Ever had this happen?

[Turkey Creek]

So what is your best fishing story?

Last night my son will have one to tell his kids. We were fishing for white bass after dark. Floating lights that attract the bait fish and we run a minnow on a weighted line. Last night I hear him say what the heck I have 2 fish on my line. I am thinking how in the hell do 2 nice nice white bass manage to hook themselves on a single hook? Well that in itself would have been a darn good story. Actually he somehow managed to hook the line that was between 2 fish that were actually caught on the same set up! Someone had caught 2 fish on a line that had been rigged with a slabbing spoon and a dollfly. The fish apparently broke off that line and had been swimming about attached to each other for who knows how long. So my son manages to reel in 2 good lures and 2 keeper fish in one catch. Not only that but that kid was on the right side of the boat all night, he caught 3 fish for everyone I was catching. Tried to take picture of it but monofilament doesnt show up well in the dark!

 

[bueller]

Truly a night to remember

 

[Bowsnbucks]

So …………. Dad was out-fished - right ??? !!! Congrats to your son.

 

[Turkey Creek]

So …………. Dad was out-fished - right ??? !!! Congrats to your son.

By a mile! Wouldnt have it any other way. He was actually starting to feel bad for me about 2am...... he said I could have his spot he was tired of reeling in fish!

 

[ksgobbler]

Explain the white bass under lights strategy. Ive tried it numerous times with no luck. My favorite fishing is jigging whites. I drive till I find a school, spotlock, then drop a 1/2 oz war eagle jigging spoon on them.

 

[Turkey Creek]

We have a lot of history with our lake so we typically know the general area where the white bass tend to be. Gulls will work the surface looking for stunned shad when the white bass are schooled up and chasing the shad. Fun to catch them casting various lures into the surface schools of fish as well. Any how we typically set up to night fish in the areas where we see gulls working before dark. They make a submersible light for this type of fishing. We lower the light(s) about 12" under the surface of the water runs off a 12v battery. Light attracts insects and bait fish which in turn attract the white bass. We use shiners (minnows) for bait on a line with enough weight to keep the minnow down. Drop it down to the bottom and reel up a couple of cranks. Sometimes we jig the minnow up and down a bit. When they are hitting well the minnow can be dead or alive.

 

[ksgobbler]

Ive got the submersible green light but never had luck. Put my dad on schooling fish 2 years ago. He thought it was awesome. I had them on topwater 4 hours one day overcst with a strong east wind. They had the shad pinched on a big flat. First fish my daughter ever caught by herself was in one of the schools.

 

[Turkey Creek]

Ive got the submersible green light but never had luck. Put my dad on schooling fish 2 years ago. He thought it was awesome. I had them on topwater 4 hours one day overcst with a strong east wind. They had the shad pinched on a big flat. First fish my daughter ever caught by herself was in one of the schools.

My brother has the green LED lights, I have some older models that have clear bulbs. Cant say that I have detected any difference between the two colors in terms of one being more productive.

 

[j-bird]

Strangest fishing story I have comes from back when I was a kid. I am fishing like always and I have a floating rapala type lure on the top of the water. Whoosh! A big boil and I got a fish....a dandy fish! I'm fighting him and fighting him and he dances across the top of the water and I have a nice roughly 5 pound large mouth on. Just as he hits the water...."doink". The lures comes free..... I'm shook and pissed all at the same time....I was like 12 or 14 at the time. I reel the lure in and it turns out the rear treble hook was pulled out of the lure! I have a few folks try to cheer me up over my lost fish, but it's not helping. I eat dinner and I decided I knew he was in there....and I was on a mission to catch him....again! I fish and fish and fish and fish.....it's just about dark now and I hear my folks loading up the truck to get ready to head home. I make what I think is one of my final casts and I get my weedless rubber night crawler hung up in a small branch just above the water. I'm yanking and the like trying to get it to come free......Woosh! I saw it that time....the black back and green side of another big large mouth! I got tension on the line so I set the hook! And the fight is on again. I'm squealing like a little girl, "I got him again, I got him again!" Dad comes running over now and he is talking me through it and sure enough it's a nice big bass. I finally get him worn out and I hand dad my pole and I go down into the water and grab the fish by the jaw with both hands. I come up the bank just smiling from ear to ear. This was the biggest fish I had ever caught. As I am unhooking the fish I see something down in the fishes mouth. "Dad, Dad, there is my treble hook from my lure!" Dad obviously thought I was crazy and took the fish from me and looked. Sure enough there was a treble hook with the retaining "screw" that was hooked deep in the gill plates of this fish. We didn't even try to remove it because we knew it would do more harm than good. We took some pictures and we released the fish. I had caught to some extent the same trophy (fished weighed just short of 6 pounds) fish twice......in the same day.

Other memorable story was my first encounter with a fish with teeth! I was fishing a small pond in the small town we lived in. The owner of the pond knew my grandfather....so he was a little crazy. The pond was so small you could reach the entire thing with a really good heave of a cast. Again I was a kid. I'd fish a water puddle as a kid if I thought there was fish in it. I'm fishing using a small rubber minnow looking soft bait and.....boom! I get a bite and it's a hard bite. This fish however went down....not up like the fish I am used to. It's fighting pretty good. I tire it out and as I get it to the surface....this fish looks like nothing I had ever seen before. It looked like it was blind. Well, whatever it was I had to get my lure back - so I reached down to lip it like I do the bass I catch and ....surprise......teeth! Several ....teeth! Turns out what I had on my hands was about a 12" walleye. So I use my pliers to remove the hook with the fish simply drug up on the bank. Then a flipped it back into the water with my foot because I wasn't toughing something that could bite me. About the time the fish hits the water I hear a voice...."What ya got there kiddo?" It's Howie, guy who owns the place. He was the schools art teacher as well. "Not sure Mr. Vickers...." "I wasn't touching it any more than I had too!" "Had teeth!" Howie starts laughing and comes walking down. "Had teeth huh?" "Sure did" I told him. That is when he told me that he had tossed some walleye in there a few years back....he wasn't even sure they lived. He then proceeded to tell me that the key to catching fish in his pond was you had to pour beer on your lure. I told him I was too young to buy beer....even just for fishing....AND it seemed like a good waste of beer. He told me that I sounded like my grandfather.....saying it was a waste of beer. He then handed me what was left of his beer...."Here, this will help you, help you catch more fish or help you not care that your not catching fish!" I had to explain I couldn't because mom would find out or smell it, and he would be able to hear her beat my behind from his house! He laughed and agreed that maybe a teacher shouldn't be giving a minor beer.... Like I said he was an art teacher!

 

[JFK52]

I have a story from my time fishing in the Florida Keys in 1998. We were fishing dead baits on the bottom at about 90 feet with slip sinker rigs or as they are called locally knocker rigs. I use Star rods and Penn 8500 spinning reels. I had 30 to 50 pound line on that day. I felt a tug on the line and went to set the hook. Resistance on the other end indicated a good fish on the line. So by pumping and reeling I worked the fish to the surface. There we saw two things. One was that it was a good size cobia in the 40+ pound range. The second was that the fish was not hooked at all. When cobia feel a hook, they roll on the bottom. This fish had rolled and caused the four ounce lead sinker to make a loop with the fishing line. So what I had was a 40 pound cobia without a hook in it. It had lassoed itself around it's head. The line was in just the right place that it did not get cut by the gills of this fish. When I saw that it was not hooked the first time it came to the boat I backed off the drag. It took 45 minutes of carefully playing this fish and having it to the boat three different times before it was tired enough for Captain Don to get a gaff into it. Weighed at the dock it was 45 pounds. Captain Don gutted it and cut cobia steaks out of it. Great eating fish by the way.
So that is my story of catching a 45 pound cobia without a hook in it.