Encountering wildlife while fishing is always a real treat for me as well. I see all varieties of birds, Great Blue and Great White heron, Green heron, hawks, and owls, turkeys etc. I was fortunate enough to see a Cooper's Hawk snatch a songbird out of the air about 10 feet from my kayak and had a kingfisher snatch my floating mylar minnow off the surface only to run out of line after about 20 feet. Thankfully, I didn't hook him. Snakes (all the time). Turtles (too many to mention except one time when I caught a medium sized snapping turtle on a streamer. There's also an enormous snapping turtle that lives in the lake that I see several times each year. His head is 2/3rds the size of a football and his shell must be 2 1/2 feet long. He usually surfaces right next to my kayak and exhales sounding like a small whale. When I turn to look to see what made the noise, we scare the crap out of each other every time. There are a number of beaver that live in the lake that I encounter at least every other time I'm out fishing and way too many muskrats. There's also a pair of otters that I've been fortunate enough to see once in a while. I also see deer quite often and even had one swim by me while I was fishing in a larger impoundment. Also, while fishing off the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia for Salmon, Orca, dolphin, humpback whales, Sea Lions and eagles were very common. The Sea Lions were a real nuisance. As soon as they heard the drag on the reel start screaming with a fish on, they would plop into the water and very soon, you’d feel a tremendous tug as the rod doubled over to the water, then the line would go slack. They would steal your fish as fast as you hooked them.
Jim Smith