Fishing Forum

Thought I might ask. What are some of the things you have pulled from the water? (Not meaning fish)
Out of the many things we have pulled out I figured I'd share 3.

1. My wife and I pulled a fellow out at Strawberry.  He had capsized his
    canoe his feet were tangled in 20 lbs test line caught in the weeds,  
    his son in a float tube was holding his head above water and had
    been for 15 min. It was fall and water temp. was 45 degrees.
2. Fishing Minersville as the res. was being drained.  A Labrador retriever      was caught in the current and being sucked the last 15' into the outlet
    pipe. He was swimming for all he was worth and slowly losing the
    contest. If I recall correctly when we got him in the boat he could 
    not stand as he was totally beat.
3. We pulled a water logged and barely floating telephone pole out of
    Gunnison Bend Res. All that was showing was about 1/2" of the side.
    It was about 10' long. Figured it was a wreck waiting to happen.

I pulled two adults and two children out of Strawberry Reservoir after their boat capsized. Saw them clinging to their capsized boat and they only had three life jackets between them.

I have landed a total of 2 rocks, both from the Weber river. I lassoed the first one with the line wrapping around the rock and the hook catching the line. The second rock had some hollow pockets from missing pyrite cubes and the hook caught in one. I was about 5 when I hooked the first one and I still remember the excitement of landing it and the disappointment when I saw what it was. Of course everyone within hearing distance came running to help me land the "lunker" I could barely reel in. I still remember the laughter. Good times.

2 days ago I snagged a real nice campo jacket at Minersville, it was pretty grungy, but I took it up to the house and threw it in the washer. Looked llke brand new when it cam out of the dryer, and it had a box of real nice flys in the pocket to boot.

I snagged a 7’ cal star rod with Shimano Trinidad 40 on it while fishing Hurricane Bank Mexico. $ 600 outfit.

I pulled a big tackle box full of tackle off the bottom of the Alamo river in California while Flathead fishing.

Pluse tons of other less valuable stuff.

Never anything that unusual. Aside from the usual tree limbs, lengths of old rope and stuff, I can only recall reeling in a lure once when it felt like it snagged. I gave a medium tug and it came free but felt heavy and odd - no action. When I reeled it in there was a nice clean Heddon TadPolly lure tangled in my own lure's hooks. Six inches of mono and a snap swivel.

The TadPolly cleaned up perfectly and it's in my collection still. I've never had the courage to tie it on and fish with it, just KNOWing that I'd lose it to some other snag down there!

One time at Lincoln Beach, I was camping down by the water where I had my 20 ft. Pontoon boat. I had come off the water early and was watching some wind surfers play in the 3 foot waves. Well the wind got worse and the waves got worse and one of the surfers went down and couldn't get back up. He was being blown towards Bird Island and I jumped in my boat and went and got him. I lost a small tackle box that got blown off my table. But I think I saved him.

(06-06-2020, 11:31 PM)thatchergreg Wrote: [ -> ]I have landed a total of 2 rocks, both from the Weber river. I lassoed the first one with the line wrapping around the rock and the hook catching the line. The second rock had some hollow pockets from missing pyrite cubes and the hook caught in one. I was about 5 when I hooked the first one and I still remember the excitement of landing it and the disappointment when I saw what it was. Of course everyone within hearing distance came running to help me land the "lunker" I could barely reel in. I still remember the laughter. Good times.

Must of been fairly high test line.  Most likely your dad got tired of your loosing his terminal tackle.
Oh the joys of youth!!!

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In reading the diff. posts I recalled pulling in a pelican at Scofield about 5 yrs ago.
When I hooked up on a cast the action felt odd.  The fish kept fighting but not like anything I could recall but a hard fight.  Just didn't feel right.  After 30 seconds or so I notice this pelican about 50' from shore acting odd.  Finally I noticed that every time the pelican lunged my rod followed suit.
Anyway his feet were all tangled up in mono that I had snagged.  To say the least he was not that happy about being drug up on shore and then having all the line cut off his legs and wings.

Over many years of float tubing I have extricated a lot of things from the water...besides fish.  One of the most memorable was on Cherry Creek Reservoir in Denver.  A hot air balloon recently launched nearby had a malfunction and a sudden loss of hot air (floatation) as it came low over the reservoir where I was fishing in my tube.  It was late fall/early winter and air temps were around freezing and water temps were in the low forties.  The basket of the balloon hit the water about 50 yards from me and I threw up a roostertail in my tube to get there to help if I could.  Neither the man or the woman in the basket had on a PFD or any kind of floatation device.  I gave up my PFD to the woman and the man helped her get it on before they had to leave the basket.  He had radioed for help but it was not yet in sight on shore.  So I had them get in the water and hold onto the sides of my tube while I kicked us all back into shore.  They were both hypothermic by the time we got there but rescue vehicles were arriving and we were able to get them safely ashore and in capable hands.

On Magic Reservoir...near Twin Falls Idaho...a sudden wind came up and I was kicking my way back in to the ramp when I hear the sound of waves slapping on a boat behind me.  I looked around to see a humanless canoe being blown almost directly at me...and a guy standing on the dock a couple hundred yards away, watching his poorly tied craft blow away from him.  He didn't holler and ask for help but I kicked over and grabbed the untied bow line and almost got a hernia (or hisnia?) fighting the wind and kicking back to the ramp against the wind.  The rest of the story?  He took the rope I handed him and retied it to a cleat on the dock...AND DIDN'T EVEN SAY THANK YOU.

Can't recall how many rods and reels I have brought in while jigging or bottom bouncing from my tube.  Most were the worse for wear after long immersion.  But some have been in good shape and with a bit of cleanup and lubing they joined my tackle arsenal.

I have also caught innumerable lures and fishing rigs.  Have caught a couple of large crankbaits that pulled loose from their snags and fought a good fight all the way back to my tube.  The best was a string of pop gear I caught off the point of the island at Deer Creek.  That was a worthy battle indeed.

Can't begin to count the rocks and sticks I have hoisted aboard my inflated craft.  I release them all, even though there is a regulation somewhere that says you can keep any that are "forkhorn or better"...or something like that.

And anchors.  Almost every year I find anchors exposed by seasonally falling water levels.  I don't use them but sometimes keep them and use them for tradesies among my boating acquaintances.

Then there are the keys and cell phones that are revealed as the water drops...particularly around popular launch ramps.  I try to imagine the "stories" behind each of those lost items...and whether any of them resulted in divorce or homicide. 

One of the dest things I ever found while tubing was a brand new kayak paddle...early one March on Willard Bay Reservoir.  I just knew there was a story behind that one.  And there was...belatedly.  I retrieved the paddle and took it home...standing it up in my garage.  Several days later there was a story in the paper about a guy from Idaho who had committed suicide by drowning at Willard.  He had bought a new kayak and since there was no open water yet in southern Idaho he drove to Willard Bay, launched and then just rolled over in his kayak with no PFD.  Some other "citizen" had found the kayak and tried to sell it on KSL.com.  When I read the story I called the rangers at Willard Bay to ask if the paddle I found might be from that incident.  It still had the price tag on it.  They sent someone to my house to pick it up and divulged some of the confidential info they had gleaned about the guy and the circumstances surrounding the situation.  I was glad to get rid of that paddle.

Have not pulled a rescue on a hot air balloon yet. That's a cool story.
Spend any real time on the water and we retrieve both fishing gear and lots of new experiences. Some great and some not so great.

I had forgotten my seagull and pelican stories. Having them attack surface lures or live baits (sometimes in mid-cast!) was pretty common in Florida. The only safe way to de-hook them was to get a towel over their heads and eyes so they'd stop their violent struggling.

Regarding Pat's "forkhorn" wood bass, I always practiced catch and release. Even the tree pounders.

I have snagged and reeled in countless lures and a few rods and reels over the years. At Lake Powell, I snagged another line and pulled a rod and reel in with the live catfish still fighting on the end of the line. At Willard Bay, we stopped the boat to land a fish and my crank bait floated to the surface. A seagull swept down and grabbed it and the fight was on. I have also had seagulls grab my lure in mid-flight. I hooked a grebe one day after it dove and grabbed my jig. When I was a teenager, we came in for lunch at Palie Reservoir (near Manti) and my dad leaned his rod against the camper with a night crawler still on the hook. When we got done eating we found a robin had grabbed the night crawler and got itself hooked.

Snagged and Reeled up a crawdad trap with YUGE crawdads in it. Must have been at the bottom of the lake for a Long time!!

My first trip to Utah Lake in about 2003 with a coworker. We were in his 21' Lowe center console boat, out to the south west of the long arm that comes off of Bird Island. We had both already pulled up a small collection of fishing line balls, rusted hooks, lures, he had snagged and "boated" an old bait casting reel. We were having better luck bringing in "junk" than we were fish. From the slight swing of the boat at anchor, my line would alternate between tight, and slack. Then at a time when it should have been going slack it was doing a slow steady tighten. I got the pole, slow lifted it while tightening the drag, and as I would lift, it felt really heavy and the pole would bend almost double. There wasn't action that indicated a fish to me, and I didn't want to risk breaking my pole. So I was reaching out to cut the line, and Chuck says "hey, let me try". He grabs the pole, lifts and reels, and looks at me and says "it feels like a really big fish, if I get it in the boat can I keep it?" I told him, hey it's your boat, be my guest. So he works it for about 5 min. all the time I'm standing near him with the net. I see a big blob of something just under the water, but no fight. I reach the net down and scoop up whatever it is. WOW, heavy !.  Got it up over the side and it splats down on the deck, lots of mud stuck to what turned out to be a 1 lb. rock full of small holes. I had a good laugh at Chuck and he started to pick it up to toss it back. But I stopped him. I took that rock home, put it in a 5 gal. bucket with a gal. of bleach and let it sit out on the back patio in the sun about 2 weeks and soak till just about all the water had evaporated. Washed it off and then let it sit in sun for another 2 weeks. Then I took and glued a small wood dowel in one of the holes on top, and made a U.S. flag to put on the top of the dowel.  I made a sign "UTAH LAKE ROCK FISH" and put it on the dowel below the flag and gave it to Chuck.
That memento of a trip almost 17 years ago has stayed in my shop at Hill AFB ever since. Chuck left it when he retired, 2 or 3 other folks have had it on their work benches since then. Then last year it was left behind by the person that had it last and had  retired.  Now it is in my office, and I will be retiring the end of this month. I wonder if I should leave it for the shop to keep handing down, or take it with me.