Strawberry's Nicest Thoughtful Rainbow

[Silver_Eagle]

[]Today my oldest son and I met the nicest thoughtful rainbow at Strawberry! We are still amazed! It made our day! It was the first time ice fishing in several years.
I caught a glimpse of Jason's new ice fishing pole pop straight up and down the hole. Gone! I felt horrible for him! Thirty minutes later we had a double hit at exactly the same time. From two separate holes we reeled in the fish that "Shop Lifted" Jason's new pole. The fish had swam around both lines. When we got the rainbow on deck, there was Jason's lost pole line in it's mouth.
What a nice rainbow to bring it back!
The ice was 12 inches thick! Solid deck with a couple inches of crusted snow on top.

Silver_Eagle
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[whit210]

That's an awesome story.
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[kbfan]

Thats awesome, wish my neighbor was this thoughtful.
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[icerman]

Glad to hear of an honest rainbow! I lost a rod down the hole last Friday, my newest rod, and wasn't so lucky! nothing like $45 down the drain in an instant! Glad to hear you got yours back!
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[Gordy_Utah]

That is an awesome story!!! Did you pay him back by having him over for dinner? []
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[Silver_Eagle]

[]We did pay him back by bringing him home to dinner! That fish gave us a memory for life! After thought this morning was, he should have stayed there so we could look forward to meeting him again. [blush]


It was a beautiful day on Strawberry. The photo shows there were eight other fishing groups parked at the marina. We caught mostly rainbows but a couple cutts. Only two rainbows came home for dinner. All the other fish are still swimming and happy in Strawberry.
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[FishSlayerMP]

Wow, what are the chances of that?! Great story, can only imagine the look on your sons face when he saw the other rod! [fishin]
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[akammerman]

Awesome story--thanks for sharing!
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[Silver_Eagle]

[fishin]Look at the photo 6579 on this post. That was the look on Jason's face when he pulled the fish up with the pole attached! It was priceless compared to the thirty minute look on his face after the pole went down the hole.


It was a beautiful day at Strawberry! See the photo!

Thank you to all the BFT members who helped me with ice, snow and reports.
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[Hazzy_Hazbourne]

That's awesome! The same thing happened to my little girl at Hyrum Dam....twice. Once in 2012 and again last saturday. I posted the story yesterday under the title "Hyrum Dam Miracle". I got reading through more posts this morning and found yours. I was thinking that it was a pretty rare occurrence, but after seeing your post I'm thinking it might be a little more common.

When I was little, I watched my dad catch his pole back using my sister's pole fishing from the bank at Porcupine Reservoir. That was probably 25 years ago. I think it would be cool to see how many fisherman this has happened to.
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[Silver_Eagle]

[fishin]My son Jason, who lost the pole Thursday, called me last night. I agree with what he said about retrieving poles like that. Even though it is a small ice fishing pole, when it drops to the bottom, it creates resistance to the fish so it swims in a circle around the pole. Just like when we catch a fish in a boat and the fish swims around the boat. We were in 25 feet of water so the fish was swimming a big circle. Better chance of catching it on another line with that much line down.

Since this happened last Thursday, I have had a half dozen people tell me it has happened to them. It would be fun to hear from everyone on BFT who have lost a pole ice fishing, from a boat or shore and retrieved the pole back on another line.

I had a new pole and reel only one day old pop straight up from the bottom of the boat in 100 feet of water in the narrows beyond the old Strawberry dam. I should have just stayed anchored for a while because the fish might have circled the anchor rope. No luck on that pole. The humor in it was going back to Sportsman's Warehouse and tell the same sells person, "I need another pole! That one didn't like me! It jumped out of the boat!" We both agreed we would have liked seeing the fish that could do that with a full size pole laying flat on the bottom of a boat with two foot sides.
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[ifishinxs]

Happened to me at Otter Creek fishing by myself with two rods..Fighting one fish as my other rod gets bit then slides out of the rod holder, pauses for a few seconds and down it goes..First thought is how am i going to explain to my wife what happened and how i need to go buy another rod and reel..My set ups are not cheap.

So I ponder all of this as I re-rig my rod after that last fish. I drop back down and within a minute I'm hooked up again. This just feels different as im bring this fish in. Low and behold my line had wrapped around the line from the rod that had gone down the hole. So I landed my fish and grabbed the line wrapped around the line I just reeled up and pulled my other rod up through the hole...Happy Dance!

It was good day!
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[up2nogood]

We can only imagine how many rods ,tackle boxes etc are at the bottom of Strawberry, I know of one cell phone, don't ask []
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[cutter4]

Had that happen to me at echo res,but we were bank fishing in the summer.My pole was on a big rock,and went in with a splash.I had no other pole with me so I striped down to my skivies and dove in,water wasnt to deep and was clear.Low and behold there was my pole on the bottom.Grabed it and got back on shore,fish was gone,but I got some odd looks from the people fishing down from us.[]
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[RockyRaab]

And I bet that none of you tether your rods even now. It's so simple and easy to add a tether ring to every rod. Like this:



Then use either a stretchable tether like this:



Or a simple length of cord tied to something bigger than the hole. You can even use a short piece of scrap wood, just make sure it is at least 2.5 times as long as your hole diameter, so it can't tip in from one edge.
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[Hazzy_Hazbourne]

Great idea, Rocky!

I've tethered my rod when fishing for the bigguns but never really gave it a thought when fishing for perch and planter rainbows. I'm definitely going to now.
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[mme1]

I donated a pole at east canyon was sitting right next to it and bam it was gone went in up to my shoulder but no luck and no thoughtful fish involved[pirate]
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[Silver_Eagle]

[]I didn't even imagine so many poles are donated to the "Fish God!" I like the ideas about tethering the pole. The one illustrated was simple to make. We always expect a pole to wiggle before it's gone. Not so! A blink of the eye and the pole disappears.

Everyone is enjoying hearing these stories. Thank You!

Silver_Eagle
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[ekimjack]

Happened to me at strawberry 2 weeks ago...
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[isda]

Last year at fish lake I had my favorite rod sitting on top of a 5 gallon bucket turned around and it was gone. An hr later I hooked into a 19" splake Which had a string coming from its mouth pulled on the 80' of line and it was my rod! I was very excited to get "Mr. P" back.
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