Not Intended Species

[TBCook]

Several years ago I went to a small pond (less than 5 acres). Only to discover I had left my Jig box at the house. Ticked me off as I intended to fish for Crappie & Bluegill. But as all good fishermen at the end of the day on previous day I hadn't put some of the Jigs in the proper place. I hunted thru my tackle bag and came up with a few jigs. Few cast and caught a hand sized Bluegill. was skittering it across the surface when a decent sized Bass grabbed the Bluegill. Didn't have much hope of landing the Bass as the hook gap on a 1/16 oz jig is not very wide.. I was standing on a dock and noticed when the Bass seen the dock he let go of the Bluegill, but another Bass that was following him. It grabbed the Bluegill and I opened the bail on the open faced spinning reel and let him run bout 30 feet. Closed the bail and when the line came tight, set the hook and the Bluegill popped off and hooked the Bass.. Landed the Bass and weighed it on digital scale 2 lb 15 oz. That was fun !

[Ketchn]

Nice read

[trypman1]

Fun, good read!!

[Redge]

Cool story.

[Crappie ciller]

Enjoyed that story- thanks.

[jnebgud]

[TBCook]

Several years after the Bluegill Bass story I was on another small pond (about 7 Acres). I was casting for Bass with a shallow running crank bait. Saw a swirl near the bank and made a cast to that area. Reeled in 3 feet of line & felt a strike. Set the hook. And it was on like donkey kong. Was a heavy fish. Very soon realized it was not a Bass. had 14 lb test braided line on a baitcaster. So I was comfortable putting fair amount of heat on this fish. After about twenty minutes I was able to get the small plastic two man bass boat to the bank as we had forgot to put the landing net in the boat. My boat partner (Donny) landed what turned out to be about a 42 lb Grass Carp. It was foul hooked near the tail. The reason I say about 42 lbs is that we weighed it on digital scale but it was so large we could only get flashes on the scale as Donny is 57 and I am 69 and we, even together had lot of trouble holding the scale still enough to read it. Now that was a lot of fun !

[Crappie ciller]

Another good read TB. Tell us another story!

[Crappie ciller]

As a boy growing up on a farm I fished every pond I could walk or ride a bike to- often with my best friend Mike. One of these was hard to get to as it was in the middle of a section with no roads or even bike trails leading to it. It was bluegill heaven and Mike and I were sure there were huge bass in there as well and every time our bobber shot out of sight we knew it was Big Bo, who had broken our line a few times. On one momentous day we made poles out of long sticks and heavy braided line and baited each one with small perch ( a trick we had learned from Field and Stream magazine) and figured we would have a tough time hauling all the big bass a half mile back to Mikes house at the end of the day. As we caught the bait the poles were stuck in the mud and watched closely but after a long bass free morning we were ready for lunch. Before we started the hike back we made sure all 10 poles were stuck into the bank as deep as we could push em. Since the bass bite was so slow we took our time with lunch and with being kids and finally headed back without much hope to run the lines. The first thing we noticed was that one of our poles was missing and then it resurfaced way out in the middle of the pond and bobbed and scooted along the surface like crazy- obvious giant bass behavior! Another rod stayed put but also had something big on that perch. When my buddy heaved it out of the water a monster of a water snake landed too near our feet! ( and when you're 9-10 years old every snake around water is a poisonous water moccasin) Before we could find something to beat it to death with it regurgitated that BG and was gone, leaving us pretty rattled, having nearly been bit by a cottonmouth for sure. At this point there remained the wonderful opportunity and awful problem of the huge bass on our pole floating in the middle of these now snake infested waters- how to retrieve our prize and stay unbit. Back the half mile to the house where we told our story and collected an old leaky plastic swimming pool type little raft. We also collected Mikes whole family, who were like us lusting for adventure and a huge fish- almost certainly a 5 pound bass at least. Upon arriving back at our fishing hole we blew up the raft and somehow I was chosen to get sort of half on it and go after the still gyrating floating fishing pole. It was terrifying and got only more so when I pulled the line to the sinking raft and realized that our giant bass had turned into the biggest snapping turtle we had ever seen. I achieved temporary hero status when I braved that snapper all the way to the bank and we beat it nearly to death with BBs until my friends Dad cut its head off. We never did catch a bass out of that pond.

[TBCook]

GREAT STORY !