i would like to hear some of your stories.

what is the strangest, or most unbelievable or craziest thing that ever happened to you or a buddy on the water?

This last fall, my wife, son-in-law and I were on CC when a storm started moving in from the southwest. The clouds were still very far away and I had just heard one soft rumble of thunder far off in the distance. I started hearing some buzzing---kinda like radio static. It would come and go. I made another cast and the buzzing had started again when I realized that the buzzing started when I raised my rod tip and stopped when I lowered it. At that moment, my son-in-law said to my wife, "Oh my God, look at your hair!". I looked over and my wife's long hair was standing straight up on top of her head, at least a foot straight up in the air. My heart skipped a beat because it immediately dawned on me what was happening. I calmly but firmly told them to stick their rod tips in the water and reel in as fast as possible. I fired the motor and we got to the house as fast as my boat would run. We laugh about it now but it's a little scary how close we came to being lightening strike victims.

wow got to watch that weather. i learned the hard way to.

About 10yrs ago I was fishing Lewisville in my 14ft Al boat with an old 18h Johnson. I took a look in the direction on my truck and I saw a guy walking around the parking lot looking inside vehicles. I cranked up the 18h and headed back to the ramp. When I got to the ramp the buster was gone. I got out the boat and took a look around and all was good. I got back in the boat and pushed off the back. I cranked up the motor and it was still in gear, almost at full throttle going forward. I did flip out the back of the boat and landed face down in the water. Luckily, the boat ran right up on the bank. I just know that buster was standing behind a tree laughing his butt off. If someone had a camera they would have won Americas funniest video hands down. I managed to regroup and ended up catching a few spawning Crappie.

Rodney

back in the early 80's i had my 16 ft fish and ski wide open going across the lake ( about 15 minutes before day break ) .i luanched at east fork on lavon heading out to the brockdale ramp area .all i could here was the motor when all of the sudden i hear something like a cats meow out in the middle of nowhere ( probably 40 ft of water) the the noise started to get faint .i was gtting curios so i turned back around to see what it was as i slowed down now i could hear a "heeelp" in the distance and i got closer honing in on the plea for help i noticed it was a guy sitting on a submerged tree in nothing but a pair off soaked blue jean cut offs .he pleaded for me to take him in .i was very skeptical so i stopped about 15 yards away thinking maybe it was some type of set up and another boat was coming to jack me up . i asked him what he was doing there and he said he went for a late night swim and got too far out and couldnt make it back so he was forced to drift until he came to the tree.after seeing he was freezing nad it was a legit story i eased my boat and let him get in . i asked him what area did he want me to take him to and he replied " i dont care just get me on land " when he got of at the little ramp close to collin park he got off and thanked me very much and he got on his knees and kiss the concrete ramp . ill never forget that one

About 6 yrs ago, me and a buddy were fishin for spawning smallmouth in the Rocky River up in Ohio, and he reeled in a 15 foot python that somebody must have let go in the woods or something. We were in the local papers, and everything. It was just one of those "pirahnas in the lake" type of ordeal, everybody was scared to wade that dayLOL.
BOB

well, this wasnt on the water it was shore fishing. me and jim were night fishing for walleyes in south dakota about 200 yards from our truck down an abandoned road. the walleye limit is 4 a piece and we had 7 between us.we saw lightning about 20 miles away and watched it for and hour or more. it didnt seem to be moving too fast. just needed one more walleye. well, the wind started to come up and the stars disappeared and it got real dark. then the lightning was closer, maybe ten miles away now. i said to jim, its gettin weird out here. jim says, its gonna rain i can smell it! jims pole went down with walleye number 8 about the same time a bolt of lightning lit up the sky directly in front of us. we started to scramble picking up our gear and the sky unloaded a massive downpour on us. jim and i got our poles all tangled together in our haste to hurry. you have never seen two 40+ year old guys in such a scurry to grab our stuff and run to our truck. we got completely soaked to the bone by the time we got there,but we limited out on walleyes and we didnt get hit by lightning.

I had one similar to one above. Lightning storm had passed and my fishing buddy was rerigging a plastic worm when his empty line lifted up off the deck and stood erect in the sky. He let more line out and it went straight up. Once he had let out about 20 yards, it started pulling line off the reel without any assistance and going up. Then I looked up at him and his (he was trying to cover up a bald spot) combover was standing up and looked like a Mowhawk haircut but off center. I nearly fell overboard laughing.

i caught a fish one time

Fished a tournament on Darbonne a few years back. I was with my cousin in his old Kingfisher. Was the first big tournament I'd fished.
The first day we knocked a ear off the prop, and broke the transducer off. We finally found a dock on the edge of a creek channel. Caught 4 nice fish in a few minutes fishing. We left all cocky that night thinking we had them figured out.

Next morning fog rolled in! We spent the first three hours looking for our dock.
About 10 am we find our dock and never get a bite all day.
On the way to the ramp we decided to fish some timber. First tree we pulled up to James catches a 1.25# fish. I drop down and hook a monster!!! I finally realize it is a 8 inch Crappie wrapped around a limb...
We decide to move back to the first tree. He hits the t/m and it jumps off in the lake and sinks!
We give up then. On the way to the weigh in we keep telling our selves that it was a tough day and WHO could have caught fish in that lake today?
First team to weigh had 7 fish that weighed 13.99#!
We finish last out of 30 teams.
It was a very humbling experience....

I don't know if I can adequately describe this tale but I'll give it a try.

When I was 13 or 14, my cousin from OK was visiting, so Dad and I took him on an afternoon/evening of fishing and then frogging at night in the Atchafalaya River Basin. This was before the basin was cut up into nothing but pipelines.

The fishing wasn't good so we had gone all over the basin. We put in at the Belle River Spillway ramp on the intercoastal if you know the area. Dad's boat was a 14' aluminum Duracraft bateau. I think he had a 25 Evinrude back then but if not something similar.

We were in the Grand River or Lake (I forget which - age???) area and dark had descended upon us. So we began to head for the area Dad planned for us to frog. I think it was Duck Lake. Anyhow, with dark upon us in Grand Lake, the weather came upon us with lots of rain, thunder and wind.

Because of the ominous situation we were in Dad headed into one of the many no name back bayous off of Grand Lake to get shelter. Grand Lake is called Grand for a reason so the boat ride wasn't a picnic. My cousin and I were riding side-by-side on the middle section and of course, Dad was at the stern.

I was drinking a Nehi Orange pop (something like what you were drinking at the time just sticks with you) and as we headed for the no name bayou at the best speed the motor could muster, I finished the pop.

Don't get mad at this point - remember it was the early 60's and I know it was wrong to do this so don't fuss at me. With the rain beating down upon us, and the boat not exactly going easy, I didn't want to hold on to the pop so I decided to throw it away.

The way I figured it, if I threw it way up in the dark, and with the wind blowing in our faces, the bottle would go over the backside and no one would know any better; only one thing I didn't figure on.

As I punched my cousin in the side and indicated to him thru hand signals what I was going to do, I lipped the bottle neck with my fingers and with a mighty toss from my now very WET fingers the bottle went ahead (not back) of us and as the ALUMINUM bateau went forward and the wind in our face the bottle went up and came down right in front of Dad's feet just as we were hopefully entering the safety of the bayou.

What a racket it made spattering every which way and causing Dad to momentarily lose control of the boat. The boat headed directly to the bank where a fairly large tree was semi-layed down from the bank right at water level. Lo and behold, as the front of the bateau approached the tree and bank at the same time (picture the right front of the bateau striking the tree roots and the left angling for the bank) a 2.5 to 3lb bass jumped into the front of the boat scaring my cousin and I that much more. I, of course, took complete credit for the 'catch'.

Anyway, things settled down. Of course that was after I took a cajun oral horse whipping. Boy, was my dad steamed. We all ended up ok and I don't even remember if we got any bullfrogs.

I know words don't to the tale justice but at least I can laugh about it now.

Was when I was back in Buffalo, NY out on Lake Ontario fishing for Smallmouth where the Niagara River feeds out into the lake... I was throwing a 7" Lizard (Green Pumpkin) on a glass and brass Texas rig in 15-25ft of water when we decided it was time to move... I reeled the lizard up from the bottom as fast as I could and got stopped cold about 10 ft from the boat. It was pulling... HARD and I of course set the hook on what became my favorite fish I have ever caught. Landed a beautiful 54" musky after abouot 10 minutes of watching it roll and tail-dance. There were alot of other boats around watching this happen and I will never forget it. I've caught alot of muskys on accident... but never as good as that one was.

I was 15yrs old, fishing for crappie with a coach at my high school,(my drivers ed/field trip)! We where catchen crappie like crazy, I got hung up on some brush, and had to break off. I was putting on another Jig, and had the knot tide, and was useing my teeth to cut the extra line, and yep sure enough Coach hooked a bass. He was running around to the other side of the boat and got tangled up in my line, and yank I caught myself! Perfect hook set right threw my lip. From that day on i use clippers to cut my line. Life lesson learned!!!

When I lived out in Southern California, I did a lot of salt water fishing at night. One night a friend and I went out to fish the Long Beach breakwater (about 2 miles offshore) for calico bass. There was no moon that night, so it was as dark as the inside of a cow. About 10:00 I heard a very soft sound that was something between a siren and a whine. It would come and go about every couple minutes. finally I ask my friend if he heard it, and he said yes, but didn't want to ask me cause he thought he was hearing things. The sound strated getting louder and then the ocean behind my boat and out about 100 yards started to softly glow. As the sound got louder, the glow got brighter. About this time, I definately needed a change of pants. Just when it looked like the glow was going to break the surface, and the sound was so loud that it hurt our ears...everything stopped and went back to dark and quiet. We decided that we had enough fishing for one night and headed in. We never did find out what it was...and I'm not really sure that I ever wanted to anyway.