Strangest occurrence while fishing

I'm sure everyone has a story to share on this topic.

For me, it was several years ago, fishing with my son on the Blue in a Silverthorne, CO.

it was mid summer and the flows were low coming out of the reservoir. We were fishing just below the reservoir. I was fishing a small pool there and my son was just downstream. In the distance, we could hear the high pitched sounds of folks flying their remote controlled model planes.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a white blur and then saw a huge splash near my fly. One of the airplanes had lost control, run out of gas, and quietly crashed next to my fly!

Being in my waders, I retrieved the plane and held it for the owners who appeared over the bank of the river.

My son and I laughed about that for the next several days.

Being caught in a microburst on the Missouri River down in the canyon section. A wall of water was being picked up a couple hundred feet and was shooting right down the canyon. We had a two second warning and it hit us. We were in a drift boat. The guide maintained control of the boat as it hit us, then it kept going down the canyon.

Larry ---sagefisher---

Hiking up the Baptism River on a beautiful fall weekend, I got to the first hole I was going to fish and see a tent on the other bank as I approached. Getting there I find two couples sitting in the pool I was going to fish. As I walked up with my flyrod they stood up and asked if I wanted them to get out so I could fish. They were very much naked and not the least bit bashful about it. I said "No, I'll work my way upstream". When I got up to the 3 falls barrier hole there was another tent and two young gals swimming in the pool. As I walked up they got out of the pool in the buff, waved, walked to their tent and quickly came back out with bikini bottoms, no tops.

Now, I fished the Baptism and other North Shore rivers for 18 years and often 4-5 times a week in spring for rainbows and fall for salmon and lake trout and that was a one time occurrence for me, but one I don't think I'll ever get old enough to forget. I actually did get a small salmon in the pool below the falls but that was just a bonus.

Maybe not too strange but certainly a surprise. Was fishing a river adjacent to a large park when all of a sudden I heard what sounded like a bazillion mad bees about to swarm me. Looked all around and saw nothing. Then, I looked straight up and about 30' over my head was a giant dragon kite 50' long and vibrating in the wind like crazy. It did sound like angry bees. Found out that they were having a huge kite festival at the adjoining park that day. :lol:

A few years back (2008), I was privileged to have visited friends who lived on Douglas Island, just across the Gastineau Channel from Juneau, Alaska. A fishing trip was arranged so I could fish for salmon in the Inside Passage. What they had was a little cabin cruiser (maybe 30') which was powered by an inboard engine that used a lot of gas (very expensive in that area!) and so they had rigged a motor mount on the stern using a 9 hp Evinrude outboard just for trolling. Everybody did their turn on the tiller of the little outboard so everyone had an opportunity to fish, and when it was my turn we were on the leeward side of Shelter Island - I tried to post one of my pics but could not get it to work so I found one on a Goggle search listed below so you can see the area. Anyway, I had just got started my turn when all of a sudden, not any more then 50' from the boat, two humpbacked whales surfaced, side by side, and traveling in the same direction we were heading. Now, I've never in my life before that ever seen a whale, let alone have one that close! Their tails were every bit as large as the boat! I like to have made a mess in my britches! Someone had to relieve me of my turn steering as I was that overwhelmed at the sight! The locals told me that frequently happens, kinda like they come up to see what your doing and maybe say hello. And let me say I saw the eye of the nearest whale and it did seem he/she was looking at us!

Bottom line, that was the greatest experience I've ever had fishing. And that Alaska fishing trip was a trip of a lifetime for me. By the way, we caught silver salmon, I caught two of them ... and do they (did they) ever eat good!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelter...d_%28Alaska%29

I'm not sure if this qualifies as strange, but it certainly was memorable. I was fishing for salmon fishing off the Queen Charlotte Islands in BC, and seeing Killer Whales and Humpback whales were not uncommon. On one outing, I spotted a humpback whale surfacing about 250 yards in front of us and when I looked to my left, I saw a pod of five Killer Whales about 50 yards off the port side of the boat. The Killer whales looked like they were headed towards the humpback whale so we got as close as we dared (about 75-80 yards away) and sut off the motor to watch. Sure enough, the Killer Whales attacked the humpback. They circled her and kept swimming around her sort of like Indians circling a wagon train in the old western movies. Every few seconds one of the killer whales would swoop and nip her fluke or her pectoral fin which she would pull out of the water and slap it back down, all the while blowing a high pitched whistling sound out her blow hole. This lasted about 20 minutes and then the Killer Whales just swam off leaving her uninjured. I suspect that they were just testing to see if she was injured or sick to make an easy meal. When she was healthy and strong, they must not have felt she was worth the effort.

Jim Smith

I until expectantly came across a mermaid sunning herself on a rock in the middle of the Deschutes one October many years ago. Her head was tilted backwards, and her long brown hair extended beyond the middle of her back and touched into the water. Not wanting to disturb her, I moved upstream a hundred yards to begin fishing, and promptly hooked, and lost a rather large steelhead, one of only 2 I encountered during a week of fishing.

May 31, 2011, Rio Grande between S. Fork and Creede, CO, 11:15 A.M. Wading river across from road to Creede which has a regular traffic flow. Came up out of river to get rid of some coffee and as I was pulling down chest waders, my Brittany charged up the hill and flushed a full grown mt. lion which had been hiding beneath/behind a bus just 60 feet away. Dog chased cat. I called dog back and waited a couple of minutes before climbing the short hill to the mesa above. Cat was walking slowly past my pickup a couple of hundred yards away and proceeded to stroll into the woods. Am told such close encounters are rare. I could have lived without the experience, thank-you.

Here's one of those Alaska salmon pics of yours truly (just before seeing the whales!) `


http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...1231677280.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by John Rhoades

I until expectantly came across a mermaid sunning herself on a rock in the middle of the Deschutes one October many years ago. Her head was tilted backwards, and her long brown hair extended beyond the middle of her back and touched into the water. Not wanting to disturb her, I moved upstream a hundred yards to begin fishing, and promptly hooked, and lost a rather large steelhead, one of only 2 I encountered during a week of fishing.

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I understand those mermaids will frequently turn up the Deschutes from the Columbia if the water temperature is right.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Byron haugh

it was mid summer and the flows were low coming out of the reservoir. We were fishing just below the reservoir. I was fishing a small pool there and my son was just downstream. In the distance, we could hear the high pitched sounds of folks flying their remote controlled model planes.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a white blur and then saw a huge splash near my fly. One of the airplanes had lost control, run out of gas, and quietly crashed next to my fly!
.

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I was fishing out of my kayak in Long Island Sound near Fishers Island, NY.
Two real stunt planes were having their fun with a simulated dog fight.
One of the planes buzzed me, lost control and crashed.
The pilot died.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/ny...unt-plane.html

I might have used this one before:

Memorable, not really "strange" and may not quite fit into the category "while you were fishing", more like "while you were camping" stories, but it does involve "fishing". Anyway, in the early to mid-80's my parent's would take me and my cousin camping at Worthington State Forest in NJ, it was along the Delaware River. Back then, the main road to get there had washed out and you had to get there by going way out of the way, so the campground was not too popular and my parents were able to get a campsite right on the river. One trip my cousin brought a small, homemade toy sailboat (think of the simple sailboat kits, flat piece of wood shaped in a rounded triangular shape, dowel and a paper sail). I don't know if the kit included the hook on the bottom because you were supposed to tie some kind of weight to it for stability or if my cousin added it, but before bedtime, he tied a leader with a fishing hook on it, approx. 6" long or so, tied the boat to a nearby tree and let the boat float while we slept, but he did not bait the hook. Woke up the next morning, my cousin went to check his boat while I went down to throw rocks and he called me over excitedly. There was a tiny dead fish hooked by the fishing hook under the boat. It was about the smallest fish that could bite the hook, no longer than 2" long. No one, especially my dad, thought that an un-baited hook in rigged like it was would catch a fish, surprised us all.

Still remember it as if it were yesterday.

Paul

This happen years ago. I was into carp fishing, and I would get up early to fish the tidal rivers and creeks near my grandmother's home in Maryland. There was one small tidal creek I liked to fish where it ran into a small basin off the C&D Canal. Parking near by with a short walk down the road to the bridge that crossed the creek. It was early with a full moon setting in the west. Still bright enough to cast shadows. I set up my lines but after a few minutes I felt like someone or something was watching me. I turned around there was a cat staring at me, moon light reflecting in its eyes. I was a bit spooked and tossed a rock at it and it disappeared. I went back to watching my lines but in a few minutes I had the same feeling. I turned around and there was a woman dressed in a white nurses uniform, looking at me and shaking her head. Then she walked off down the road, without a sound. A car came down the road not long after she had started walking. I climbed up the bank and I looked down the road and it was empty. I packed up my tackle, ran down to my car and took off. I never fished that place again.

While preparing to launch my raft at the Emil Plum access on the Snoqualmie River I was standing, looking downstream, and I think I actually ducked as I heard the loud whir of wings, seemingly right over my head. I looked up to see a large hawk in hot pursuit of a duck which I took to be a female mallard. About fifty feet downstream of me the duck dove directly into the water while the hawk pulled up and began to circle. After a few moments the duck popped up again and the hawk immediately stooped, to be greeted by a spreading ring of water as the duck submerged again. The same maneuver occurred at least five more times as the duck would pop up and the circling hawk would dive. Finally (and I could almost see him shaking his head in disgust) the hawk gave up the game and soared off; shortly the duck re-surfaced and went about her business.

On another sea-run cutthroat trip on the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, we had anchored up for a late lunch just downstream of the lower end of a steep-sided, rock-walled canyon. While enjoying a sandwich and a beer, I was startled by a drawn-out, rumbling, roar and turned around in time to see a column of water fountaining twenty feet in the air as a boulder the size of a small automobile crashed down the near-vertical wall and into the river. Rowing back upstream we could see the naked scar over a hundred feet up, near the upper edge of the wall where the chunk of rock had torn loose, bringing down a torrent of dirt and uprooted trees with it.

I actually caught a fish? ;)