This is one story that always come to my mind when I think crazy happenings while
fishing:
About a decade ago, I was staying on a famous fishing lake in northern NY, a short distance from the Canadian border, for a week long fishing trip. One morning at sunrise I was down at the dock waiting for my fishing buddies so we could take the boat out and slay some smallmouth like we’d been doing for the last few days. I was making a some casts in the weedy, murky, slate colored water with a wacky senko. After my bait hits the water on one cast, I get the unmistakable line jump of a strike, so I reel down and set the hook on something heavy. After some brutal head shakes, this beast starts swimming straight at me and I can’t reel down fast enough. The fish swims under the dock, parallel with it, and my drag is screaming. I still can’t see what ever this thing due to the stained water. I have no control over this fish, I was just along for the ride. It continued darting back and forth under the dock at unbelievable speed and peeled drag off my spinning reel like a T-Rex. Predictably my 8lb nylon line breaks either from sustained pressure or scraping the dock. I sat there stunned at what I might have hooked, but not surprised at the outcome.
But that isn’t the crazy part of the story. This next part is still hard to believe, even though I’m the one it happened to.
After my line broke on the giant mystery fish, I tied another hook on and rigged up another senko as soon as my adrenaline settled a bit and my hands stopped shaking. I make another cast and I’m immediately greeted with another strike. I reel down, set the hook, and I kid you not, THE EXACT SAME SCENARIO PLAYS OUT MOMENT FOR MOMENT, INCLUDING THE OUTCOME. Same heavy weight, lightning speed, brute force, took the same path under the dock, until my line breaks after the drags screaming run. Same exact situations play out back to back.
I have no idea what those 2 fish could have been, but they were certainly not bass. The thing that really makes the story is that this lake almost every fresh water fish imaginable, including lake sturgeon, Muskie, and bowfin. So it’s very exciting to think about what I could have hooked into, but man that back to back heart break losing 2 monsters will stay with me.