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Posts: 250
Location: Pittsburgh, PA | I was fishing Saturday for walleyes they just came in here in PA and with the bait about 10ft from the boat on the pause with my xps nitro minnow a huge brown trout hit and the fight began i get it right up to the boat and right as im going to net it i lift it up a little out of the water and pop the lure comes out and it swims away. One of the worst moments of my life makes me sick to my stomach thinking about it.
But it got me thinking that that could have been the biggest trout ill ever have on and it got away so how many people think they lost their fish of a lifetime.
So if you think you did what species and about how big do you think it was.
Edited by baldeaglefisherman 5/4/2008 12:45 PM
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Posts: 32934
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | I lost a REALLY big Pike on Wabigoon. It was impossibly large, and I had it on two days in a row and lost it both times, in front of others to add to the pain. |
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Location: Windy City | I lost an honest 52 -53 incher on a local lake that was every bit of forty pounds.Mind you the state record is 38 and change. Had the fish at the boat twice with the second being a two to three second window and my fishing partner ( who had never fished musky before) just stood there with the net in his hands. I'm yelling ''take her, take her'' to no avail. The guy just froze.He had never seen a fish that size and just froze. Needless to say the fish made a tired run out to the weeds and the bucktail popped out. When the lure popped out it was probably only a split second moment but it felt like it was in slow motion. I still replay the incident in my head once in awhile and the only thing you can do is get back out there and keep throwin, because sooner or later it will happen again and if its meant to be it will happen. Hope this helps a little .
Edited by one last cast 5/4/2008 1:23 PM
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Posts: 2024
| Summer 2006 on LOTW. Will never forget this. 10 minutes earlier I released a thick 49" and proceeding down the shoreline I see a big, tan shape emerge behind my bait. All I could say was, "Holy %^*& it's bigger than the last one." Tossed a topwater back at it and she blasted the bait with her tail TWO times maybe 15-20' from the boat. Then nothing.
That spot is cash money, though, and another one that size from that spot will fall victim to someone in the near future. I just hope it's me between the dates July 14th and July 21st, 2008... :D |
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Posts: 4266
| I will only total up the "fish of my lifetime" when I'm on my death bed. Anything can happen, you just have to keep on casting.
Beav |
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Posts: 1310
Location: Washington, PA | There has been more than a few for me. Keeps me going. |
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Posts: 159
Location: Stevens Point, WI | Big muskie. I don't want to talk about it. |
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Posts: 433
Location: Cedarburg, Wisconsin | A long time ago in early spring, sometime around 1981, I was soaking a smelt under a slip bobber in a little feeder creek dumping into Lac Seul. I noticed my bobber was down just under the surface about 6 feet away from the boat which was anchored in the middle of the creek, sideways. I was using a nine foot spinning rod loaded with 20# test and when I set the hook the tip of the rod never moved. Something really heavy started heading under the boat and I was lucky enough to steer it around the anchor rope in back. It kept running faster and finally I couldn't backreel fast enough. The handle was pounding my knuckles, the drag was slipping and the fish was heading for a beaver house about 200 feet away. I finally got the handle back, and leaned on the fish for all I was worth trying to stop it before it got into the brush around the house. The fish came up, created a bathtub sized depression in the water and the hook pulled out. What was it? #*^@ed if I know, but it had some horsepower I wouldn't have believed if it didn't actually happen to me. I'm guessing a pike in the upper 20# class or maybe more. I'll never know but I sure would have like to have seen that fish!
Had another fish hit a brand new Northport Nailer off a dipsey out on Lake Michigan. The musky rod I was using at the time bent in half, the drag screamed as loud as anything I've ever heard for about two seconds and then nothing. I reeled up and the spoon was bent like the letter "U" in the middle. We were into some nice bow-bows at the time and that's another fish I dearly would have loved to have seen.
It's been a long time since these happened and I'm still hoping someday I get a chance at another a fish like either of these. |
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Posts: 654
Location: MPLS, MN | I lost right at the boat a Bass that had to be pushing 10lbs and a state record. I've caught legit 6+lbers and this would have ate those. Had it trolling a Slamo Slider on Lake Minnetonka. |
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Posts: 203
Location: Germantown, WI | Baldeaglefisherman,
I lost a fish of a lifetime out your way about 10 years ago. I was flyfishing in mid-June on Penns Creek in the Catch and Release area.
It was mid-morning and there was a nice hatch of Little Blue Winged Olive Mayflies. I was fishing a large, deep pool by myself. I kept seeing a big fish rising next to a rock in the middle of the pool. When it came up to feed its whole back and shoulders came out the water in a sort of porpoising effect.
I was casting to many rising fish and catching a few, but I kept casting to one parrticular fish every so often. Finally after I had been fishing there at least 45 minutes, I made another cast to the big fish by the rock and when I realized that I could not see my fly anymore I tightened up. You guessed it. It had taken my fly.
I fought that fish for a long time and it was strong. I would gain line and it would take it back. I never really did get a good look at it before it starting making a bee-line toward a brush pile on the far shore. Being a relatively inexperienced flyfisher and having never fought such a big fish on a flyrod I did what instinct told me to do. I thought if it got in that brush my 6x tippet would break for sure so I palmed the reel a bit to slow her down. Well the next thing you know my tippet snapped like it was sewing thread. I know it was a big Brown Trout, but I'll never know just how big. I've caught trout into the mid-20" range and this was much bigger. I'm guessing it was in the upper 20" range, perhaps pushing 30".
I was shaky in the knees for awhile after that, but it was just a fish so I just went on fishing and enjoying a great day on a great stream. By the way, the fly was #20 Little Blue Winged Olive Thorax Dun fished on a 5 Wt rod with 6X tippet. After that episode I rarely ever fish tippets less than 5X.
Tom Ramsey |
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Posts: 50
| About 4-5 years ago I lost a big walleye up in Canada on my muskie tackle. The fish t-boned a rapala type bait with only 2 trebles (no middle treble), so the bait was too big for its mouth. I got her next to the boat and she spun around took a dive and she was gone. Both my dad and I saw her real good and estimated her at 33-34 inches and 13-14 lbs. I'm still upset about it.
JTM |
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| One night down on the Sangamon River by where I live in Illinois my buddy and I were flathead fishing using live bluegill for bait. We had caught a few smaller ones but nothing huge. Then all of a sudden my rod just took off from the rod holder towards the log jam.
When I grabbed it and set the hook there was nothing, just dead weight. I looked at my friend and said, "Oh man I'm snagged." Then all of a sudden the "snag" decided it didn't like being hooked. The fish swam right toward me of all things getting slack in my line. It broke the surface of the water when my friend said, "Oh my god that thing is huge!" Right after that I felt some intense head shakes and my weight and hook came flying at me like a rocket.
Seeing the fish I'd estimate the weight at being 40+. Now that's not gigantic for flathead standards, but pretty #*^@ big for a smaller river in Illinois. |
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Posts: 1168
| For muskies there were two. The first was a solid 50 inch class fish that hit a DDD right after a twitch so there was slack in the line. It took the bait right out of the water and as I set the hook the line either got wrapped up in it's teeth or gill plate and broke me off. The other muskie wasn't the biggest I've ever encountered but it was a solid solid fish. Pointer and I were working a weedbed, I've got a trusty DDD on and it gets fouled with all sorts of sandgrass. It had about 2 feet of weeds trailing it. I reel in quickly and as I pull the bait out of the water this fish just explodes on it and misses. A little while later Pointer is throwing a bucktail in the same area, gets fouled up with weeds and that fish comes back on his bait. Lesson learned: Never give up on a cast regardless of how many weeds you might have hanging on your bait.
The true fish of a lifetime though was ice fishing awhile back. Pointer can testify to the fact that there are no snags at all on this lake. No stumps, no rocks, just a muck bottom. No muskies in here, just pike and panfish. Flag goes up, spool turning as I get there, pick the tip up out of the hole, grab the line, set the hook and it doesn't move. I've got the line in my hand and it makes a run so hard that it threw me off balance and put me right on the ice....then it was gone. Pull the line out and the hook was straigtened out perfectly. That was a fish that would have been nice to see because I've never even had a muskie that felt that heavy or pulled that hard. |
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Posts: 250
Location: Pittsburgh, PA | well hopefully those werent the fish of our lifetimes and we go out a catch bigger ones but the only way to do that is fish so ill just keep pluging away |
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| my fish of a lifetime came oneday when I was by myself before i had to go home for lunch so i made a few casts into my homewater and luckily for me i got bit but it made quite a run for quite awhile so i kept fighting it and fighting it and it ended up being a twentythreeandahalfinch pickerel from the flemington canal luckily for me i wasn't late for supper or i might not have been able to go fishing later that week but i did anyway it was fun i enjoyed it and will do it again but first i need to study a little bit then maybe i can go fishing again on that homewater of mine as soon as i finish my nightly chores because that is the key to good health and you need good health when you go fishing because it keeps your mind clear so that you can be on top of your game whenever you are caught by suprise like i was that day on the canal catching that pickerel |
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Posts: 8837
| You sure got the sentence of a lifetime going there. I hope y'all are studying grammar and punctuation. |
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Posts: 16632
Location: The desert | haha thats pretty funny jeff and it really made me laugh hard did you have any luck in the opener jeff how is the land up north are you going to be putting anything on there this year i hope you have a great season of fishing and you catch lots of fish |
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Posts: 225
Location: Nordeast Minneapolis | I remember it like it was yesterday... I was about 5 years old (31 now, if that tells you how powerful the memory is) fishing with my dad. He was casting for musky, and had put a River Runt on the end of my Snoopy pole... something that would float if I happened to drop the rod in the lake. Which, by the way, later became the ultimate resting place of said Snoopy rod, but I digress...
Back to the story. Around 5 years old. I went to cast the river runt, but the reel didn't open the spool very well. The bait went about 4 feet from the boat and slammed into the surface, where a northern the size of a Winnebago opened it's cavernous, tooth-filled jaws and pulled my lure down to the very depths of hell. And once he got back down to hell, he stopped.
As soon as I caught my breath, I started to scream that I had a fish, which, of course, my father did not believe. Why would he? He had given me something to keep me occupied while he fished... the expectation was not that I would actually catch something myself. (In retrospect, I'm a little surprised it even had hooks.) His response was "Probably a weed. I'll get it loose in a minute." Then the 'weeds' started to move out away from the boat. I frantically pulled with my bony little arms, but the monster pulled line out like it was his job. Which, I guess, it was. That's when Pops realized there might actually be a fish of some sort on the line. And just as he was coming to that realization, the beast broke water. It must have weighed 400 lbs. and been at least 12 feet long... it was like the dog in 'Sandlot'... getting larger and larger as more of it broke through. I was convinced I had latched into a sea monster of epic proportions that would soon devour both of us if I didn't wrestle it into submission. The mouth opened, and I was sure he would swallow the boat whole. Or at least me...
With a mere shake of his head, my 5 lb. test line snapped like a dry twig, and 'Ol' Sawtooth' (as we named him on the ride home) descended back to it's shadowy lair. My River Runt was never seen or heard from again.
As the days passed, the legend of Sawtooth grew... my grandparents called to console me, my dad's friends congratulated me on the near-miss and people I didn't even know were telling me to 'go get 'em' (I was only about 5, after all... the list of people I actually knew was pretty short. But I was an exceptionally cute 5 year old, so the list of people who knew me was probably quite long). The plus of it was it suddenly rained River Runts; as though the fishing gods were trying to make up for the one Saw-tooth took, I got River Runts for my birthday... Christmas... as presents when my parents' friends would come over... from the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy... when the dust cleared, I had about 20, in every color and size I could imagine.
In reality, Pops estimated it to be about a 15-20 lb. northern. A fish I would definitely get excited to catch today... but no fish could imprint itself with the hyper-exaggerated presence of that fish, or that single moment. Despite countless attempts in the years that followed, we never did catch a giant northern with a river runt in it's lip, but I got to spend a lot of great time in the boat with my dad, which I continue to do.
So probably not the 'one that got away' story you were thinking of, but in relative scale, Sawtooth was the biggest fish of my life.  |
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Posts: 550
Location: So. Illinois | Still waiting..... |
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