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3. And then I hooked the friggin bat, Page 5

Okay, now this is really a true story! About twenty years ago I was up on the Salmon River in Pulaski, NY. A guy I knew and I had walked way down near the mouth to the "Bus Pool". It was, at that time, a great resting pool for fresh steelhead coming out of the lake. I'd caught a couple steelhead about 5 pounds each and was fishing a chartreuse streamer in the nice run, casting across and letting the fly swing down into the depths until it got below me. Well on one swing I felt a sharp take and got into a terrific fight with a very strong fish. It went on for well over five minutes of give and take and finally I was able to walk the fish towards the shoreline so I could beach it on some gravel. You can imaging my surprise when I saw the fish that my streamer was not hooked into the trout's mouth but instead there was a plain hook in the steelhead's mouth with a about an 18" long heavy leader trailing out with a Perfection loop on the end. As my #4 streamer was bouncing along on the bottom of the river the hook went into the Perfection loop and kept on drifting down river. When the line got tight I felt the "take" and set the hook leading to the ensuing fight. When I landed the fish it looked like either a resident lake run rainbow or a steelhead with some color. It was an amazing experience considering it was a pretty big loop and the slightest slack and it is likely the hook would of come free.

This is a photo of the print picture.

That's pretty neat, Matt.

I've hooked (and landed) bats, a duck, a muskrat; had a night hawk get momentarily tangled in my back cast. A friend was fishing a surface plug on a lake years ago and a seagull came down and took off with his lure. dropped it after a bit.

Nice one Matt, Bet you can't do that again.. Sitting playing with my toys, I am looking at something I caught 30years ago. Na nothing live like your fine fish but a Falls City wade in bucket, with its strap thats what I hooked into. I was on the 10 mile creek,3 miles up in trying out a new 5'4" spinning rod a friend hand crafted for me. Plus I was trying a gold spinning rig,with a royal coachman at the end of it. Yes before my fly day, but sure was one of my first sign, I was calling for a change inside myself.
Didn't catch no fish that day on that native creek, but, my catch of day, is worth maybe 35.00 taday to the right fellow. No it's not for sale, all you tackle hounds. Come ta the yard sale when I be gone ta better waters, ol'lady have it out there for a buck or two. Oh, great photo there Matt, it says all.

Great story Matt...Only goes to show that if you spend enough time on the water you are bound to see everything. :)

Spence

Ok I wasn't going to chime in here for fear of someone thinking I was trying to hijack this thread, but similar to Matt's experience, one time on the Salmon river I was swinging a black comet about 50' out into the run when my fly became attached to a j-plug wich was attached to a Chinook of roughly 30lbs. That thing had me up and down that pool several times and I never knew I was hooked to the j-plug until I had that fish within arm's reach. Here is my list of some of the other critters I've hooked while fishing (all on the fly):

Several bats, almost too many to count( all on dry flies), three mallards (on dry flies), two terns (on crease flies), five seagulls (three on crease flies and two on clouser minnows), a cormorant (on a clouser minnow) a loggerhead turtle ate my false albacore off Harkers Island one time (I don't think that counts but it was a big one about the size of the hood of my truck.)
Of all the birds one of the seagulls was probably the strongest, it was one of those big (a little bigger than a Canada Goose) and just plain nasty. Although the cormorant put up a pretty good fight too. And talk about nasty, those things are disgusting.

I once hooked an immature hen mallard on East Lake, a volcanic caldera lake in the Oregon Cascades. I was fishing from shore and she was huffing and clucking her way around picking goodies out of the elodea. I specifically gave her a wide berth when I cast, but she glided over anyway and sucked up my #14 parachute adams. Got her right though one of those vents in her beak. Luckily, she was only half grown (if that) and I was fishing 4X Umpqua which was pretty stout stuff for the alleged diameter and I was able to turn and run right up on the bank with her and run her down and pluck the fly back out with a set of those mini pliers. She was pretty hosed at me though and after I put her back in the lake, she swam back and forth in front of me and read me the riot act in Mallardese for about 5 minutes. She was making so much noise that for a while, I feared a personal injury lawyer would materialize out of the bushes (they're everywhere...), sign her up and poof, there would go the rest of our vacation.

Another time during the Green Drake on Penns Creek, I hooked a guy from Willow Grove (or maybe it was King of Prussia, I forget..). He was in full Orvis regalia, so he was probably about ready to spawn. Which would explain why he didn't put up much of a fight despite going at least 90-95 Kg. Just as well, probably. The hook was only caught by about 4 threads of his treated SPF 80 shirt and I probably would have lost him anyway if he had jumped or made a hot run downstream..

Damn boys! Don't let the gang from Audubon know where you two fish...They may show up with a real lawyer! :)

Spence

Spence: I know the head Audubon lawyer. He's a nice enough fellow, but most of what he says is for the birds..

Ha! No you didn't?! :)

Spence