Thread: The Telling of the Fishin Tales Thread

Tell me a tale...
Back when I was in my 20s and livin in Chitown I used to do a lot of illegal fishing. I didnt see it as poaching as most of the time it was hooking minus the cooking just exercising peoples pet fishes. Places ranged from a big game farm outside Elgin that Marshall Feilds help start, to farmers ponds, catfish farms, and abandoned gravel pits. One of our favs was right off the expressway I88 sadly dozened and stripmalled now.
I never bought a liscence, back then only ever saw the fish po po in forest perserves.

The quarrey held a shitload of nice bucketmouths, crappies and big gills almost to many fish as they were begining to get stunted. It was surrounded by dense brush w/ the expection of a few spots in one corner that held some great structure.
It was patrolled by a private sec firm at pretty random times and the dense brush made it pretty easy to escape even when they saw you.

So me and a couple bros are fishin and I come across a big pile of tackle trash. Im pissed cause shit like that lets them know peeps are there. I pick it up and happen to find a lisence.
Dudes specs match me pretty close so Im like hell yeah ground score.
So we get a little brazen and leave the cover and my bud ties into a +5lber Im helping land it when security rolls up my gear is out in the open and far enough away that escape is gonna probaly mean no more gear and it was a good loomis stick.
So we give up. You got one warning in this place and your name in the black book.
One friend had been busted before, the other one and I hadnt. I thought Id save my warning and give them the lisence, turns out hed been caught. I tried to backpeddle my way out but the cops showed up and the two of us were going to the pokey.
Thankfully we gave our gear and a few items that would have led to additional charges to our other friend and the keys to the car to come bail us out.
Well I negillected to fess up to my real name and signed the tresspassing ticket Robert Nesta Marley and was released on ibond.
Just so happens the guy whose lisence I found turned out to be a cop in a neighboring suburb and when he recieved a summons to appear for trespassing wasnt to happy and of course insisted his wallet and id had been stolen.
So they start calling and hounding my buddy about who I was. He played it off as just some fishin brah he met in a bar as a any solid bro would.

They had me on video and continued to hound my friend and threatened to give him the full slamdunk maximum on his trespassing charge.
Since this was begining to harsh our freindship and he was up for a big promotion. I called and made sure the only additional charge would be another attempt to obscure justice misdomeaner charge and turned myself in.

Appeared before the judge and was sentanced to court sup and a $400 fine and never trespass there again. I said yes sir your honor even though the fishin great Ill obey.
He must of been a fellow lip ripper cause he responded you were just fishing and cut the fine in half.

Flashback to last winter while entering Canada when asked my occupation I reponded trophy husband skibum, which while made the border babe laugh also caused a background check which brought up these charges from must of been around 88 and my needing to tell the abrivated version before being allowed to enter.

Dats my tale for today
any others?

Craziest thing I ever saw fishing was below Percy Priest Dam in Nashville. My family was fishing for stripers in the tailrace from the bank. Two guys come roaring upriver in a big bass boat with a 100hp outboard and start drift fishing the fast water in the pool, running laps up from the tailout to the turbines. After a few passes, they decide they've found a sweet spot along the current seam in the pool and want to anchor up on it. So, they run up to the turbines and start to float back down to that spot, quickly picking momentum in the 15,000 cfs rushing out of the turbines. Then, to the suprise of everyone, one of the guys stands up and throws a big anchor off the STERN! He'd tied it to one of the ski rope eyelets and remember a bass boat has a low, squared transom with a heavy motor perched off the end. The boat fucking vanished. The bow went up at an angle and the stern went down like a sub on emergency dive. There were just two shocked guys floating downstream very fast in winter conditions. Then the rope pulled and the boat reappeared 50 feet from where it went down, bottom side up, and it quickly exited the pool and floated out of sight. Fortunately, there was another boat out there or those guys would have died.

I was fishing in Flamingo, right at the edge of the Everglades, coming out of Islamorada (guide out of World Wide Sportsman). We come up to the cut we are going to fish, and anchor up. Right about that time, we watch 3 mexicans launch a row boat from shore. They are fishing with huge tackle and dead fish heads. This was the first time I had fished for Snook, and really the first time I had fished in FL. I had no idea what these guys were planning on hooking. About 30 min. after they launched, they hooked into a 150-200 lb Tarpon. It must have towed that row boat around for 2 hours, with those guys spewing Spanish the whole time. It was like a Mexican sitcom. Near the end, the guide turns to me and says," bet you anything they keep it."
Sure enough, they haul it up to the boat, row back, and load it into their truck with the row boat. Highly illegal. Their truck prolly would have been confiscated as evidence. The guide decided not to call it in. He figured if those 3 guys were desperate enough to eat that bony ass fish, he wasn't going to ruin the rest of their lives too. They obviously had bigger concerns than fishing laws.

When I was a youngster I saw a musky take a chunk out of a woman's leg un in St. Germain, Wisco. I couldn't have been more than 6ish so the memory is foggy but it kept me outta the lake for that trip. Not exactly a shark attack but the thing chomped her once, obviously thinking her leg, (dangling off one of those floating pier things), was a smaller animal that it wanted for lunch.

The fishing part is fairly dull. After the lady got to shore and received some kinda medical attention, (prolly got multiple stitches), my Dad tossed me in the boat with all his gear and fished for the thing for hours. My Mom claims she had to force him to drop me off on shore at dark. He fished until the early morning hours trying to find the monster....he caught a buzz but never saw the musky.

'Bet we are some of the only people to have witnessed a musky attack.

First time ever deep sea fishing. The Hatteras Marlin Clubs annual Blue Marlin tournament in 1996 or so.

4 guys a mate, captain and the boat owner. Each strike on the line gets a guy a turn in the chair, I was 3rd. Guys catch a couple small Marlin and we get some points. The longest line out gets a strike and 2 Marlin can be seen way out, my turn in the chair. First time ever in a fighting chair, and it's a big blue. I get a lot of line in quick and it looks like it's gonna be over, as the captain backs down on the fish. Now we see 2 big blues shadowing the one on line. Captain says the big one is a female and the other two are males chasing her. Who knows if he's right ? I'm freaking out trying to reel this thing in and not lose her.

We get the fish just put outside of the leader length, about 20 feet or so and she comes up broad side to the back of the boat. 54 foot sport boat and she's about 2 feet wider than the stern. The captain freaks out says that's a "grander, that's a grander!!!!". Fish that is probably north of a 1,000 he says. World record is/was at the time 1,200 lbs. or so out of Oregon Inlet.

The mate is just about to grab the leader, she flicks her tail and reels off almost the whole damn spool. That was the closest we ever got her back to the boat. I spent the next 2:45 fighting that fish. Never been so exhausted in my life. Felt like a concrete truck was on the end of the line. She jumped, tail walked and launched over an over and over, what a beautiful animal, the whole time the two males are running right with her.

Mates pouring water over my back, legs, head and the steam is rising off my body as that damn thing pulls the boat around the Gulf Stream. She drives deep and the captain says we finally got her, says she's going down so deep cause she's exhausted, she's exhausted ? I'm almost pukin' my guts out.

I start pumping line to get her up and the leader finally snaps. I was almost relieved, that was the hardest damn thing I've ever done. I had bruises and blisters from that fish for a couple weeks. The reel was fried, the reel holder was bent I've Never worked that hard to get beaten up before.

The pisser was I was an last minute add for a guy who couldn't go. I was registered in his name so I wouldn't have gotten credit for the catch and release, and if we brought her in we would have been disqualified from the tournament. The captain and owner were like " fuck it we're taking that fish in if we land it". I don't like killing fish just for the sake of the catch, I prefer the catch and release, unless it's an eating fish. I don't know if I would have elected to bring her in, we had cameras on board and a pic would have been just as memorable, without the picture in the local paper, record or not.

This other time me and a couple guys went fishing for this monster shark that kept eating beach goers. I told the captain we needed a bigger boat but that fucker just kept trying to bugger this little piss ant marine biologist, singin' sea shantys and talkin about how his destroyer sunk in the "big one" and all his buddies got eaten by sharks. He wouldn't listen to me, and then he got eaten ......heh heh heh heh heh.

About 8 years ago my dad and I took our 18 foot Marlin out to Deep Reef out of Half Moon Bay for salmon. We were a little puckered up as it was our first time taking a boat out in the open ocean. When we got to Deep Reef there were lots of boats there. One in particular was a really nice larger boat. It had about 8 really young guys on it so it seemed like it was somebody's daddy's boat. The swell was pretty big, but spaced. They had twin outboards and had the cover off of one. At first only two guys were back there. But then, just at the wrong moment, they all went back to look the motor- just as the swell headed right towards the stern. It washed over the boat and it sunk in about 2 minutes. I still remember that poor kid standing on the last peice of boat sticking out, cell phone to his ear as she sank. Coast Guard did come and drag her off.

Vacationing in NH with the grandparents when I was about 13. Too old for Storyland so they suggested that we visit a hatchery for a tour. I tied a hook to about 15’ of line and put it in my pocket for the ride. I stalled while on the tour until the group moved on and I made my move. Dropped the line down into one of the pools with the broodstock and hooked a monster. Got busted hauling it up out of the cement pond by a fish and gamer with a full blown case of Tourette’s. Got us all kicked out but they couldn’t do anything to me since I was a minor. It remains the biggest trout I’ve ever caught.