What is the strangest thing you have caught while fishing?

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  • hobiecat590

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 2, 2016
    2,434
    Crabs on a regular basis. BTW, they have turned back on again for the past 10 days in SOMD.

    An eel as a kid that got the whole campground involved in the catch and skinning.

    A seagull that hit a fish gizzard while chumming one fall by the target ship. Gulls do not like to be caught and are viscious. The hook went through its tongue. We had to put a towel around it before extracting the hook.

    007 :-)

    The most fun is watching a kid catch a 2' snapping turtle while chicken nekin' and them thinking it is the biggest crab in the world. The screaming tends to scare away the crabs though.
     

    Reptile

    Ultimate Member
    Sep 29, 2014
    7,282
    Columbia MD
    In the late 70s I kept a 10 foot Jon boat at the reservoir in Laurel and would fish in the early morning hours after working a night shift. I made a cast toward some weeds in a shallow area and thought I hooked a big one. I stood up to reel it in and saw what looked like the head of the biggest catfish I had ever seen. The "fish" was almost as big as the boat. It scared the daylights out of me until I realized what I was looking at. It was a partially submerged spool of some kind of cable. Two of the holes looked like eyes and the bits of cable sticking out looked like barbels.
     

    gtodave

    Member
    MDS Supporter
    Aug 14, 2007
    14,169
    Mt Airy
    I'm pretty sure I snagged a dead body once. I was fishing the beach with a friend, and something snagged both our lines, and started to burn both of our reels clean. We couldn't bring it in, even working together. We ended up breaking off. Now I've pulled in 60+ lb rays with that rod combo before, so I know it can pull some weight. The two of us should have been able to haul in anything up to 100lbs or more. Well, a kayaker had flipped about a mile down the beach earlier that day, and early the next day they found him washed up about a mile up the beach from where we were. So he was floating by roughly the time we were fishing there.

    My wife says it was a log, which could be true, but there's no way to know. It would have had to have been a big log.
     

    JB62

    Ultimate Member
    Mar 5, 2013
    1,498
    Annapolis
    Not a crazy object but an Osprey. Buddy and I were live lining in the bay. Hear a splash, bait runner starts going, see an Osprey come out of the water, and bait runner really started screaming. Watched for a second, osprey had my bait in it’s talons so flipped the drag. Osprey dropped about 4 feet in it’s flight, it managed to hold the fish, hooked ripped out of spot and bird kept going with it’s breakfast. Got my rig back just minus the bait.
     

    ChannelCat

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Oh, good grief, that's s good question. I've caught some strange things in 50 years of fishing, but here are a few. I caught an old raincoat once while trophy rockfishing in the spring. I thought that I'd hooked a 50 incher for a while, but the lack of head shakes eventually clued me in. I've caught a tern once that picked up and flew off with a plastic jig during a rock and blues blitz. My buddy and I once caught the same large mouth bass that took both of our plastic worms. I've also caught several turtles over the years.
     
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    bigdv

    Ultimate Member
    May 17, 2010
    1,297
    Calvert Co.
    not me but my grandfather caught a sea turtle on a fishing pier in Nags Head. Screwed up every line on the pier.
     

    Rambler

    Doing the best with the worst.
    Oct 22, 2011
    2,162
    A pickup truck, 2 guys and a dog.

    This was an indirect catch. My 3 kids, my FIL and I were fishing at the pond and spillway at Wye Mills. We had been standing on the little pier on the pond and decided to climb the bank and go to the other side. A few moments later, we heard a siren in the distance. A pickup came around the bend and veered into the parking lot. He was going too fast to make much maneuvering room out of the little space he had and hit the dirt embankment of the dam and launched into the air landing on the pier where we had just been standing.
    2 guys and a pit bull were climbing out when a female MD State trooper slid her cruiser into the lot, jumped out and drew down on them. One guy had managed to jump over the damn into the spillway, injuring his leg in the process. The other got rolled and cuffed and a civilian deputized to sit on him. The dog ran off after the guy yelled at it. She was getting ready to shoot it it seemed.
    There were enough other grown men there assisting that we thought discretion the better part of valor and got the 3 little girls safely up to a church parking lot nearby. Within minutes, there were more police plus fire and rescue to get the guy out of the pond.
    This incident pretty much stopped any desire of the girls to do much fishing after that.
     

    CrawfishStu

    Creeper
    Dec 4, 2006
    2,337
    Crofton
    I've never really hooked stuff you wouldn't expect to catch in the swamps.
    I snagged a big nutria once. It fought like crazy. Caught several frogs, snakes, gators, and a few birds; including a pelican and a heron.
    I did once hook into a 5' long alligator gar. It stripped every inch of line off the brand new baitcaster I was using and took half the reel with it along with every eyelet. I never even slowed it down.
    Brought up some big softshelled turtles and a huge alligator snapping turtle that stand out in my memory.
     

    Ranchero50

    Ultimate Member
    Dec 15, 2012
    5,411
    Hagerstown MD
    I've caught doubles a bunch of times. Usually running top water at dusk. Big catfish on torpedo's etc. I usually see stuff on the bottom and pick up the interesting stuff. Old '50's bait casting reel once and a nice little lightweight rig that I still have the rod from.

    Couple years ago during a drought I walked to river and loaded the boat with trash. That was a good day.
     

    G O B

    Ultimate Member
    Nov 17, 2007
    1,940
    Cen TX
    '72 Key West Fla. we were beach combing for abandoned lines with recoverable tackle. The ex found a line with something on it and went crazy trying to land it. She started wading out pulling on the line - when something large broke water she went into overdrive pulling it in. Just before she got close enough to grab it, I hit her high and my friend hit her low THERE WAS A LARGE MORAY EEL just inches from her hand!!!!
    I immediately took her to the aquarium to show her WHAT was on the line so she would stop bitching about us 'not letting her land anything!"
     

    STeveZ

    Thank you, Abelard
    Sep 22, 2011
    779
    Aberdeen, MD
    When I was a charter captain on Lake Erie many moons ago a member of my crew accidentally threw one of our rental rods over the side while casting. A while later I had a hook up and based on the steady bumping on my line I assumed it was a sheephead (drum). After a long battle I pulled in the recently overboard spin-cast rig which I had hooked in the handle. The spool and off-center bail arm were spinning and letting out line, which caused the pulsing on the line.

    We would occasionally pull in clams, which was always comical.

    My dad caught a sea gull that swooped in on a cast lure midair. That was an interesting catch and release.
     

    gtodave

    Member
    MDS Supporter
    Aug 14, 2007
    14,169
    Mt Airy
    My dad caught a sea gull that swooped in on a cast lure midair. That was an interesting catch and release.
    I've caught (or witnessed) a number of seagulls, sea turtles, pelicans, etc over the years. It is never pleasant.

    I caught a big shark on a baby shark once as well.
     

    Derwood

    Ultimate Member
    Jun 2, 2011
    1,075
    DC area
    I caught a snapping turtle in a lake in PA when I was about 12 at summer camp. I was fishing with a simple worm on a hook with a bobber for bass when I suddenly got a HUGE bite and tug. I landed the turtle and boy was it mad...I had no good way to get him off the hook unfortunately. It was probably 12 inches across and weighed 5-10 lbs., with 3 of those pounds being its massive beak/mouth. I tried several times to get the hook out of him but he was definitely going to bite my finger off if I reached in his mouth at all. All I had on my was a little swiss army knife. I had to cut the line and hope he survived with his new nose ring. I didn't like that outcome and it still bothers me.
     

    jimbobborg

    Oddball caliber fan
    Aug 2, 2010
    17,112
    Northern Virginia
    I caught a snapping turtle in a small lake in Cape Cod. Fortunately, it was hooked in the neck and the lure was long so it came out without much trouble.
     

    Laddertowr

    trigger puller
    MDS Supporter
    Mar 3, 2013
    829
    Few years back a guy I worked with kept bugging me to take him out fishing.. So we set a date for a day following a tour at work. At 6:30 the next day I was launching the bass boat in at BAFB waiting for my co-worker to arrive. As I was setting up the rods we’d be using it came clear that my co-worker not fished (bass fished) before and talked about using 2 oz weight 30 pound line…

    Before too long we were heading down river toward the WW bridge, figured we’d fish fox ferry and the spoils.. Few hours roll by and he had yet to get hooked up….Thought I’d increase his changes at catching something and setup a rig he should bottom fish with at Blue Plains..

    Turn the boat around and made the short run to the discharge side of Blue Plains….Tied the boat up to the pier with the back facing the discharge area.. About 10 minutes roll by and a hear a big splash… without turning around I figured what I just heard was a catfish breaking the water.. As I turned around to see what my co-worker was hooked up with..I noticed he was NOT in the back of the boat… Seems that he and my fishing rod made a quick exit from the deck.

    At the back of the boat I find my co-worker hanging onto the motor and trying to pull himself up into the boat… I finally got him back in the boat and being the good captain I was I asked…. Here’s my Rod???

    He starts explaining to me what happened… The fish had hit so hard that is pulled the rod out his hand and he stood up to grab the rod that his feet caught a line coming of the motor and got launched off the back… needless to say… that ended our fishing trip..

    This was not the strangest thing I never caught…. But it’s a time on the water I will never forget…And it made for a great story to share with co-workers (all shifts) and after that event they ended changing his station nic name to Bait Boy..
     

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