how about fessing up, I did in the “Green Zone”
with all of that flyline laying around, and an eight foot long rod , and a boat , and anchor lines, and rope cleats, and fish on the line…
What is your best ( or worst) tangle story???
Hey Druid Dude,
Yeah, been there, done that, got the T-shirt!G Lets see ya top this
one. Embarrassing to say the least, but fess up I did.G Including the
face plant.
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/feature … 02405.html
Warm regards, Jim
I bow before the master!!! :roll: :roll:
lets have 'em guys… more >>>more…more
zzdruid,
I worst tangle story is more a heartbreak as opposed to taking time to untangle lots of line. I was fishing my lake on the “flats” for gill and bass when a noticed a tailing carp about 100 feet away. The tail looked the size of my hand so I knew it was a big one. I’ve always wanted to land a carp on my fly rod so I carefully motored close ehough to the carp to get a good cast. Carp are constantly speared on my lake, so they are very wary and I get very few opportunities to site fish carp. I grabed my 6wt with a grub imitation and after a few casts I managed to hook it. The carp took off like a freight train. Unfortuately, the line had tangled around my foot and my 3X tippet snapped like a thread. I wish I would have had a chance to land the fish, but the one little tangle prevented my catch of the summer.
caribe
A tangle?? Me?? Nah! Never!! heh-heh-heh.
don
My most memorable tangle came when I was about 16. I was with my Paw Paw and my dad fishing in Blue Mtn. Lake in Arkansas. Bass were schooling and attacking almost anything we tossed at them. We were all using baitcasters, and this was in the days of braided lines. I was using a Lucky 13. I reared back to heave that monster plug at a school that was blasting some shad on the surface, and proceeded to snap my line and sail the Lucky 13 out of sight into the woods. I worked for 3 hours or more trying to untangle that particular backlash. My dad and Paw Paw sympathized with me, but didn’t slow down their fish catching. Does anyone know what it’s like to sit in the boat unable to fish while bass up to 2-3 pounds are being snatched uip on almost every cast. Paw Paw even caught one that prolly topped the 5 pound mark.
Was indeed one of my saddest days of NOT fishing while on the lake with a fishing pole in my hands. I eventually had to cut the line off. I would have cut it off sooner, but of course no one had any extra line I could use to re-spool. 
It really hurts to miss out on a hundred fish day!!!
Caribe, I had a similar experience, but I caught the tangle in time… I hooked a nice carp on a Lake Michigan flat, and the thing started peeling line… I looked down in time to notice the line wrapped around the butt of my fly rod, and freed it up just as the last bit of slack was getting pulled off.
jsalkas,
Sounds like your tangle had a happy ending. Did you eventually land the fish? I seen some of the carp in Lake Michigan when I fished for salmon off the breakwalls. They are monsters.
caribe
I won’t even get into backlash on level wind baitcasting reels or bird nest on spinning reels. Both are like flying a helicopter, too many moving parts sooner or later somethings going to mess up.
Float tubing down the Hooch a couple of year back my slack line hung on a snag in fast water. I could not get back to the snag, eventually had to let go let the line pull through the guides down to the backing where I cut it and retied. It added drama to the day since being the world’s second worst trout fly fisher I wasn’t catching any fish that day.
zzdruid;
Last week on a float trip down the Au Sable I failed to anounce that I was making a cast (Center seat) and ohiotuber nailed my backcast. We were so badly tangled togather that Capt. Tony had to ground the boat and wade froward to work out the knots!!
I learned a nice trick the other day while fishing for gills from my kayak…
If you look away from your rod while reeling in the line to make sure where the feeding fish are, the tip of the rod will start to spin like a propellor and the line will wrap around, and around, and around, and around… Until you have a nice big wad of line on the rod tip.
I had to clip off the tippet and pull the entire ball off the rod tip before I could get the thing untied. Meanwhile, the gills just kept up their persistent laughter, mocking me with their little fins…
:lol:
Hey Jack,
Seems to me there was another one where I wasn’t looking & got you! Kept Tony busy again! Thank goodness his eyes are better than mine!
Mike
MOturkE… oooooh, pretty! You should have shellacked it and made it into a Christmas decoration.
I am heartily enjoying these tales. Keep 'em coming. I’d contribute but, alas, I don’t tangle. :roll:
Oh, there are so many. Twice I’ve had spools come out of the reel and go spinning toward empty in the river’s current. My worst was not when I was fishing. I had decided to change lines and was sitting in one of those hand-made willow chairs with all the knobs sticking this way and that. The little spool the line was on fell from my lap while I doing the knot between that and the backing, which got the cat going. The phone rang, meaning I dropped the whole mess. When I came back line was everywhere, and as I tried corraling it, it became more and more entangled in all those knobs and the rockers. My wife asked if I was trying to create a human spider web. Biggest line mess ever, on stream or off, in a boat or canoe. It was pitiful. JGW
there I was in a pothole trout lake chasin browns. Working a bit of a bay (well, not a bay really, just a good depression in the shoreline). Coming up on sundown, the perch moved in and latched into my rust-brown WW, with red tag on its butt. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing … perch, perch, perch … WHOA ! fins on surface … I’m not sure if I peep myself, but the browns were wurface swimming, coralling the perch into the bay’ish area to feast. Kinda caught off guard, as one swam between me and shore (I was out about 25-30 ft). Oh yeah, so I cast out to the one out there - not too shabby … it took it - full zing and screaming reel - gonzo. Well, I knew it liked it, but it was gone. About 5 minutes later, they were back, but farther out a bit. I whipped up a cast, and on that ‘just one more false cast’ I do the step into it URGGGHHHHHUGGGHHHH !!! tagged me a nice pint sized willow … :evil: and went home.
Have done relatively the same thing, no trees though - and on that cast that counts (the one you shoot line on to the huge fish) your shooting line abruptly stops … 'cuz it caught under your toe :oops:
I fret the day I have a birdsnest from stripper guide to reel, fly out in the water a ways, and a monster takes the fly and burgers off … :shock: