Tall Tales Truth Be Told

[Mike Carey]

Got a good story fishing/outdoors/life to share? Post them on this thread. If it's "Tall" enough it may make it to the Articles section of the web site.

[eat-sleep-fish]

I use to fish a pond in the Yakima area, do not recall the name. It was a good producer of panfish and bass, never landed anything very large though. Average bass was around 1.5lbs and the bluegills were 6-8 inches. Seems like every other trip, we would hook a decent fish in one area but always broke them off. Very frustrating, felt like nice fish.

After a couple years of this I needed to know what was happening. Donned my scuba gear and dove in the area of the fish that kept winning the battle. In the bottom of this pond there was a 4-door mid 50's car with schools of nice bass inside, much larger than I had ever caught here. It looked like anywhere from 3 to 10lbs using this old car for cover.

I swam up to the car to get a closer look and I'll be darned if they didn't roll up the windows on me!

[Idstud]

http://youtu.be/uBuPiC3ArL8" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thought this would be a good share bird fishing with bread.

[The Quadfather]

I use to fish a pond in the Yakima area, do not recall the name. It was a good producer of panfish and bass, never landed anything very large though. Average bass was around 1.5lbs and the bluegills were 6-8 inches. Seems like every other trip, we would hook a decent fish in one area but always broke them off. Very frustrating, felt like nice fish.

After a couple years of this I needed to know what was happening. Donned my scuba gear and dove in the area of the fish that kept winning the battle. In the bottom of this pond there was a 4-door mid 50's car with schools of nice bass inside, much larger than I had ever caught here. It looked like anywhere from 3 to 10lbs using this old car for cover.

I swam up to the car to get a closer look and I'll be darned if they didn't roll up the windows on me!

Now that was a good story! I was right there..."ya, so what are the bass gonna do??"
Oh!....

[fishinChristian]

Thought Idstud's link would be about cracker/bread fishing on Santee-Cooper reservoir, and some other Striper lakes. The fishermen there wait for flocks of seagulls and the like to storm an area, where the stripers are driving baitfish upward. The birds show where the stripers are hitting hard, and you can catch fish every cast for a while. What a friend of mine showed me was how to fish for fishermen by tossing out a box of crackers or loaf of bread and get a dozen or more high-powered bass boats converging on what amounts to nothing. He said in the long run, he gets less people running up on "his" schools that way. I think he's still alive, but I haven't heard from him for a while.

[fishinChristian]

Also, Amx's post on catfishing reminded me of Neah bay, where as a teen I fished bottom fish with my grandad. We were in a 16' rental with a ten horse Johnson outboard, and catching like crazy, as was normal back than. 10 lb seabass and 50 lb ling were non-bragging fish back then, and we were in the middle of several hundred acres of Black Seabass churning the surface, when very suddenly all the fish were gone. We couldn't figure it out till I saw a whale spout nearby. Looking down, there were more than a dozen big grays, and 2 gently bumped the boat. This made my grandad nervous, and he wanted me to get us out of there. I said "no way." and was rooting around the tackle box. Now, I had a reputation for catching really big sturgeon and halibut, and going after the biggest fish I could find, so I had my grandad really convinced when he asked me what I was looking for, and I replied "A big snag hook." I got yelled at before laughter took over my carefully constructed seriousness.

[Amx]

Talk about a 'boat ride'.

[fishinChristian]

Actually, the boat ride came when I was fishing Priest rapids. We'd sat there for most of a day with no fish, when ?I switched to lighter line. Sure enough, I hooked a 9.5' sturgeon on 30 lb test, shore fishing. Now we all know the probable outcome here, but I had an inspiration, as perspiration confirmed I was running out of line. I had gone as far as I could, and the stream below the dam wouldn't let me go further. I yelled at my friend to get me the floater. He did. I put on the kickers without waders, jumped in and strapped the seat, just as the fish decided she was leaving. When she hit the end of the line, I started to think, for the first time since hooking the fish, that this might not be the smartest thing I'd ever done. I had to plunge the rod tip deep in the water to avoid tipping over, and while Priest isn't deep enough nor the line strong enough to pull a floater under, I still had the adrenaline pumping feeling that I was going to look like a small bobber with a hungry crappie under it. A boater wanted to rescue me, but I waved him off, with thanks. I was well below whitefish island by now.
I finally managed to get enough line in, and worked my way back to the shore. After a few minutes, we both admitted we had enough, and she came docilely to the beach above the bridge, posed for a picture (my buddy finally finding his way to where I was in the pickup {He'd never driven a stick shift before, sob...), submitted to dehooking, and swam tiredly away. I grabbed the vienna sausages, Cragmont tropical punch, and chips for a celebratory feast. My friend just shook his head a lot.

[Amx]

[fishinChristian]

Hmmm... Nobody jumping in. You must have some stories you tell on trips with new guys, or old friends, right?
Well, ask anyone. They'll tell you I'm full of it. "It" must mean stories and great wisdom, right????
Think I'll avoid the rest of the sturgeon stories for now at least. They're true enough, but pretty unbelievable.

How about misery on the White Salmon? There were 3 of us in a jeepster, and while we usually went after Bass, my friend wanted to go after his specialty, steelhead and salmon. So, after school we headed to the White Salmon for an overnighter. When we left, Rick was driving, I had shotgun, and Carl was in the jump seat in the center of a stellar mass of fishing and camping gear. All went fairly normal till we neared Satus Pass. I was reading from Bassmaster Magazine from a humor series called Harry & Charlie, two redneck misadventurists. It was a particularly funny one, and I was getting into it, embellishing a bit with added ad lib and southern fried voices. I got to one line that cracked all of us up severely, just as Carl took a big swig from a big bottle of Cragmont pop. He had tears coming out of his eyes as I continued reading, and couldn't force a swallow for about 5 miles, in the middle of all the gear, with no window to expel the liquid threatening his esophagus. He lay there panting for another 2 or 3 miles.
We got there late, but were able to make a few casts, but no luck. Parked nearby, we took the stove under the railroad bridge to avoid the frigid deluge from the sky. Carl was in charge of cooked vittles this trip, and he saved some cash by getting some horrible malleted steaks, on sale no doubt. After one taste, we went back to vienna sausages and chips. He apologized, and we went back to fishing, this time for sturgeon (still legal at night back then) before turning in. The weather got worse, so we retreated to the jeepster to warm ourselves by Coleman lantern, with 2 windows open for ventalation. Cold, slightly hungry, weary, and often rattled by trains 40' away, we dozed fitfully till morning, where we discovered we'd left the lines out. Sheepishly gathering the rods from the righteous salmon angler's midst, we bid a hasty retreat, and went to the Klickitat. No luck there, from a river that resembled the hot chocolate we had with breakfast (chips and a sandwich, as I recall).
Admitting defeat, we headed back toward Satus Pass, then remembered the small stream near the first summit. I had the bright idea that we could salvage some piscatorial honor by fishing for trout, and just to make it interesting, limit ourselves to one lure each. I had some limited trout gear in my anadromous tackle box, and found the smallest sizes of red Rooster tail, Mepps, and Kamloops spoons. Winner to be determined by highest number of legal sized fish caught. Using steelhead gear, supplemented by 1/3 of a spool of leader material from the bottom of the box (either 4 or 6 lb test), we marched downstream on the ridge, and followed the creek back toward the rig. I had the Mepps, Carl the Kamloops, and Rick the Rooster tail. We caught around 40, with the Mepps first with 20, Rooster tail second with 13, and the kamloops 3rd with I think 8. Carl caught the most interesting fish however. As we were nearing the highway, we saw a 55 gallon drum sideways with the top off, half submerged in the water. I cast directly into the mouth of it, and caught a decent sized trout. Carl, not to miss a teen opportunity to goof around, walked over, set the barrel upright, and started jigging. To both our shock, he caught one, fair and square in the mouth. So much for stealth. Shortly after, we scrambled up the hill to the rig, but not before Carl left his stringer of 3 (the rest thrown back) in the hopes the Black Bear would have it for lunch, and not us. Guess it worked as well as the giant squid repellant works in my yard.
We were tired, somewhat defeated, but still found a way to make the best of it. Shortly after, I read McManus' "A Fine and Pleasant Misery" and was able to truly identify with it. We didn't need "reality" shows back then. We could find our own.

[MarkFromSea]

A sturgeon out of a float tube? That's a real good one!

[fishinChristian]

Woulda thought more would join in. Always knew I was different... Least that's what people keep telling me...

So, litter anyone? Way before it was an eco-nut cause, I had a vendetta against litterbugs. I would take out more than I brought in to most places, or at least didn't add to the mess. I was around 12 when I went Smallmouth fishing with my grandad and a cousin, to Alder Creek above John Day Dam. Now, Alder was different back then, not the silted in carp hole it is now, at least where it enters the pool. Deep cliff edges with gravelly bars, dark crevices and a fresh water source combined to make it one of the best Smallmouth trophy spots, probably in the world. Now runoff from the farms has made it a mud flat, but then it was piscatorial paradise. The only downside was the rattlers every 10 feet or so, but that was doable.
Enter the 3 intrepid fishermen. We worked the cliff side, and caught fish after fish, with more than one over 6lbs. Like I said, paradise. We reached the midway point, and it was pushing 100 degrees out. My cousin drank a cola, and reached back to pitch the can out in the water. I pointed out the fish fry often use these as cover, then get trapped as they grow, besides the whole "thou shall not defile Paradise" theme going on in my mind. After he grinned and said he was going to anyway, I told him he'd follow it if he did. He didn't believe me. "Splash" went the can. "Sploosh $#@% $% %*^(*" went the cousin! Now, I didn't know if he could swim or not (I couldn't), but apparently he could. He was a bit larger and older, but he seemed to understand pursuing revenge was not a good idea. This action did scare the bass out of the immediate area, but they were back after a short recess, that I like to imagine as recovering from laughter.
Strangely enough, even though we limited out, and C&R'ed lots of good sized bass, that was the last trip he took with us. My mourning was brief.

[MarkFromSea]

LOL That's the way to delve out "counseling!" LOL