Coolest thing you've ever witnessed while fishing?

[NHBull]

1.. Almost hit a baby bear who was taking a swim at dust near a channel marker.

 

2.. Caught a seagull with a pop max......almost had to take it on the boat before he let go

[Teal]

Seen an osprey come down and ****** mama bass off the bed.

 

Seen new born deer learning to walk.

 

Seen 5 little ducks swimming behind mama, then a big splash, it was obviously a bass, then there were only 4 little ducks swimming behind mama.

 

Seen a girl pulling up to the marina on a jetski and somehow whiskey throttled into the pier and pilings... my friend and his wife drug he ashore and stabilized her and performed cpr until medics arrived.   She suffered alot of trauma injuries.  Her face, head, clavicle, neck, and both arms were all jacked up.  As a former part time medic, I've seen it all, I just havent actually seen it when it happened.

 

Have pulled up on two bass floating in water with their mouths locked on to each other.  Both were 3 plus lbs.  I firmly believe now, bass will eat anything.  

 

[Boomstick]

2 hours ago, Mobasser said:

I was night fishing a small lake from the bank years ago. I turned around and flipped on my headlamp, t get a bait from my tacklebox on the bank behind me. When I stood back.up I looked to the left, and there was a large deer standing about 10 ft away. We looked at each other for a few seconds then with one leap, he was gone.

Not fishing, but I used to carpool to work with someone who loves about a half mile away from me. One morning, he was running late so I figured I'd go sit outside to save time, and a buck walks up about 50 ft behind me and we stop and stare at each other and neither of us moved until he finally ran away when my friend drove his truck up the hill.

[Smells like fish]

Perhaps not cool but with keeping with a lot of posts, I too have saw nature in action. I was wading a river casting for Snallmouth when a baby rabbit jumped into the water and swam out with a mink in pursuit. The mink grabbed the fist sized rabbit and took it the screaming little fellow back to the bank and ripped him apart in seconds. The equivalent of myself leaving the drive thru at McDonalds...

[Rpratt]

I just pulled up on my favorite spot, and 2 labs came walking out of the weeds on the bank. They proceeded to jump in the water and swam to my boat. So there I am with 2 dogs sitting on my deck with no idea of where they came from or who they belonged to. About a half hour later I found the owner frantically looking for them farther down the bank. The dogs thanked me for my hospitality, jumped out of the boat and went back to their owner.

 

Now my fishing partner will tell you a story he SWEARS by on his children's lives that he was chased by Bigfoot while he was in his kayak.

[Boomstick]

18 minutes ago, Teal said:

Seen a girl pulling up to the marina on a jetski and somehow whiskey throttled into the pier and pilings...

If we're counting stupid people stories, my #2 has to be fishing on a pier and there were two people out in boats, a big boat with many inflatable towables and a smaller boat. They were so drunk that the guy in the smaller boat kept ramming his boat into the bigger boat to get the driver's attention.

 

Shortly behind that, I was fishing on another pier a couple years ago. There was a waterboarder who fell off his board, and his buddies went on without him before realizing he fell off. About 20 minutes later they came back, and as he's getting ready for round 2 my oldest son yells "Don't fall off!"

[Teal]

@Boomstick crazy enough, the girl on the jetski is not and old story, that was just last Saturday on Lake Gaston in NC.  No sooner than we got to the marina it happened.  I think alcohol was a factor.  

[TAFKABCF]

The second coolest thing I ever saw was when I was working down a bank fishing laydowns. There was one tree that went down into the water and then bent back up and out of the water. There was a squirrel on the shore near the base of the laydown pacing back and forth and really making a lot of noise. I wondered what what getting him so worked up when I noticed a big acorn sitting on the laydown where it came back up out of the water. After watching him for a few minutes, it happened. The squirrel ran down and decided to swim across that little bit of water and get the acorn. Just as he gets to the other side and grabs the acorn, the biggest bass I have ever seen jumps up and swallows that squirrel whole.

 

The absolute coolest thing I have ever seen is when that bass came up and put another acorn there.

[Teal]

17 minutes ago, TAFKABCF said:

The second coolest thing I ever saw was when I was working down a bank fishing laydowns. There was one tree that went down into the water and then bent back up and out of the water. There was a squirrel on the shore near the base of the laydown pacing back and forth and really making a lot of noise. I wondered what what getting him so worked up when I noticed a big acorn sitting on the laydown where it came back up out of the water. After watching him for a few minutes, it happened. The squirrel ran down and decided to swim across that little bit of water and get the acorn. Just as he gets to the other side and grabs the acorn, the biggest bass I have ever seen jumps up and swallows that squirrel whole.

 

The absolute coolest thing I have ever seen is when that bass came up and put another acorn there.

Why did I just read that and visualize that squirrel from the ice age movies.. that's crazy

[roadwarrior]

Inflight mating dance at Pickwick

 

 

https://raptorresource.blogspot.com/2014/02/do-bald-eagles-mate-in-flight.html

[Smells like fish]

1 hour ago, Rpratt said:

I just pulled up on my favorite spot, and 2 labs came walking out of the weeds on the bank. They proceeded to jump in the water and swam to my boat. So there I am with 2 dogs sitting on my deck with no idea of where they came from or who they belonged to. About a half hour later I found the owner frantically looking for them farther down the bank. The dogs thanked me for my hospitality, jumped out of the boat and went back to their owner.

 

Now my fishing partner will tell you a story he SWEARS by on his children's lives that he was chased by Bigfoot while he was in his kayak.

How about giving us the Bigfoot tale? I've recently been enjoying hearing stories of bigfeet!!

[12poundbass]

I bought my wife a pink Cabelas spinning combo about 11 years ago for her birthday. We went out that morning fishing, and she had a dink bass on and was about 10 foot from the boat when out of nowhere a decent sized pike came and took her bass! There was a big blow up, followed by her screaming, followed by a big tug, then a broken line, more freaking out, and me saying “that was awesome”! 

[Scott F]

I was actually done fishing for the day but I was still lakeside when the coolest thing I’ve seen happened. I met Al Lindner while I was at Rainy Lake in Minnesota. He was just coming back to the dock from a day of fishing with a friend of mine. He was so nice, took pictures and we talked fishing. It is a highlight of my fishing memories. 

[schplurg]

49 minutes ago, Smells like fish said:

How about giving us the Bigfoot tale? I've recently been enjoying hearing stories of bigfeet!!

It was probably me.

 

My feet are small but I'm hairy enough that I could probably come up with some great bigfoot hoaxes.

 

And I tend to look blurry when photographed and I'm always in bad lighting so I usually look like a blob in photos. People's cameras seem to stop working properly and get really shaky in my proximity too. Just like bigfoot!

 

I saw a bigfoot photo once and the "creature" literally had less body hair than me. I stay away from forests for fear of being shot at.

 

There are people who make pretty convincing feet out of rubber, put short stilts on them and walk around making fake footprints just for fun while fishing. Saw it on the interwebz.   

 

I guess they can't (or don't bother to) make fake bigfoot hair, scat, carcasses or anything else that would be easy to find if bigfoot actually existed. And anyone who hunts knows you need a population of animals to maintain a - uh - population. So if you see one bigfoot there are probably hundreds more nearby.

 

A nice clear video or even a capture should be reported in the news any day now...

[Smells like fish]

42 minutes ago, schplurg said:

It was probably me.

 

My feet are small but I'm hairy enough that I could probably come up with some great bigfoot hoaxes.

 

And I tend to look blurry when photographed and I'm always in bad lighting so I usually look like a blob in photos. People's cameras seem to stop working properly and get really shaky in my proximity too. Just like bigfoot!

 

I saw a bigfoot photo once and the "creature" literally had less body hair than me. I stay away from forests for fear of being shot at.

 

There are people who make pretty convincing feet out of rubber, put short stilts on them and walk around making fake footprints just for fun while fishing. Saw it on the interwebz.   

 

I guess they can't (or don't bother to) make fake bigfoot hair, scat, carcasses or anything else that would be easy to find if bigfoot actually existed. And anyone who hunts knows you need a population of animals to maintain a - uh - population. So if you see one bigfoot there are probably hundreds more nearby.

 

A nice clear video or even a capture should be reported in the news any day now...

I'm with you schplurgy, could have been you! Lol but what interests me is not every one of those people are liars. And I know they are not seeing big ape men, they have been extinct for awhile. But I have to wonder why the human mind sees something at a glance or glimpse and they think it's 8 foot tall monkey man. Then there is little green men, skin walkers and spooks. What's goin on with these people. 

[Rpratt]

2 hours ago, Smells like fish said:

How about giving us the Bigfoot tale? I've recently been enjoying hearing stories of bigfeet!!

A Bigfoot story eh? What? My dog story was not cool enough? ? Ok, here is his story, bit it has 3 acts to it.

 

Act1: My friend, whose Native American name is "He Who Snags Everything",  was out on his kayak at Washington County Park, which is near Nashville, Illinois. He had just caught a bass and released it (which honestly is the part of the tale I don't believe) when he got a strong uneasy feeling of being watched. He continues on for a few minutes when he says a really really bad odor hit him. He said it was very foul and almost made him puke. Suddenly he saw a large rock come flying out of the trees and land about 10 feet from his kayak. He looked up, and says there was the Foot just staring at him. The rest of the story is that he paddling like crazy to try and get back to the dock, but it was narrow stretch and the Foot was really close to him running along the bank yelling/grunting and tossing more rocks his way. When he finally got out of the cove he was able to shoot across the water, get to dock and book out of there.

 

Act2: He went with some friends camping there in a cabin the following year at the same location. I personally did not know of this story yet, but he had told a few people about it. He told me when he actually told the tale that the reason he didn't talk much about it was for fear of ridicule. Anyways, while camping he was given the assignment of taking the garbage up the road to the trashcan. It was dusk.... As he was walking he heard a knock on a tree. He did not think nothing of it. Then he heard another knock. He stopped, looked around, and suddenly a rock came flying out of the woods, and he heard a loud growl. Bigfoot appeared off the trail 20 feet from him. Well, He Who Snags Everything took off like a shot back to the cabin, waving his arms everywhere and gibbered like a wild man that the Foot was after him again. And then....

 

Bigfoot walked out from around the cabin. He said he almost died right there of a heart attack..... But then Bigfoot took off his head, and lo and behold, he had been set up. His friends had purchased a Bigfoot costume.

 

Act3: Last year they went out and took their sons with them. These children are between 5-8. Wanna guess what happened? You would be right! Only this time they did not reveal that they had a Bigfoot costume to the kids. The kids still talk about it to me to this very day....

[Smells like fish]

27 minutes ago, Rpratt said:

A Bigfoot story eh? What? My dog story was not cool enough? ? Ok, here is his story, bit it has 3 acts to it.

 

Act1: My friend, whose Native American name is "He Who Snags Everything",  was out on his kayak at Washington County Park, which is near Nashville, Illinois. He had just caught a bass and released it (which honestly is the part of the tale I don't believe) when he got a strong uneasy feeling of being watched. He continues on for a few minutes when he says a really really bad odor hit him. He said it was very foul and almost made him puke. Suddenly he saw a large rock come flying out of the trees and land about 10 feet from his kayak. He looked up, and says there was the Foot just staring at him. The rest of the story is that he paddling like crazy to try and get back to the dock, but it was narrow stretch and the Foot was really close to him running along the bank yelling/grunting and tossing more rocks his way. When he finally got out of the cove he was able to shoot across the water, get to dock and book out of there.

 

Act2: He went with some friends camping there in a cabin the following year at the same location. I personally did not know of this story yet, but he had told a few people about it. He told me when he actually told the tale that the reason he didn't talk much about it was for fear of ridicule. Anyways, while camping he was given the assignment of taking the garbage up the road to the trashcan. It was dusk.... As he was walking he heard a knock on a tree. He did not think nothing of it. Then he heard another knock. He stopped, looked around, and suddenly a rock came flying out of the woods, and he heard a loud growl. Bigfoot appeared off the trail 20 feet from him. Well, He Who Snags Everything took off like a shot back to the cabin, waving his arms everywhere and gibbered like a wild man that the Foot was after him again. And then....

 

Bigfoot walked out from around the cabin. He said he almost died right there of a heart attack..... But then Bigfoot took off his head, and lo and behold, he had been set up. His friends had purchased a Bigfoot costume.

 

Act3: Last year they went out and took their sons with them. These children are between 5-8. Wanna guess what happened? You would be right! Only this time they did not reveal that they had a Bigfoot costume to the kids. The kids still talk about it to me to this very day....

Thank you Rpratt for typing all that out. Sounds like a rough crowd to be around. They best hope they never accidentally cross with a person who'd like a museum specimen or they'll have patch their foot suit lol

[Boomstick]

5 hours ago, Teal said:

Why did I just read that and visualize that squirrel from the ice age movies.. that's crazy

Funny, I did as well

4 hours ago, Smells like fish said:

How about giving us the Bigfoot tale? I've recently been enjoying hearing stories of bigfeet!!

Well, I do normally wear a size 15 shoe (I can fit in a few rare 14s)

[slonezp]

7 hours ago, J Francho said:

Saw a fox trying to wrestle 30# king salmon of their redds in a creek.  The fish probably weighed more than the fox, but they were easy picking.  Seen a family of deer crossing the lake once.  Lots of weird things, the more I think about it.

Nature is really cool. Survival of the fittest. I watched a heron catch and swallow a 12" crappie last weekend. One of my favorite bird stories happened a few years back in Sturgeon Bay. My son and I were fishing for smallies and there was maybe 3 or 4 seagulls making a commotion in the water about 40 yards ahead of us. We thought they were feeding on a school of alewife's. As we get a little closer we see they are trying to pull a sucker that looked to be about 5lbs out of the water. Out of nowhere, a bald eagle swoops down and grabs the sucker right out from underneath them. They're ticked. For what seemed another 5-10 minutes, the gulls chased the eagle from the shoreline back over the water, Back and forth, back and forth. The eagle went in to land on a huge tree. He let go of the fish and it lands in someones backyard. There was a kid playing in the yard and he starts screaming to his mother that a fish fell out of the sky.

[Bankbeater]

This happened probably 12 or 13 years ago. My dad and his buddy were out fishing at a conservation area that sees some very heavy pressure. A fawn came out of the woods went up to my dad’s buddy and started nuzzling his coat pocket where he had some snacks. After about 5 or 6 minutes they were able to chase the fawn away back into the woods.

[TnRiver46]

Manatees, snakes eating fish, alligator/egret noise making ccompetitions, pigs swimming across, deer swimming across, two separate occasions a squirrel swam across, a red fox swimming across, raccoons snatching my plastic worms and live Shad out of the water, all kinds of ridiculousness. I constantly see bald eagles near my house and also saw two on my camping trip this morning. In Jackson hole Wyoming I saw a brown bear trying to remove a dead elk from the lake. 

[schplurg]

5 hours ago, Smells like fish said:

I'm with you schplurgy, could have been you! Lol but what interests me is not every one of those people are liars. And I know they are not seeing big ape men, they have been extinct for awhile. But I have to wonder why the human mind sees something at a glance or glimpse and they think it's 8 foot tall monkey man. Then there is little green men, skin walkers and spooks. What's goin on with these people. 

There are explanations for it, but it's probably too off topic. Briefly - sometimes people see what they are expecting to see or what they want to see. The subject is something I've been interested in for a long time.

 

If you'd never heard of bigfoot and saw a dark shape moving in the woods you probably wouldn't think it was bigfoot. Why would you? If you knew bears existed you might think that's what it was. 

 

But if you are with some bigfoot enthusiasts, every tree branch snapping sound is probably a potential bigfoot, at least to them. And every culture has its bigfoot - chupacabra, tazmanian devil, yeti...bigfoot is not unique. 

 

We will even make stuff up if we can't explain something. The brain needs an explanation.

 

I thought I saw a neighbor standing near my house a few weeks ago as I drove up the road. Turned out to be a shovel leaning on a truck, the side mirror being the person's head. My brain interpreted it as a person. Closest thing it resembled at that distance, but it really didn't. Your brain sometimes fills in the blanks so things make sense to it.

 

There are many reasons people see, or think they see these things. 

 

Okay back to fish stuff!

 

Cool Fishing Story:

Not too cool but to be on topic, I once was walking up the Delta levy and saw a jackrabbit run by from my right to left along the side of the embankment. It was out of sight in 1.1 seconds. Not even full speed but wow!

 

5 seconds later a ratty looking large dog comes running from the same direction and passed right in front of me. He looked at me with a crazed dog smile and I said, "My friend, you are not catching that rabbit"

 

He said, "Oh ya? Watch this!" and turned 90 degrees left of the rabbits direction and ran off.

 

And yes, I met a talking dog (but bigfoot is fake).  

[OCdockskipper]

Last spring, I was fishing out of the back of a cove, with my back to greenbelt area where the cove ended.  There had been about 2 dozen coots up on the grass, when I heard a sudden commotion and all of the coots splashing into the water.  I turned around and saw a large Red Tailed Hawk standing in the greenbelt with a coot pinned under one of his talons.  The coot wasn't struggling, he had probably been knocked senseless from the hawks dive bomb and now vice grip.  Then, within 10 seconds, crows started to appear and dive down at the hawk.  They weren't trying to save the coot, they were just trying to drive off a predator.  The hawk stood there and didn't flinch as crow after crow swiped at him, all the while keeping the coot pinned down.  After about a minute, the hawk tired of the harassment from the crows and flew off, leaving the coot behind.  After a few moments the coot stood up, wobbled his way towards the water and kind of plopped in to join his friends (who all had just stayed in the water watching the spectacle with me).

 

The coots surrounded the wounded one and they were all squawking & chirping, but the victim seemed to rebound quickly.  Within a few moments, he was chirping back and swimming away, probably irritated that none of his friends tried to save him.

 

I was fortunate enough to get a picture during the middle of it.

[Way north bass guy]

Couple years ago I was catching a pile of decent smallmouth with my dad, and we were on a lake with lots of eagles. One decided to “follow” us along the shore, flying from tree to tree. After about 10 bass, I hooked one about 3lbs that was jumping like crazy. Well I guess the eagle had enough, and flew down from the big pine tree he was in and tried to ****** my bass right out of the air, on three different jumps! I literally had to yank on my rod to pull the bass midair away from the eagles talons. It followed us for another mile or so before we finally fired up the big motor to head to another spot. 

[Koz]

One of the coolest things I have ever witnessed was a giant Red Tailed Hawk swooping don and grabbing my Whopper Plopper. It got about 10 or 15 feet in the air and thankfully dropped it.

 

I've had plenty of gator encounters over the years including landing a baby gator on a frog and having a full grown gator hiding in the bushes grab my frog (I didn't land him - just cut the line). I've even been chased around teh bank by a gator.

 

But the coolest gator memory involves my son. We're fishing a small lagoon and as he's reeling in a topwater I see a juvenile gator (4 or 5 footer) start heading for his lure. Then the gator picks up speed. My son is standing there oblivious to everything.

 

Now what was cool was the gator's tail was propelling him so fast that his body raised out of the water and he was skiing across the water like a hydrofoil boat. And man was he moving fast! Thankfully my son snapped out of his stupor and didn't lose his bait to the gator.

 

Oh - and speaking of turtles, did you know that they blink their eyes? There's one spot that I fish where just about every time this turtle comes and hangs out with me. He just sits there looking at me while I fish. I thought he was staring, but the little guy actually blinks.