Total Fail!!!!

[J Francho]

I was fishing the pond today, at lunch and...

Wait, there's a back story.

A couple of months ago, I picked up a Zillion burner, a lefty version. I use both right and left hand retrieve, each for difference things, as is my preference, and thought I needed another lefty.

My buddy fishes almost exclusively with lefty reels, but for some reason, around the same time, picked up a righty Zillion burner, LOL. Well, neither one of us liked what we bought ourselves, and when I was about to ask if he wanted to trade, he asked if we could switch reels.

BINGO! That was easy.... So, at the next club meeting, I brought my tools, so that I could switch out my Carbontex drag washers, and switch out the handles, since a mouse chewed off a chunk of his handle, and we made the trade.

AWESOME! We both had what we should have bought in the first place. Only thing is, we couldn't trade spools, since they would have been spooled up backwards. He got my two day old 12# CXX, and I got a spool of 50# Power Pro, slightly used and faded. No biggie, as I intended for this to be for froggin.

Fast forward to today's lunchtime diversion. 1st cast, I realize there little more than 1/2 a casts worth of braid, with the remainder being that awful 10# Fluoroclear that my buddy is so fond of. He's so fond of it, he continues to use it on just about every rod he owns! Every trip out, I see him feed the Lake Gods about $30 to $100 worth of assorted baits, only to have them break off on the hookset, the cast, when he looks at the rod, etc., LOL.

It kills me to watch this absurd stubbornness to fish this crap line. But he just trucks on with it.

So, I see this horrible stuff that isn't even fit for backer on my new reel, and immediately my mind races to thoughts of a fish breaking off. I was froggin' after all, and needed something much beefier. I decide that I'll just walk the frog in, and go to my car to change out the reel with another loaded with something more appropriate.

You guessed it, SLURP-SPLASH!!!!

I should have just let the fish run with it, and eventually spit the bait, as if I were prefishing a tournament. But no, I instinctively set the hook, and stuck her good. It felt like a decent fish, and as I tried to put some pressure on it, and gain some line, the darn Uni to Uni connecting the braid to the crap backer snapped.

Great. As painful as it was to lose a fish and an $8 frog, what felt worse was watching this horse of a bass launch itself all over the area to try and shake the frog free, which was also connected to about 25 yards of braid.

Fail! Fail! Fail! What a moron I am.

Eventually the jumping and porpoising stopped, but not after I got a good look at the fish, and yeah, it looked about the size of a double digit trout. Knowing what I know about guessing, I'd put the fish at half that, probably around 3.5 to 4 lbs. A nice pond fish.

Hopefully, it got the hooks free, and from what I saw, the frog was on the outside of the fish's mouth, so I am optimistic.

Black frog, bye bye. You caught me many fish.

I surrender, LOL.

[roadwarrior]

Great story anyhow!

[CWB]

Good story.

I had one break me off a few years back and for the next ten minutes or so It was jumping around like it was on crack. Then the jumping stopped. Lo and behold there, floating about 10 yards away, was my frog. Go figure.

[Sfritr]

Great story!!  I started getting the sweats as it reminded me of a tourney I fished where I 5+SMB busted me off and i had to listen to him taunt me for over 30 minutes hurdling out of the water near our boat.  We lost the tourney by less than 2lbs.  I still have nightmares of that moby dick fish.  I felt like cpt. Ahab

[Daniel My Brother]

Great story! I bought a spool of Flouroclear once. Once.

[J Francho]

Great story! I bought a spool of Flouroclear once. Once.

I thought I only bought it once, too.....Once I saw this stuff, realized what it was, and that it was 1/2 way between me, my frog, and a likely bite, my stomach turned.

[Muddy]

No failure in mistakes it's when you make the same one 22 times that you are stuck on stupid. Mistakes are just signs that you are going the right way on the wrong road. 8-)

[Paul Roberts]

...and immediately my mind races to thoughts of a fish breaking off.  

That's the warning. The failure (as you know) was not heeding it. At least you have that warning system intact. Your buddy may not -yet.

I know the feeling. > > > :-[

I've developed a certain number of those warning bells. One I did a bit too often lol: I'd be grouse hunting, and I'd see FRESH grouse tracks in the snow. And I'd say, "Wow! Those are fres..." Thppppppppp! (grouse flushing) -and me looking at the ground! For some reason I did that more often than a sane man should. I finally got over it -the second the word "fresh" comes into my head -I look up and flick off the safety!

[luckyfisher]

great story and maybe someone reading it think of getting flouro willl read it a learn before they make the same mistake. lol

[endless]

talk about premonition you seeing it before it happens.

[Paul Roberts]

talk about premonition you seeing it before it happens.

That's not a premonition -in the mystical sense -it's knowing your stuff. It can get, or seem, almost weird. Could make you start believing your sensory perception is "extra-sensory" rather than just fine-tuned.