Most Terrifying Fishing Experience?

[ChrisWi]

I've had a few..

One time while fishing from shore on the Wolf River in Wisconsin, I was walking a large rip rap bank, I had saw plenty of snakes that day already but continued fishing, these were only grass snakes and don't have much for teeth. I stroped down the bank a few more steps, made a cast when I felt something On my ancle, I looked down and about a 30 inch Grass snake had me by the ancle, I'm deathly afraid of snakes, I kicked and screamed and finally got the snake off, little bit of blood and being traumatized, I quit fishing for the day.

Fishing in the bay of Green Bay for Walleye from a 17 foot starcraft it was rough out and it was getting worse. We had about five footers out there, being on the bay they were very close, we made it back but very wet.

[OntarioFishingGuy]

Canoe fishing in a FAST river with my dad (who has never even been in a canoe before),was pretty scary. Especially since he was the one steering. Whose idea was that?

[WolfyBrandon]

August 12th 2014

 

Headed out fishing after work on what looked like a nice day. Headed north away from the marina fishing my way up the shoreline (the fishing wasn't the best so I kept pushing further). I was at the furthest point north than I had ever been before when over my shoulder I heard the first sound of thunder. I looked behind me to see a major storm moving in. I instantly dropped fishing and headed back at full speed but sadly was a good half hour away. Needless to say I got caught in a major wind/rain/lightning storm. Spooky stuff, I hope to never make that mistake again.

 

 

WolfyBrandon

[RSM789]

2 instances that were more startling than scary, each at the opposite end of the spectrum as far as being close to nature.

 

The first was when I was visiting my sister in Texas, I had gotten permission to fish a ranchers lake (much bigger than a pond).  At one point, I cut across a flat area with knee high grass to get to a particularly good looking spot.  I am approaching the shore, maybe 40 feet away, when suddenly the grass starts moving and this fawn pops up out of the grass maybe 2 feet in front of me.  Startled the heck out of me as it ran off & then I started looking around to make sure daddy buck wasn't coming back to see who chased off his baby.

 

Second, last year we were in Phoenix for a few days & I fished a few of their urban lakes.  There is a nice one just behind the Phoenix Zoo that consists of 3 connected ponds.  For urban lakes, these are pretty rural, & I was cutting through the brush to an opening to one of the lakes.  As I pop thru the brush, I suddenly see a homeless guy laying on the ground about 10 feet in front of me, covered with newspapers & sleeping.  I startled him, he startled me and then not knowing what to do, I said "Good Morning".  He responded "Glibnat santo framly doog frampy catters!!" or something along those lines.  I assume it was a friendly greeting because he didn't shank me.

[matuka]

I'm a newbie here so, hello everybody! As a teen I was striper fishing at the end of a long rock jetty in SF Bay. I started about 4 am and it wasn't till nearly sunrise when I finally took my eyes off the water and looked behind me. I was horrified to see the jetty was covered with rats. I HATE RATS! These were the big wharf rat variety, (I have weighed in smaller bass). It was getting lighter but these dudes just weren't ready to leave. I had over two hundred yards of rat covered jetty to get thru to get back to the car. I decided I'd have to make a run for it. In heavy chest high waders, clumsily sprinted/hobbled the gauntlet of disgusting critters. They scurried in every direction. Screaming, literally, most of the way and swatting at a few braver studs with my heavy surf rod, I reached the safety of the parking lot in a record, oh, five minutes. Exhausted, I climbed out of my waders and inspected my rod tip. Yup, damaged nicely. I had parked behind a warehouse of sorts and the early morning crew were laughing. At me. What the heck, I guess it really was hilarious after all.

[geo g]

Fishing the Putin Bay Area of Lake Erie, we were having a great day drifting the Islands off the Canada side and catching a bunch of Walleye,  when dark clouds started building to the north west.  By the time we rounded Putin Bay and the shelter of the Island we were almost in trouble in a 27 foot boat.  The waves went from dead calm to 6 foot  in no time at all.  We had a 20 mile run, and it was a white knuckle ride.

[Ratherbfishing]

 

I started looking around to make sure daddy buck wasn't coming back to see who chased off his baby.

 

 

Daddy buck won't be anywhere around.  Male deer follow the 3 F philosophy.  (This is a family website so I won't explain what that means).  The mother deer, on the other hand....

 

I'd have been much more concerned about the homeless fellow.  Not to be a hater but a fair number of the ones (around here, anyway) have mental disorders.

[RSM789]

Shows you how little I know about deer.  Nice to know I didn't need to worry about being gored, just kicked to death .

 

I was concerned about that homeless guy, mainly because I was kind of cornered if he would have become aggressive.  Had he come at me, my choices were to beat him with some combination of the 4 rods I was carrying or show off my swimming skills.  Maybe if I had one of those old Budweiser lures that looked like little beer cans, I could have cast it to one side in order to distract him.  I am not sure I could have reeled him in with my 10 lb. test, I have heard those homeless are brutal on a drag system.

[Bruce424]

Yea those snappers will scare ya!!!! I mean I love turtles, but snappers definitely sneak up on ya!! They Hide and you don't see them til last second. Happened a couple times to me. Haha. Still got all my fingers.

[Catch 22]

First time on Kinzua Lake ,Pa. I was fishing southward from Willow Bay and doing well.The water was being draw down for the winter so things were popping out of the water that normally were well covered.I returned just right at dark to find some people at the ramp asking for help.They told me there boat  was disabled about a mile north,could I help retrieve it.Off we go into the darkness into strange water with minimal light.I`m running about half throttle,maybe 20 mph,and I get an image of some sort shoot past really close on my right side. I shut down ,but not before the boat ran almost completely up on a rock bar.The image I saw was two massive tree stumps.It took every thing the two of us had to float the boat again.. About a mile and half later we found the boat and towed it in.At the ramp the guy admitted that he ran out of gas.I wasn`t fit to be near after that and explained that he should get outta my sight.

 

Lesson learned ==don`t boat in strange water after dark. Question those who  ask for help to see if they really need it.

 

Iv`e seen the line floating in the air thing with heavy static electric present.That actually puts one close to death. 

 

I was caught in an on water  hail storm once.It felt like being shot with marbles from a sling shot .

 

Got caught on Lake Erie and could not navigate  back into Presqisle Bay.Hid in the marina next door til my bud retrieved the trailer..

 

Almost died in the mouth of the Indian River Inlet,De in a 14' tin boat one foggy morn. Just a darn good thing I know how to run a boat in bad water.

 

C22

[RSM789]

This story was told to me by a friend, so while I can't account for the accuracy, it is interesting nonetheless.

 

My friends father-in-law & a friend were fishing Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains the morning of June 28th, 1992.  That date is significant because a little after 8:00 am, there was a 6.5 earthquake centered at the lake.  The two fisherman were near the middle of the lake when they saw the trees shaking, dust & dirt flying off of them.  The guessed it was an earthquake and about 30 seconds later, they saw a game warden boat fly past them at full speed, headed away from the dam.  The father-in-law happen to glance down at his depth-finder and noticed that it read 45 feet, when just a minute prior they had been in 60 feet of water.  He now focused on the depth-finder and was amazed to see the depth quickly changing.  40 feet, 35 feet, 30 feet.  He suddenly thought "Oh crap, the dam broke & the lake is draining".  He yelled to his buddy to start the outboard (pull start) as the depth-finder continued to drop 20 feet, 15 feet, 10 feet.  In the panic, they can't get the outboard started, so both anglers just grab hold of the sides of the boat, bracing for impact.  As the depth-finder reached 0 feet, all the water around the lake began bubbling.  What had happened wasn't that the dam broke, rather the earthquake had shook loose all of the sediment & methane from the bottom of the lake & the depth-finder misread the rising bubbles as the bottom.

 

The two fishermen returned to the dock, presumably to get a change of underwear...

[Bluebasser86]

I don't know if anything would top this for me.

[scaleface]

Getting shot at by a duck hunter....

Same here. He shot from a distance and the pellets were landing around me. Maybe I shouldnt have been fishing during duck season. 

[MarkH024]

Same here. He shot from a distance and the pellets were landing around me. Maybe I shouldnt have been fishing during duck season.

you have every right to fish. They have no right to do that. That deserves some jail time to teach them a lesson. I would kindly relocate if they just spoke out as would many.

[scaleface]

I was catching big Small mouths 30 foot deep at Bull Shoals on Tubes with 1/4 ounce weights. I could see dark clouds moving in though the hills. I didnt want to leave because it was the best smallmouth fishing I ever had at the time. I made a cast and my line arced upward  from electricity , it did not lay down and I was using 1/4 ounce jig head. I was about to be struck by lightning. I spent the rest of the day in a bar telling fish stories.

 

I was fishing a small lake on a  beautiful day and I heard this roaring noise. I trolled out in the cove to have a look around and there was a wall cloud bearing down on me. I raced it to the boat ramp , it won. I just beached the boat. I never saw the tornado but the next day it was in the news .

[hawgenvy]

Okay, I'll admit this wasn't terrifying, but it was freaky, especially because it happened this evening. I was bank fishing at a golf course pond with my cousin and her husband.  From atop a five foot wooden wall, I pitched a brush hog out over some shoreline pickerel weed and into the stained water an inch past the weeds. A bass struck it so fast and hard it took me totally by surprise, and when I set the hook it was like setting it into a moving freight train. The fish pulled the rod right out of my hands and my rig flew down into the thick pickerel weed below.  As I stared at the rod in open-mouthed disbelief, the rod started moving further away as the fish pulled on the line. This was a Dobyns Champion 734c rod with a Shimano Chronarch reel, not a rig I would give away without a fight. The rod thankfully then got deeply wedged in the weeds and was stuck there, as the fish strained at the 65 lb braid that was tamped down by a drag tightened all the way. The fish pulled this way and that, and actually jumped a couple of times trying to shake the hook. My cousin, meanwhile, was struggling to get her lure unstuck from some lily stems, so I ran past her to her husband and grabbed his rig which was armed with a shaky head jig. I pulled some ottery looking creature off the hook, and was soon grateful to learn that a shaky head jig dangling from a rod is a perfect instrument for retrieving a downed fishing rod. I snagged the jig hook on one of the line guides and reeled in my rod.  Well, the darn fish was still on! I successfully landed it, 4+ pounds of very impressive largemouth muscle. Of course, I tossed him back. You know, I'd never before had a rod pulled out of my hands, and hope it'll never happen again. I truly admire that powerful fish, the first one that almost hurt me back.

[Trenton]

Last year my buddy and I fished a local bass tournament series as members. We joined and fished all of the tourneys out of his 1232 Jon boat. I'm a big guy (6'4" 295lbs) and he's 5'10" 160lbs. Now the tourneys were trolling motor only that's our series name TMO level motor field for glass boats vs. Jon's. We were limited to an inlet of a no limit hp lake so we could go out into the wake of the main lake. We were fishing probably 3/4 mile from the dock roughly 350yards from the no-wake line when the biggest jet boat I've ever seen at the lake swung in the buoys and shot out to main lake. My buddy was up front and I was in the back with 2 batteries and 2 trolling motors and were sitting in 40ft of water on top this submerged tree. The wake came all that way and sent 3inches of water over the back like 2 times. Batteries shorted out so my buddy took an oar out and was hitting the tree under us and dragging us to shore as I bucket about 8 gallons out the back. I seriously thought we were going down in this little boat. I had more control of my bowells then I thought I did for sure.

[Josh Smith]

When we were 16 or 17, a friend and I took my (Dad's) boat out on the Salamonie Reservoir for fishing after pitching the tent at a campsite.

 

Well, we got to fishing and noticed dark clouds rolling in.

 

The boat is a deep V and perfect for riding waves.  It is, however, only rated for a 35hp motor and Dad saw fit to only equip it with a 15hp, so we started back to the ramp.

 

When we were about halfway back, the white caps started.  This was no big deal; the boat handled it fine and we were wearing life vests.

 

However, we noticed all the other boats zooming back ahead of us.  Bass boats, speed boats, even a couple pontoons -- all but one were faster than us.

 

The one that wasn't faster was a john boat with a couple folks in it.  We'd passed the time of day earlier, traded strategies, and they were nice folks.

 

They were behind us, but we lost sight of them someplace.  We had both been hugging the bank as close in as was safe to try to keep the lightning to the trees.

 

My friend and I debated going and finding them, but we weren't equipped and besides, that funnel cloud that just appeared didn't look too cool.

 

The wind started blowing harder, and we figured those folks had turned the boat into the cove we should have used, too.  We hoped so.  We couldn't talk about it much as the wind was drowning the outboard's sound.  I've never been out in anything like that before.  It was awesome!

 

We passed a point that had a huge tree.  That tree came crashing down behind us close enough to give us a bit of a boost.  That was a cool experience.

 

By the time we got to the dock, it was raining so hard I literally could not see.  I left my friend to hold the boat, backed the trailer into the water, and we loaded that boat on in record time.

 

When we got back to the campsite, we found our tent torn to hell.  It was a good campsite, too, but all the shelter it provided hadn't been enough and the tent showed it.  We gave up recovery long enough to toss the tent into the boat and take off to his grandmother's, which was closer than either of our homes.

 

We found out later that there had been a number of tornadoes in the area.  It had been supposed to only rain, and it ended up being one of the worst storms of the season.

 

We were too dumb to be much scared.  It was exciting and educational.  Dad did tell me later that I should have gone with my first instinct and headed for the cove where the other boater with the john boat probably headed.  (We heard of no fatalities, and so we assumed these other folks end up fine.)

 

Just one of those things.  That boat is the one I'm rebuilding now, and though I want to run it mostly electric, it will have a 35hp motor.

 

Josh

[KayakKid]

I don't know about any of you, but I think looking at fish underwater is really cool; especially when they are holding on to cover in clear water and you can get really close without them spooking off. So anyway it was a hot day sometime in august, and me, my dad, and my uncle were out diving on cribs, you know just looking to see what was down there. We were on a shallow rocky flat, about 10 foot deep, and we were trolling along looking for these cribs that would hold giant small mouth.  We had always in the past looked for this one crib that was about in 15 feet of water, but without GPS we would have to be right over the top of it to see it(making it almost impossible being 400 yards or so off the nearest shore to know exactly where it was). Well the water level had been down that particular year so we though we would have a good shot at finding it. We found it after what seemed like hours of searching, and at this point we hadn't caught anything all day so we were ready to jump right in when we got there. A boo-ee hadn't even been thrown by the time I was in the water and I was approching so fast I didn't even notice a short log floating above the others. I was about 5 feet away when this musky turns broadside and darts away. I didn't get an accurate judge of how big the musky was but I suspect it to be in the upper 30 to upper 50 range. It scared me so bad i actually had the strength when I got to the surface to pull myself above the gunwale and fling myself into the boat. To this day that is the most scared I've ever been.

[SPEEDBEAD.]

Riding across Guntersville with CJ in his Legend. Terrifying....

[NCBassAssassin]

FIshing off of a dock at a timeshare in Bath NC in the Pamlico river, trying to catch some striper that were on a run.  Earlier in the day I had caught a 80 lb ray, and saw a bull snap a guys flounder line.  I was sitting back in a chair with a nice hunk of bait tossed out there.  Had the rod in my hands, something took it with a vengeance and pulled me off the dock into the water. The water there is only three feet deep right at the dock, but none the less rays sit there under the dock.  Scariest moment ever while I've been fishing.