Quote:
Originally Posted by sarcastic
Ok, now photos from '98 are being posted...... Granted a great photo.Inspired by Wiredantz story, what is your best or more accurately your worst lost fish story......
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Well I've lost a few that I will always remember.
Most relevant for this board was a halibut I lost at La Jollla this last year. I hooked it on a Spanish fishing a dropper and thought it was a big leopard shark till I got it right to the yak. It was just barely hooked, with the hook in a little chunk of skin outside the mouth. It was hanging vertical, a sleeper, white side in, with it's eyes facing away from the yak.
I had several choices: I could of taken my time and tried to lay it out on it's side, but it had not yet seen the yak and when it did it would likely take off, and possibly pull the hook. I could try an over the head shot which would allow it to see the gaff and possibly spook it as well, or underneath which was awkward since it was straight up and down, but at least that way it would not see it coming.
I went for underneath and hit it hard but the gaff glanced right off it's gillplate. Andy got it on film...
Naturally it took off and the hook pulled.
It was a really really really big fish, most likely forty plus. I've taken them in the thirties but that fish looked bigger than anything I've got up close. It was simply huge. In hindsight If I had to do it over again I'd pass on the headshot and would come in deep and low well below it's eyes around the belly and gaffed it there where it was soft. Haven't lost one at the gaff since, but I lost that one and it was a nice fish..
Another one that I'll remember was in MDR harbor. I used to run a big sportfisher out of there and when working on the boat at night I'd turn on the underwater lights on the stern and it would raw up huge clouds of bait. Occasionally small seabass would come in for them and every once in a while a legal would show up. You could see them in the lights and every once in a while I'd take breaks from work and fish these fish with little raplala floating minnows on four pound. Only ten feet deep so I'd catch and release them. Caught more then I could count several fish numerous times. One night I was working a little rapala in the lights trying to get a 26 incher to go, and a big four to five foot fish came up out of nowhere and ate it right in front of me right in the lights. Saw it clearly no doubt what it was or as to it's size.
So here I am with a thirty to forty pound class seabass on my little spinning rod with four pound. Oddly it never took a long run but just kind of dogged it like it wasn't even concerned. Never even got it even close to the gaff though and finally after a good thirty minutes it wrapped me on one of the dock pilings. Can't say too much it's not like I ever had a chance, but after that I went to eight pound
For me though the granddaddy of them all is a freshwater fish, a flathead catfish I hooked on the Brazos bellow Granbury dam.
It was back when they still et you wade right up to the dam.
I hooked four of them in some unusual conditions that one night on big 12 inch live gizzard shad I caught with my throw net. All huge fish and I lost them all.
This particular one I had on for 45 minutes on twenty pound. He wrapped me on a concrete structure (baffle) of the dam so I waded in after him into to chest deep flowing water. It was dark but when I got him around the baffle he came up to the top, right in front of my face and he was just huge maybe 18+ inches across eye to eye at the head and well over sixty pounds. He could of been in the seventy to eighty pound range for all I know. The biggest one I have ever seen, and he was right there in chest deep water right in front of my face. I should of just grabbed his gills and drug him the sixty semi odd feet to the rocks but the footing was bad, with heavy current, and he was so big I was a little afraid to grab him because he might of pulled me off my feet and then out of my hands. I honestly figured I had him anyway. I was laughing about it. Talking out loud saying things like: "I got your @$$ beat now Mother F#####r" I mean I knew the other ones were huge, and I had caught several of them in the thirty pound range there before but this fish was in a class by itself. I was completely blown away by his size and just beside myself with pure joy at finally getting one of them after loosing the three others before him.
As I walked him over to shore dragging him to the rocks I was laughing and shouting, and then he rolled on his side and spit the hook maybe ten feet from the waters edge in four feet of water. I literally dove on top of him trying get a grip on him but I could not and he was gone.
It's like I got hit with a sledgehammer in the back of the head. I hooked that fish in probably 1977, and I was just a teen but I still remember it like it was yesterday. It's like burned into my head. I fished the rest of the night but did not hook another one. I never saw those big shad or the conditions in there like that again and though I got a lot more big fatheads out of there I never hooked anything even remotely that size again. I still occasionally dream about that fish and would give almost anything to get another shot at him. The old farts probably dead by now but it still kills me to think about it. Hell of a fish and I was so close to landing it.
Oddly one of the most memorable lost fish for me was not a giant like the one above but just a little fish. It's certainly my oldest memory of one that got away. I was very little maybe five or six or so, and my dad took me out in a boat fishing for the first time at I think Eagle Mountain lake, with a family friend Uncle Len. There was a run of white bass or sand bass as we called them in Texas, in the winter and the fish were by a powerplant outlet in warmer water. There was a fence at the outlet made of half inch cable and we tied up to that, but though we fished for hours we did not catch anything. Finally we decided to head in and my dad tied on a little lure a "Pico Perch" to my line for me to troll on the way back. So there I was I was holding a little solid glass rod with some old level wind with dacron on it when a sandbass hit the lure. I was so excited and reeled it in like a reel pro for a kid but then right at the boat when we could even see the fish the rod butt slipped in between the two haves of the little orange kids coast guard pfd I was wearing, and the reel handle snagged and twisted up in the tie straps to the preserver making it so I could not turn it. My Dad kept saying: "Reel it in Jim" "Reel it in", but I could not get that damn handle to turn. eventually the fish got off and then my Dad realized what was wrong and untangled me. We ended catching a bunch of them trolling lures up and down the cove that day but the only one a remember clearly is that first one flopping around when I just could not turn the handle. Man I hated those vests after that. For a while I got mad every time they made me put it on
Well there you have it. Recent and old. There's only a handfull but I have lost a few I'm not likely to forget.
Jim