Too Weird to Believe

Simply stated, fishing’s unpredictable, and you never know what might happen.  You notice the odd happenings, and over time you can collect a unique set of stories.  Put your time in and you'll get to enjoy your very own assortment of occurrences Too Weird to Believe!

I’m not an ardent fly fisher, but I did start fly fishing at an early age.  I’ll save my stories for another time, but let me just say now that a couple of friends tested the boundaries of strangeness with their early fly fishing attempts.  One friend hooked up on his first two casts, ever, with a fly rod.  Unfortunately the first hook-up was with a duck; and the second was with his own ass.  The former provided some distraction, confusion and panic.  The latter was raw slap-stick comedy; I doubt Mantan Moreland (of “Three Stooges” and other fame) could have done a more entertaining bit.  The images this provided were burnt permanently into my young brain; I’m glad I went fishing that day. 

Mantan Moreland - from the web

I had tipped off another friend about a hot, after-school bite on The Pond, and he arrived with a fly rod.  With 10 or 11 years of life experience and wisdom, I seriously doubted his claims of previous catches on the fly.  I especially doubted his claims when his perpetual false casts never allowed the fly to alight on the pond’s surface.  He was after all, “fly fishing,” and I guess anybody can catch a fish from the water.  He missed out on a good bite; the fish preferred to stay in the water, ignoring his flying bait, and both the “location” and “presentation” variables in the equation to fishing success firmed up in my mind.

People can choose to do some weird things, but the rest of my stories here simply involve the fish themselves and physics; no human behavior necessary.   For instance, I suspect the chars are more voracious feeders than are true trout.  As such, they are perhaps more suspect to being lassoed than other fish.  After all, I’ve only been witness to two lassoed fish; they’ve both been chars; and weirder still, my wife Amy subdued both of these.  The first was a Rhode Island brookie that came to the net just fine, but when I went to take the hook out, I got temporarily confused.  Clearly the fish had swallowed the pin minnow; but the small bait had escaped through the fish’s gill.  Expecting the fish to have been snagged, I flipped it over and found that the small single hook (live minnow still attached!) had somehow found the main line and cinched up.  Amy rustled this fish like a true cow-poke, and it was as helpless as a rodeo calf.  The second instance was basically the same, but involved a lake char and a size 9 Rapala on the troll.  I can only wonder how that 6-pronged plug could have snaked through the fish’s gills without finding some tissue; and further wonder how it found the line instead of the fish’s flank.  It seems too unlikely, but I enjoy imagining that moment of the strike, the fish charging with gaping mouth and flaring gills.

Lake char - from the web

Getting cut off by a pike while bass fishing is no unexpected occurrence, but having the opportunity to use the very same lure for the entire session’s entertainment is odd.  One evening, while float tubing on Michigan's Wakeley Lake, I chose to fish for bass with a classic black Jitterbug.  It was a good choice on a couple of counts; it provided good surface action, and it floats!  The first hit was a slashing, splashing strike, and the instant slackness screamed “Pike!” to me.  Having enjoyed the strike, but mourning my lost lure, I was busily re-tying when a blip on the surface 30 feet away announced the return of my plug.  I finned over, picked it up and re-tied with this, instead.  This scenario repeated itself at least five more times that evening; I never landed a pike, but each fish returned the bait.  When a nice bass crashed my bait and came to hand in the full dark, I called it a night, thankful for the action I’d enjoyed.

Black Jitterbug - from the web

Another bass returned another plug to me at another lake.  The strangeness here is that I saw the entire sequence; it was the biggest bass I’ve ever seen or may ever see; and I’ve been somehow unable to use this plug since.  I was fishing an unfamiliar lake, but what seemed like a super-prime spot.  It offered wood, rocks, depth and overhead cover; I expected good things.  It was summer-time and I was burning this particular yellow crankbait and banging it hard against the rock and wood.  On the cast in question, just as the bait touched the cover, I thought I had a strike; but I swung and missed, my line went slack and my bait was gone.  It all happened so fast, and I was banging the bait so hard, that I started to question whether I had actually had a strike, or if I had simply broken off in the cover.  I didn’t have to wonder for too long, though, as I could see my yellow crank moving slowly through the clear water.  As the bait moved closer, the giant bass materialized under the boat.  She deliberately yawned and shook her head; my lure floated to the surface within arm’s reach of the boat.  She disappeared; I never took another bass from this location; and I’ve never again tied on this particular lure.

Summer-time used to be Wet Wading Season for me, and Grand Rapids is blessed with the flow of the Grand River right through downtown.  A size 2 or 3 spinner can be smacked by just about anything here, this time of year, and my catch of a flathead catfish, while unexpected, wasn’t exactly unbelievable.  The weirdness was that I didn’t hook the fish.  Somebody else had, previously, and the cat had broken them off at the main line’s connection to a barrel swivel.  As I swung my spinner downstream, a single tine of my hook found the open end of the swivel, still connected to the catfish by the original fisher’s leader.  I tightened up and it was “Fish On!” – kind of.  I was somewhat confused by the sight of the fish following my spinner by a good 12 to 18 inches, until I was able to witness my inadvertent hook-to-swivel connection.  Oh well, it made for an easy release.

I was once pre-fishing for the annual Ludington salmon tournament with my tournament partner, Eric.  Per usual, pre-fishing was slow, and we tried a variety of locations, baits and presentations.  I was surprised to see Eric’s dipsey diver rod standing straight out from the rod holder, and under no tension.  As he reeled in this line, disappointed at the lost tackle and wondering just exactly what had happened, the wire rod with the one-pound ball started screaming.  That helped the boat’s mood, and I fought the fish to the boat’s stern; almost.  When I got to the wire rod’s weight, its lure was clearly visible and fishless; but there was a bright king salmon 6 feet or so behind.  Getting closer, there was a single wrap of line around this lure’s hook; and that line led to the salmon.  We netted the nice, teen-ager-sized salmon and found Eric’s dipsey-presented lure in its mouth.  I don’t often run a wire rod down the chute like I did this day, for fear of tangling fish caught on other lines.  But how that mono leader, on a lure connected to a now-free ranging fish, ever found and tangled in the wire line, I can’t explain.  How that tangle held, when it presented itself as a single wrap at the end of the encounter, I also can’t explain.   If the fish had simply been caught by the dipsey; simply broken off without finding the wire line; or simply came disconnected during the fight on the wire rod, I wouldn’t have a story.  But these events did happen; and that’s almost too weird to believe.