04-14-2003, 07:15 PM
[cool]A good followup thread might be "THINGS I HAVE FOUND WHILE FISHING". As I have previously posted, I have also been a diver for most of my life, and have snorkeled and scuba dived in many fishing areas...fresh and salt water. In addition to tons of cans, bottles and other JUNK, I have found countless lures, rods and reels, guns, car keys (wonder how they got home), glasses (prescription and sunglasses), radios/stereos, walkie talkies, outboards, anchors...you name it. My observations are that people are slobs and fishermen are an unlucky group, that tend to lose things a lot.
One of the more interesting things I have found, while fishing, was a variation of the same thing on two different occasions. That was catching a stringer full of live fish. The first was a metal clip stringer with six nice rainbows, near the island on Deer Creek. I was deep jigging for perch at the time and those still active trout gave me one of the most unusual battles of my angling career. The second stringer was a four foot long rope stringer, absolutely full of small white bass...hooked and recovered near the "bubble up" on Utah Lake, back in the days when that was a good spot for early season whites. Numerous anglers waded and casted into the roving schools of whites and tied rope stringers on their waders to keep their fish. Evidently, somone's granny knot came untied and they lost their harvest. I donated the still wiggling whities to a couple of kids fishing from the bank without any luck. I'll bet their parents were surprised when the kids showed up with those fish.
I haven't noticed anyone mentioning losing fish already in baskets or on stringers, but I know a lot of people lose them. I have seen quite a few boats go roaring off to a new spot with a bunch of fish bouncing on the water beside the boat.
Me, I'm like everyone else. I have lost lure boxes, glasses, knives, rods and reels, etc. But, the worst thing I observed being lost was a set of fins by a fellow float tuber. A fishing buddy had bought a new set of fins, for a trip to Yuba. I tried to talk him into adjusting them, since they looked like they might be loose. No dice. He pulled them on and hit the water. An hour later, the wind came up and we were kicking back against it to hold position over a school of big perch. Suddenly, he got a sick look on his face and said "I just lost a fin". That is disaster in float tubing. You cannot keep your tube moving in a straight line with only one fin. He peeled off and started angling toward shore, losing ground to the increasing wind. The next time I saw him, he was getting out of the water on a distant shoreline, where the wind had finally deposited him. He had also lost the other fin and had no propulsion at all. He had a long hike back to the vehicle and didn't especially care to talk about it on the way home.
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One of the more interesting things I have found, while fishing, was a variation of the same thing on two different occasions. That was catching a stringer full of live fish. The first was a metal clip stringer with six nice rainbows, near the island on Deer Creek. I was deep jigging for perch at the time and those still active trout gave me one of the most unusual battles of my angling career. The second stringer was a four foot long rope stringer, absolutely full of small white bass...hooked and recovered near the "bubble up" on Utah Lake, back in the days when that was a good spot for early season whites. Numerous anglers waded and casted into the roving schools of whites and tied rope stringers on their waders to keep their fish. Evidently, somone's granny knot came untied and they lost their harvest. I donated the still wiggling whities to a couple of kids fishing from the bank without any luck. I'll bet their parents were surprised when the kids showed up with those fish.
I haven't noticed anyone mentioning losing fish already in baskets or on stringers, but I know a lot of people lose them. I have seen quite a few boats go roaring off to a new spot with a bunch of fish bouncing on the water beside the boat.
Me, I'm like everyone else. I have lost lure boxes, glasses, knives, rods and reels, etc. But, the worst thing I observed being lost was a set of fins by a fellow float tuber. A fishing buddy had bought a new set of fins, for a trip to Yuba. I tried to talk him into adjusting them, since they looked like they might be loose. No dice. He pulled them on and hit the water. An hour later, the wind came up and we were kicking back against it to hold position over a school of big perch. Suddenly, he got a sick look on his face and said "I just lost a fin". That is disaster in float tubing. You cannot keep your tube moving in a straight line with only one fin. He peeled off and started angling toward shore, losing ground to the increasing wind. The next time I saw him, he was getting out of the water on a distant shoreline, where the wind had finally deposited him. He had also lost the other fin and had no propulsion at all. He had a long hike back to the vehicle and didn't especially care to talk about it on the way home.
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