interesting nature encounters while fishing

[hap]

After many years of fishing very close to brown bears and black, moose, caribou, even sheep, and mountain goats, I have had a whole slew of very close encounters... In two weeks this spring we had at least 200 encounters with Kodiak brown bears (many were the same bears repeated) .

A few years ago we had a Kodiak bear pop out of the brush no more than 25 yards from us and I stood him down and made him go around us because we had a bunch of fish and did not want him to get the idea we could source them for him. It all happened pretty fast and when the bear was moving away I recognized him as a very big bear that had been very aggressive towards me in the past... Enough so that I simply left the stream when he showed up. As he was going away he suddenly had a very ugly bowel movement and I realized he probably was grumpy atop his reputation (with me) as a dominant alpha critter.

As a kid my father left me to direct him to a mountain goat from the lake side with signal flags. After he killed the goat I went fishing and stumbled onto a sleeping boar brown bear at very close range. I backed out as quietly and quickly as I could. I do not think the bear even woke up.

Last time I was out we saw a ridiculous number of porcupines... Enough we lost count, but well over a dozen in a single day.

Many years ago I watched a fox fishing for pike in flooded grass. He caught several and ate them right up.

[Mike Thomas]

Not fly fishing but in the late eighties in Kenya I was sitting up to my neck in Lake Baringo on a very hot day, fishing for perch and catfish with cheese for bait and cooling off at the same time when a volley of rocks whistled past my head and splashed in the water about 20ft away, followed by a big wake moving away from the rock splashes as a big crock I had not seen moved off! The local kids who chucked the rocks had, luckily for me, spotted the crock moving in to range, I suppose attracted by the struggling fish on the end of my line.
I gave those kids all the fish I had caught, they deserved them more than me!
All the best.
Mike

[aged_sage]

Several years ago, four of us were fishing from the bank of a 7,000 acre private lake for bass. The lake also had a healthy population of alligators. We were having a very productive morning using spinner baits. An 8 ft 'gator ultimately showed up, and chased every bass we caught all the way to the bank. We had to retrieve like crazy to keep this guy from getting our fish. After we had gotten the fish out of the water, the 'gator would swim off about 30 yards, and submerge. One of my buddies made a nice long cast after one of the 'gators failed chases, and while retrieving a substantial spinner bait, he lamented that he had hooked a submerged log. He was finally able to get it to move towards him, as he desperately wanted to retrieve his lure. Suddenly, the gator popped up with the spinner bait securely held in it's mouth! He was "retrieved" to within about 30 feet of the bank. We all refused our buddy's offer to let us unhook and release it; so, he wrapped the line around his hand and forearm and broke the guy off, after getting him to within about fifteen feet of us. The 'gator slowly swam away, turned, and gave us a long glaring look before submerging; the spinner bait still dangling from it's mouth.. We all agreed that we had had enough "fun" for one day, and left the 'gator to solve his spinner bait problem on his own.

[GILs_GONE_WILD]

One day while "fishing", actually just sight seeing with a fly rod in my hand I was on the Chattooga River. I was on the South Carolina side and the sleek, hard bodied, gorgeous blonde was sunning herself on a huge rock on the opposite side of the river with her top laying beside her. Wow, I LOVE nature and fishing!!!

[zaxaca]

GILs wins.

[EdD]

I kicked a squirrel in the head once....

Somehow or other that's less of a shock coming from you...

Have y'all started a chapter of Creek Chubs Unlimited in Kansas?

Ed

[quivira kid]

I tried, but since our creeks are all dry, there are no creek chubs of which to celebrate their existence and/or provide habitat. Kind of unfortunate. The rainbow teal that inhabit similar environs are confused as well...

[FishnDave]

I've had my encounters while fishing. Each event is interesting and special in its own way. It'd be tough to pick even a few of the best, so instead I'll just list the non-human critters involved:

skunks, owls, beavers, muskrats, raccoons, mink,
alligator, deer, ducks, snakes, osprey, eagles,
woodland caribou, bear, moose, porcupine, fox,
snowy owl, pelicans, herons, egrets, turkeys,
and snapping turtles

[Gigmaster]

Gils got my vote.....!!! Now that's wildlife......

One day while "fishing", actually just sight seeing with a fly rod in my hand I was on the Chattooga River. I was on the South Carolina side and the sleek, hard bodied, gorgeous blonde was sunning herself on a huge rock on the opposite side of the river with her top laying beside her. Wow, I LOVE nature and fishing!!!

[Gigmaster]

One night in 1973, I was night fishing for catfish on Lake Lewisville (formerly Garza-Little Elm), near Tower Bay, Tx. It was about 2:00 AM, on a cool Oct. night, and my youngest older brother was there with me. We always watched stars a lot, and on this night, the sky was especially clear, with millions of stars, everywhere. This was back in the days before they gated off lakes, and marked them "Day Use Only", and there were no streetlights installed, or camp sites, and you could fish without being bothered by anyone....I had just put a channel cat in the fish basket, when my brother called my attention to the sky.

There was a very bright light, much brighter than all of the stars, and globe shaped. It very much resembled an opaque hollow globe with a light inside of it. It was hovering at our 9:00 high position, to the East. I couldn't be sure of it's altitude, because there was nothing close by it to judge it's size by, but I guessed it was about 30' in diameter and around 500 ft altitude. It started out as orangish-white, but shifted to a reddish hue, and back to white, occasionally. It was not the moon, because the moon was also clearly visible in the east, and was only at the 1/4 phase. There were no other markings on it that we could see. Our dachshund, Bruno I (I still have one of his grand-puppies, Bruno III...he was a great dog, and so is his grandpup), started yapping at it vigorously, so it was obviously really there, or he was hallucinating, too. There was no sound other than the wind and the trees. The wind was blowing from the E. at around 5 mph.

The object hovered over the lake for a few seconds, then moved to the west, for a few miles, not fast, but deliberate. It hovered a bit near the Tower Bay water tower (about 5 miles away), then moved back to it's original position in the east. I guessed it's speed to be no more than 150 mph, at that time. It made a few more identical passes from east to west, hovering for as much as a minute at each end. After the fourth pass, it shot rapidly straight up, and disappeared, from view, in less than 2 seconds. About a minute later, 2 F-4 Phantoms with 301st Tactical Air Wing (out of Carswell AFB, Ft. Worth, Tx) insignia (I had just returned from a tour in Vietnam, so I was familiar with A/C markings) screamed by at around 1500 ft altitude, from east to west, and made hard climbs, out of sight, after passing the water tower (at Tower Bay, Tx.). After that, things returned to normal, and my brother and I went back to fishing, and discussed the incident.

To this day, neither one of us has ever found out what it was we witnessed. My guess is that it was some sort of rare natural phenomena that triggered a SAC radar scope somewhere, and the Phantoms were dispatched to check it out.

That's probably the weirdest thing I've ever seen while out fishing.