Oh Wow. Beautiful fish.

Butterfly or Long-fin carp.

Many years ago, while working for Bass Pro as an event coordinator, I was helping some Boy Scouts with their fishing merit badges. We were out at the pond in the evening and there was something flying back and forth over the water. I thought it was a sparrow stealing some late night insect snacks. One of the boys cast a lure out and that "bird" fell to the water. When he reeled it in, we saw that it was a small bat. I used a big roll of paper towels and pliers to free it (luckily the barb didn't penetrate). After instructing the boys on what to do if they encounter a bat, I carried it over to a nearby tree and let it latch on. He stayed there for a few minutes before taking off.

I caught this Lunker tire on a jigging spoon, absolute misery trying to reel it in; but I didn’t want to lose that much braid or my lure.

A little fact about ocean sunfish


The sunfish weighs between 545-4,409 lb, but its brain is about 0.17 oz, making it one of the dumbest fish in the world.

No picture, but I skipped a frog under some overhanging trees once and had a blowup. Within about 5 seconds I realized it wasn't a fish. Dang racoon had jumped on my frog and was taking it back up the tree. Say taking because there wasn't much I could do to stop it. Never had a hook in him thankfully and I guess he got tired of tug-o-war and let the frog go.

That would have been fun to reel in.

is that at Veterans?
nice koi from Lake A also

great thread
all pics are interesting

That sure is perdy is 😍

Fun thread. Had a few of unusual catches that would have made great pics but happened before the days of cell phones. 1, was freelining mullet off the north jetty at port a and had a pelican dive bomb my bait. He got hooked in the upper bill but luckily couldnt get airborne so i was able to reel him in. He put up quite a commotion but managed to avoid that beak and finally got him unhooked relatively uninjured aside from a hole in his bill. 2, was wading in a pond exposed by low water levels at choke canyon and threw a topwater next to a log a few yards away. The log suddenly came alive and i had a 3-4ft gator on the end on my line with two treble hooks stuck in his mouth. I was a broke student at the time and didnt want to lose an expensive lure so i literally wrestled a gator in waist-deep water to get my lure back. We both survived intact. 3, i was on an offshore trip with dolphin docks; it was my first trip with my own tackle. I was drifting a live pinfish when something nearly yanked my brand new offshore rig out of my hand. A second later a bottlenose dolphin jumped out of the water and after a few more spectacular jumps, proceeded to spool my tld in about 15s. After the crew had a good laugh they were nice enough to respool my reel with line they had on the boat. Thanks to whomever started this thread, I’m chuckling to myself as i write this, all great memories.

Great stories. I have had many fun, productive and unusual trips with Dolphin docks.