Odd "Catch" on Oneida

[choo choo]

While drift jigging a sonar in 20 fow a few weeks ago on a friends boat, I snagged what I thought was bottom, but it started coming up ....slowly I reeled it up to the boat and landed it.
5 foot Perko plug in stern running/anchor light, complete with an American flag ! It was full of muck and zebra mussels, but really not that bad condition.
We laughed and wondered what were the odds of hooking that, landing it etc...and wondered how many other fisherman could say they "caught" one of those.
Not exactly on my bucket list, but a new Personal Best on length
Would have been nice to hook "Old Glory" this Saturday on the 4 th of july.

What other odd "catches have you guy's and gals "caught" while fishing

[BIGJim223]

I hooked (and landed) a Garcia casting rod with an Abu-Garcia Ambassador 5000 casting reel on it. Hooked it right in the first eyelet while trolling Otsego Lake in 80-90 FOW. Fought it to the surface, looked like it had been lost that morning! No moss, no slime, clean as when it came out of the store. Reeled in about 100 foot of line on it and it had a nice Sutton spoon on the end. Only thing I caught that day. Still use it for a trolling rod.
  I also hooked and landed a 4' diameter metal wire tree basket out of about 90 FOW while jigging for lakers! That one was quite the surprise....

BIGJim223

[choo choo]

I hooked (and landed) a Garcia casting rod with an Abu-Garcia Ambassador 5000 casting reel on it. Hooked it right in the first eyelet while trolling Otsego Lake in 80-90 FOW. Fought it to the surface, looked like it had been lost that morning! No moss, no slime, clean as when it came out of the store. Reeled in about 100 foot of line on it and it had a nice Sutton spoon on the end. Only thing I caught that day. Still use it for a trolling rod.
  I also hooked and landed a 4' diameter metal wire tree basket out of about 90 FOW while jigging for lakers! That one was quite the surprise....

BIGJim223

I would have liked to haul in that rod and reel....You came out way ahead that day....niceBIGJim

[touge30]

lost one of my best lake trout rigs on otsego in about 90 feet.Got it back 5 days later pretty lucky.

[BIGJim223]

lost one of my best lake trout rigs on otsego in about 90 feet.Got it back 5 days later pretty lucky.

That is an amazing catch right there! And very lucky!

BIGJim223

[choo choo]

Super Lucky togue....that had to feel good !

[choo choo]

BigJim and togues stories just reminded me of an incident I heard about last Month...

I ran into Jim (nightfisher here on MFF)at the bar in Altmar mid May or so, and he tells me a story about the nightmare fishing trip he just recently had on Lake Ontario, then posted the report the same evening on MFF and Facebook.
Turns out Jim (nightfisher) was fishing solo, fighting a fish, and boat was getting squirrelly and off course so  he first grabbed one of the other rods out of the rod holder so it wouldn't get tangled, layed it down on the rear platform, then got to the steering wheel to straighten the boat, when WHAM, fish grabbed the lure of the rod just laying there..... then up and out of the boat that fish pulled his rod and reel combo...a good combo...gone forever. Or so he thought.
  That same evening after he posted his lost rod story along with the area he was fishing on facebook, he gets a call from a guy that says he thinks he has Jims rod and reel. Jim thinks it's a joke at first, but answers the guy anyway. The guy asks Jim to describe the combo...sure enough it's Jims !!
It was a charter captain, fishing the same area hooked a stray line, then pulled the line in by hand, with Jim's lure , rod, and reel attached, turns out less than 1 hour after nightfisher Jim lost it!
 Pretty Lucky....Lake Ontario is pretty darn big body of water!

[reeleyz]

Nice catch choo choo! I have pulled in a few rods but never anything like that. 

[fishit]

Ice fishing Sandy pond a long time ago with a friend, we had mutiple jigging rods out with small bobbers and minnows for perch and then sit on a bucket jiiging for pike. While running to check on a bouncing rod set over a hole for perch, watched as rod went down under the ice. While my buddy is laughing at my dumb move to leave my rod unattended he hooks into a nice slime dart...after a brief fight pulls the fish onto the ice, removes the spoon and releases the fish to the depths of the pond. We laugh about my misfortune and his success and I notice a small minnow hook sitting on the edge of his jigging hole, pick it up and proceed to pull my lost rod up thru this hole some 50 feet away...d**n slimey bugger must have inhaled my perch minnow on it's way to hitting his spoon...

[Rugburn]

A few years back, while trolling, my buddy hooks into something that feels BIG. It was in the spring of the year so we were running lighter tackle. We cleared the other rods for him and backed our speed down a tic. He was having a battle, treating this fish like a gold bar. He says " I don't want to loose her". It was a great demonstration on rod handling on my buddies part. Finally with net in hand, I get the first look at the beast. I drop to my knees in laughter. He had perfectly hooked a plastic shopping bag through both handles! That bag had opened up like a parachute, oscillating in the current "head shakes" , moving to the side, the whole nine yards. We always share a good laugh about that catch. 

[rgfixit]

I caught a world class steelhead below the falls at Oak Orchard that turned out to be a very nice landing net. Used that net for many years 

Rg

[choo choo]

 Good one fishit...you did not even have to touch the slime dart and you got your rod back

  good story Rugburn,...... You all are lucky it wasn't a 30 gallon trash/leaf bag he hooked....he'd a babied it and played it 'til the sun went down

I caught a world class steelhead below the falls at Oak Orchard that turned out to be a very nice landing net. Used that net for many years 

Rg

Rg, did you net the net...or just beach it  ?

only kidding ,,,,always good to come home with more than you left the house with....nice "catch" rg...a good net aint cheap.

[jboggey]

Great stories all.   ;Wish I had one of equal caliber. When fishing with grand kids and newbies my stories end with the words " Lost gear" Can't enumerate the items that have gone down the hole ice fishing or overboard with the grand kids. Still, all is forgiven and "Grand Pa" is grateful to get them out at any cost, just will not let them use my new Garcia combo any more.   Last seen somewhere between the first and second buoy out of the river in Oneida Lake.

[2muchleft]

These are the kinds of fish stories you never forget.  I remember as a kid heading out to Michigan in the early 70's to "fish" the Muskegon River for salmon in the fall in a small boat.  This was still a few years before Ontario had any returning salmon runs.  Dad hooked a nice chinook and got it close to landing but somehow managed to drop his favorite pole and reel with fish attached back into the river.  There were probably at least a dozen boats fishing this one hole with us.  Next day on the opposite side of the river a boat next to ours hooks up and reels in my Dad's setup with the fish still attached.  Dad got his pole back and the guy next to us got to keep the fish.

[rp dog]

Well I wasn't really fishing and didn't catch it as much as it caught me. Probably early seventies I was running one of my hydroplanes on the lake we lived on when my motor quit . Ended up drifting towards shore and about 75 yards the boat hit something and run a ground knowing this lake very well I knew this couldn't happen. I couldn't get off from it and it was right under the boat so I jumped out and found a 2' by 3' house safe. It was tough but somehow I got it loaded into my 10' hydro and took it home. I called the state police and the officer told me that I would be able to keep the contents and the safe if nobody claimed it. The last time I seen or heard anything about it was when he shut the trunk on his cruiser. I have to say its still my personal best for weight. Good thing nobody hit it or got hurt but I still wonder what was in it.
Rp