hours.
They call that a Nantucket sleighride, we were shark fishing, had pretty heavy gear.
My dad talked about that ’til he died, wish we had a camera, I was 12 or 13.
Boy were we surprised !
This wasn’t on the high seas, an estuary river in Savannah.
I used to love fishing as a child but was never any good. Just had a cane pole and earthworms and usually got a few little sunnies. I’d fish off docks on near-by lakes, but the biggest fish I ever got was from the Kalamazoo River. It fought for about 5 seconds then just laid there. When I pulled it up to shore, it was a stinking carp. I knew enough not to bother with them. Actually, we never ate anything from that dirty river. Too much pollution back then.
My brother continued to fish and has even fished in almost every state. He was fishing near Lake Michigan and hooked a large sturgeon just one day before the season opened. He was excited and everyone around him were ready to help him pull it in when they realized that one of the crowd was actually a DNR agent. My brother reluctantly said, “Oh, shoot, it’s a sturgeon”, and proceeded to cut the line. The agent smiled and went on his way. Dang.
Not a dramatic story, just a fun memory. Years ago I used to fish for trout at a lake in PA when visiting a cousin. One day when I got to my favorite part of the lake (a very productive corner with a bunch of stumps sticking out of the water), a fish was jumping near that corner and about 50’ from shore.
It was jumping in the same spot over and over and you could tell from the size of the splash and the sound of the splash that it was a nice size fish, and several men and teenage guys and boys were taking turns trying to catch it. They’d cast for a bit, strike out, and move on.
I was fishing nearby waiting patiently for my turn and when I finally got my chance I nailed it on the fourth or fifth cast with a spinner fly combo. Nice size trout and lots of smiles and nods and thumbs up from the guys.
Had lots of good times stream fishing for trout in the Poconos, too, and a lot of wonderful memories as a young child hanging out with my dad when he surf fished for stripers and blues.
@Openthedoor
That happened to me too (Claudia?), except the snake in my bass’ mouth was a water moccasin. It almost bit me too! It dropped into the floor of my canoe. Lucky for me I was alone and kept my composure so I didn’t capsize.
I will send BFH a photo of the bass.
I like catching 3 pound pan fish on quarter pound test. It’s the same thing as catching a 300 pound fish on 75 pound test. The difference is you can do it every 10 minutes.
@Jethro,
I will admit to screaming like a girl, when I saw the snake, totally unexpected.
@OpenTheDoor
I don’t recall screaming, but my anus did pucker a bit…
Every spring the snapping turtles come out of the pond across the street to lay eggs in my landscaping mulch. Typically around 2 ft across. I will send a photo to BFH.
As kids we would snag carp in the Detroit river. I was always the one to spot them. My brothers dubbed me Carpeye. True story.
One time I went ice fishing but didn’t catch anything.
It turned out to be a bad trip because we got a ticket for illegal parking in the wrong spot at the ice rink.
Used to work on a fishing boat out of Avila. Right off the pier. Same pier all the boats tied up to. Same pier that had a fish processing plant and a restaurant at the end of it.
For some inexplicable reason the local dive club would swim right around the pier for practice. The fudge were these people thinking? The whole area was full of fish oil and blood in the water.
You can look up what happened next. Late afternoon, closing up the shop, great white bit the head off a diver right by the pier in about 15 feet of water.
Didn’t stop to look, just closed up the shop and walked down the pier to my car. Holeee-crrrrap. You never really forget something like that.
I especially remember asking the owner why they dove there. It seemed insane.
Glad there’s no limit on length…
Shortened version, HONEST!
Used to run “trotlines” with up to fifty sets possible on the full size lines that used “water ski tow rope” for the main line and 100 to 250 pound test single strand mono line for the drops with all salt water tackle (stainless ball bearing swivels, drop forged stainless hooks sized 6/0 to 10/0, etc.). Shorter lines were 250 pound mono that ran through barrel swivels that were crimped on that line every four feet. Bait was usually live with it being up to two to three pound fish hooked through below the dorsal fin. (Many people think Mr. Cat Fish is a scavenger, but the big flat heads prefer live over cut bait. If I had money to burn Golden Roaches in the four to six inch size were what worked better than other “rough fish” or the blue gills.)
When you were serious about it you baited every other set leaving one open between each hook and small floats on the main line keeping the baits two to three inches just above the bottom when at rest. When approaching a large hook up you would get as close as you could and snap an MT gallon-and-a-half Clorox bottle on the MT set, drop the line row out to the other end and pick it up with a weighted treble hook, work in and do the same thing on the other side. Back off, smoke a cigarette and continue until you could get close enough to gaff or use a VERY large dip net to try and bring them into the boat. Solid hookups you were going to get and those that were not you were going to lose at the side of the boat anyway. Could be interesting if you had more than one large one on at the same time.
That’s the shortened definition to preface the story…
Anyhow, one night we had my partner in the stern and his twelve year old kid in the bow and me in the center of a twelve foot row boat. Started to run the line and about three or four sets into it I could not raise the line from the bottom and told my partner that we must have had it run into a “deadhead” (downed tree) or some such obstruction on the bottom.
“Mike, I think I finally got it coming up off the bottom. Yeah, there it is, it’s a dead tree alright (looked to be about two feet in diameter).
Then the tree moved, swirling and throwing a fair amount of water on Mike’s son in the bow. The kid didn’t know what he was looking at, but grabbed the gunnel with both hands like he was going to jump overboard. Went back and forth like a ping pong ball grabbing both sides of the bow, but not jumping overboard. He said later that that he wanted to get away, but at the same time not get in the water with the fish. No place to go! Was only on for about four or five seconds after I got the fish up from the bottom, but it seemed much longer. We were lucky, the fish wasn’t hooked and had taken another fish that was. The smaller fish had “grinder marks” on it which means by their placement it was sideways just before the bigger fishes gullet and was about eighteen inches in length. That gives some idea of the size of the bigger fish and believe I would have damn near been able to crawl up into his mouth.He spit the hooked fish and moved on. More detail and definition, but this is already way to long for this forum.
Have almost been pulled out of the boat by some of them. Many more stories, but thinking most here won’t believe them anyway…
A buddy of mine is a diver for the Corp of Engineers.
He dives down the face of hydro dams checking them out.
The really big catfish wait at the inlets for the fish to come to them.
Really big enough to be mistaken for a diver in the murky water.
I caught 9 lb Rainbow Trout on ultra light gear at Lake Chabot here in CA. It swallowed the hook so not much fight. My mother-in-law fried the thing whole in her Wok.
My History of Fishing
… long form …
by ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ, aka Crabcakes
never was much of a lake fisherman, maybe ’cause there are no natural lakes in Merryland (only state in the Union not to have any) drowned a lot of worms in Greenbelt Lake trying for Sunnies & Blue Gills w/ my dad. later, the only times I ever caught anything in the Reservoirs was when we went ice fishing. (suckers are hungry that time of year)
always had decent luck trolling Blues in the Bay, that is, until the DNR decided that Rockfish were a better game fish & (a bit tastier, I’ll admit) & drove a lot of Blues out by . Blues, though smaller, was a much better fight then Rock. sometimes it would take up to 15 minutes to land one. Rocks, you just hook ’em & haul ’em.
nowadays, mostly pier lines & trot-lining for crabs & my biggest fish-thrills are going to a little place called ‘Jerry’s’ & getting the fresh ‘catch-of-the-day’, slurp some oysters, crabcakes or soft-shells w/ a good beer … or 2 … or 3 … or …
@ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
I didn’t know you were a fellow marylander.
Caught a 400 lb shark in the Gulf off of Fort Meyers in the 70s. About 100 yrds from where we had been spearfishing for Snapper earlier.
Pickerel fishing in the Lower Catskills when I was 12.
Man, they have teeth! 14″ plus, quite boney. Not far from Narrowsburg, NY – the narrowest point in the Delaware River.
Getting up before the crack of Dawn and fishing on a ‘party’ boat with my father in law at Captree, LI.
Spent a good portion in galley with my head DOWN, trying not to through up, to the up and down action of the waves…weather was ROUGH.
RIP Louie, thanks.
Lakes and rivers…more stable…yeah less lbs. per fish but STABLE! Well at least lakes…and ponds.
@ Molon Labe – understand, but in NY LAKES are abundant and also you can get a reservoir permit here in put a small boat in.
Anymouse- Oh my lanta! LOL.
My first wife died from eating poison Puffer fish.
My second wife died because she wouldn’t eat the poison Puffer fish.
I still like fishing.
@Jethro ~ yep, 7th generation on fraternal side, 3rd on maternal side
sad what this state has become … Washington DC, Jr.
Forgot to add, fishing on the Deschutes in a remote spot in Oregon in ’85 with my bro, still lives in Eugene, and three other 19 year old guys from the Bronx at the time in a cross country camper. We caught ONE trout.
COOKED it and I will never forget it.
@ Molon and Jethro – deepest sympathies, I have Gillebrand!
When I was ten, my family drove to Vancouver BC from L.A. and back, over a couple of weeks. While making a rest stop by the Walker River in Northern California, my brother and I went down to throw rocks in the river. There was a guy there, fishing, I guess. He yelled at us to go away. Said we were scaring the fish. Had all his gear laid out, buckets, poles, and nets all over the rocky bank. He kept casting into a little pool about 8 inches deep trying to get one of the fish that was trapped there. I wandered over and watched him for a minute. And then I said “if you want a fish, Mister, why don’t you just reach down and grab one?” He was pretty mad!! I had to run for it. HA! Hope it wasn’t one of you guys!
ps. Still a scamp!
When I was a kid fishing was quite boring so I was doing what kids do, throwing out a hook baited with a worm and reeling it back in, over and over. I had just got told I wasn’t going to catch anything if I didn’t leave my line in the water. Well about that time I caught a huge fish, one that was pulling me off the bridge culvert I was sitting on, so I started yelling I was letting go. My brother ran over and grabbed my pole about the same time I was letting go, he fought it for a long time and finally got it in. It happened to be the biggest large mouth bass to this day I ever caught(well I hooked it anyway). On the old fish scales it weighed just over 10 lbs and it just got filleted and cooked and ate.
As for noodling, not something I’d ever have the guts to do. I’m not sticking my hands where I can’t see what’s in there, but my Dad did a lot of noodling. He had lots of scars on his hands from noodling. He would bring home catfish bigger than me when I was a kid. You have to be just a little nuts to noodle imho.
Biggest fish I ever caught and measured was a 46″ Rockfish (Striped bass) that weighed 36 pounds in the Potomac. Most fun was a smaller one, about 30 inches, that I caught in a Kayak. Good thing I had a grappling hook anchor that day to stop the “sleigh ride”, and I had no idea what to do with it when I got it to the gunwale. I like to fish but usually thank them for their service and throw them back. Favorite fish are Flounder and Spanish Mackerel. I was “King of the beach” last week when I caught an 18″ Rock in Kitty Hawk. No one else caught anything.
The last time I went fishing I really had a struggle on my hands. At first I thought, “This is going to be easy”, but I soon found out that I had grossly underestimated the task ahead of me. I was leaning to the left, leaning to the right, and tugging as hard as I could, but to no avail. It seemed to take forever. Finally I could feel a little slack, and with one mighty pull
I finally landed my prize.
The freezers at the local Kroger store really lock those boxes of fish sticks in there rock-solid sometimes.
Geoff C. bought me a new fly rod and case for Christmas last year and I have yet to inaugurate it. We’ve fished all over the NW together, but our favorite places are eastern B.C. We spent our honeymoon week fishing Oregon with friends. Before fire wiped out the store and docks, we had a memorable day on Crain Prairie, an impoundment that left a ghostly tangle of drowned trees and lots of cover where the trout grow to monster size. If you ask Geoff C., he’ll warn you not to let me be your net person. I say he’s a sore loser. I didn’t knock his fish off the line. And I know for a fact that that fish was not bigger than the trophy I took that day. Bingo. Bango. Bongo.
(If you ever get a chance to fish in Alaska rivers, jump at it!)