An interesting experience

[OttoDita]

One day, I was pike fishing with my baitcasting gear. Used a big smelt, and I got snagged up, so I started to pull and tug, and it freed. So I'm sitting there for a while and I was watching the seaguls play.

So I see this gul swoop down and take this big dead........smelt, from the top of the water. Apparently when I freed up the line, it broke off the weight. So my smelt floated to the top.

So anyways, he wasn't hooked, but he also wouldn't let go. So I reeled him in to about 20 feet of me when he let loose. I was being gentle with him, since I thought he was hooked. It's illegal here to harm one of those beech chickens.

Thanks everyone for the stories. Some of those had me LMAO. And for you folks that fish in bear country, you're all nuts

Shane

[brhoff]

Well, this spring I was fishing a smaller stream flow and it was early AM, just rained and this little stream was rolling pretty good...but no more than 3 feet or so at it's deepest so I figured...what the heck?

I knew it was that morning or no time to fish for at least another week so I hopped in and started a fairly miserable upstream wade consisting of much debris dodging and questioning of sanity.

As "luck" would have it about 1/2 hour in, I got a Smallie and that just egged me on to continue...until....

I felt something hit the back of one leg, then the other...then oddly enough the thing hit the front of one leg then the other and seemed to grab on and started gripping the opposite leg...being prudent of safety, I quickly jumped 3-4 feet in the air freeing this thing from my legs...goose bumps rising, chills and the willies setting in for sure.

About 3 feet ahead I saw a furry something of about 2 feet wash up and around, struggling in an eddy...muskrat, baby beaver, not otter like, who knows but after being hit with an animal, I decided it was time to reel up and go home!

[dixieangler]

Try being waist deep in a Smokey Mt stream and have a Copperhead swim right toward you. No shot-gun just a fly rod to beat him. BILL

Yeah. Been there, done that in Georgia. Went between the legs of my fishing buddy (still don't know how he was lucky enough not to get bit) and then went to the left of me downstream.

[Wingsdlc]

Before I had my drivers license I would ride my bike about five miles to town to meet a friend and fish the lake in town. We fished quite a few different places and ended up next to the bridge at the mouth of the white river that connects our town with the neighboring town. The two of us were both fishing spinning rigs with tiny torpedoes. My friend cast out somewhat next to a mother duck and her babies. I don't remember for sure but I think he was at least ten feed away from them. Well one of the babies got as curious as a cat and found the need to check out the tiny torpedo. My friend gave the line a good jerk trying get the bait away from the baby but ended up hitting it instead. The mother duck saw this happen and unleashed some fury on the tiny torpedo getting extremely tangled up in the process. Now here we were, two kids about thirteen to fifteen years old with a mother duck at the end of our line trying to reel the thing in without making too big of a fuss and hurting the duck. It seems as we soon as the extravaganza began about ten boats decided to drive by. I guess they thought we had a nice fish. I remember being pretty embarrassed about it, thinking nothing to look at here folks just caught a duck and we will put it back where we found it. We were good young sportsmen who practiced catch and release after all and didn't have a duck stamp anyways.

We were able to free the duck with out nay major harm done to it that we could tell.

Next time I will have to tell the story of the seagull.