FUNNY FISHING STORIES (Contest & Beyond)

[Deleted User]

Transfer of new Funny Fishing Stories to the new BB: Read the 3/10 post on the former DB for contest details. Because I will be out of commission for a couple weeks late April/early May, I am extending the story contest to May 15th. We have saved all the stories from the DB. For more funny or incredible fishing stories, please post them here under this topic thread as reply posts; rather than a separate post. Thanks so much. The stories are really fun to read! - Steve

[Deleted User]

I was fishing Cliff Lake off SW Montana's Madison River several years ago. Cliff Lake is legendary for its big browns and rainbows (held the Montana State record with a 28lb. brown for a few years) so my partner and I were jacked for the possibility of getting a tow by one of these brutes in our tubes. However, Cliff is a deep, deep lake and we we using everything we had to get our flies down 30-40 feet into the "zone". With anticipation still riding high, we kicked past an anchored jon boat grossly overloaded with several cowboy hatted adults, 5-6 rugrats, a couple of mangy dogs, numerous coolers, a veritable briar patch of spinning rods AND a stringer of fish that looked like something out of my grandpa's photo album of salmon fishing off Point No Point in the 1920's!
Trying to sound nonchalant, while also drooling a tad, I cast out the proverbial "How's fishing?" to the mob. Actually I was ready to ply these local worm dunkers for all the information I could wring out of them...depth, bait etc... Being a "snobby, flyfishing, purist" I wasn't going to allow those worm chuckers the satifaction of knowing that their Powerbait encrusted snelled baithooks from the local True Value were kicking the crap out of my Orvis, Sage, Scientific Angler blah, blah, blah, setup towing the perfectly tied hellioandropomorphic sculpin pattern indiginous to that environment. How's that for fly lingo?
Anyhow, I was rewarded with a reply of "Great fishing! Daddy hold up my fish!" from a beaming little girl about age 8. Well, "Daddy" with true friendly Montana hospitality, smiled and pulled up an obnioxios vine of trout none under 18-inches and one (which I supposed was the happy little girl's catch) looked to push the 30-inch mark. It was truly a thing of beauty and Kodak moment. Except that right when Grandma was snapping a picture of little Debbie and her monster, one of the overloaded chain links next to Daddy's hand decided that the steel in the 99-cent K-Mart stringer need to pop loose and relieve 20-some pounds of rainbow trout induced stress on it.
When those fish fell in the water, a numb silence fell across the boat for a second. But then, with looks of horror, pure pandemoneum busted loose. Dogs and cowboy hats flew in the water, Grandpa and Daddy were lunging for the prized stringer, the allready overloaded boat was wildly rocking and shipping ungodly amounts of water, Mom and Grandma were screaming at everyone to sit down, Grandma's camera went swimming....PURE HELL for 10-seconds. It all subsided and silence prevailed in the boat, until the Dad metioned to the now thoughouly devestated little girl that "It's all right honey, well catch another fish."
"NO ITS NOT!" she wailed back. "WE'LL NEVER CATCH ANOTHER ONE AND IT'S ALL HIS FAULT!!!" Of course she was pointing directly at me. I was trying my best to shrink into some small unnoticable aquatic bug that could travel great distances and speeds over water in short amounts of time. And, of course in my tube I couldn't get too far too quick so I had the unpleasant task of watching the little girl bore holes in my float tube with her angry eyes while her family retrieved their pooches and bailed the old jon boat.
As they pulled anchor and fired up their old outboard to head back to what would probablly be a somber camp, my partner was laughing his head off. I felt horrible for inadvertantly ruining a little girls fishing day (probablly scarring her for life and turning her into a man-hating, float-tube despising, angry assasin of anything toting a damned flyrod woman).
Anyhow, there is something to be said for karma since I spent 6 more days in the fly-fishing paradise of Montana and could only hook a desperate, starving whitefish or two. The fish gods had their revenge. Every drop of water I touched from the Clark Fork, to the Henry's Fork, to Clark Canyon Resevior went utterly dead (for everyone) upon my arrival. I finally flew out of Bozeman to return my job in disgust. Of course two hours after I was airborn, my friend was driving (he stayed another week)a favorite stretch of the Missouri and saw with a smile that rods were bent for a mile stretch of river. He claims he was never so happy to see a fishing buddy go home. I can't blame him. Since that day whenever the Queets, Naselle, Dry Falls, Deschutes or any other water fails to give up a thing, he blames me and the Cliff Lake debaucle.
My partner that day never fails to revive that story when he puts on a slide show for a fly club or hosts his booth at a sportsman's expo. I still feel like an ass about it.
[This message has been edited by Chuckn'Duck (edited 04-13-2000).]

[bait boy]

Let me tell you about a fishing trip or 2 to catch spring Chinook it goes a
little like this

2300 start work

0600 decide you want to go fishing the willamette and take off early from work

0700 make it to the store to get your license and find out that the computer/ telephone lines that go to town have a problem and the state has computerized licenses and to top it all off the ATM machines in town are on the same phone line so I have to buy a package of 25 cent crackers to get money for the launch. got $20 from register

0730 realize that $5 launch fee can't be paid out of a $20 go back to store to get change for $20

0800 get out on the river with 100 of my closest friends and catch nothing.

1200 go home and start to get ready for trip that night to go fishing again

1800 leave for Buddy's house

1900 get To buddys house help Buddy get everything ready to go make sure spare is in truck

2000 leave Buddy's to pick up other guy going with us

2230 finally get to where we are supposed to be going get everything ready to go and put the boat in the water find out a tire on the trailer has been blown for so long that the sidewalls are gone.

1200 get tire fixed put spare on put boat in water spend 20 minutes trying to figure out where I can put the truck without getting towed or a ticket. Get to the boat and get settled for sleep.

0400 wake up to go fishing next morning, run the boat to get going in the morning find it gets really hot and need to find out why.

0430 pull the boat out of the water to figure out the overheating problem
find and fix problem Loose hose on outdrive.

0500 get boat back in water get Buddy who drove truck back to parking spot
1/2 mile away.

0530 get rods in the water for a spectacular day of fishing.

0550 steering linkage breaks

0630 steer by hand using the gaff to push and pull the outdrive (20 ft searay) finally make it back to the dock. Buddy sets off to cool off (He's kinda hot under the
collar at this point http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/mad.gif ) and get the truck.

0700 Buddy gets back with the truck put boat on trailer. Decide to go have a nice leisurely breakfast in town, park trailer and tease Buddy that the tire is flat again. Ha Ha

0830 leave diner find the tire really has gone flat drive the 100 yards to
the service station and get 2 new tires

0920 get back on road and stop by the fish ladder to see the fish that we attempted to catch.

1200 got back to Buddy's did a little work on the boat and went home for a
nap before I Had to get the Kids at 1600


[This message has been edited by rickh75 (edited 04-16-2000).]

[This message has been edited by rickh75 (edited 04-16-2000).]

[Bait O' Eggs]

I was raised on the Trask River, and one morning we were awakened by a drift boat fisherman who wanted to drive thru the field and remove their boat from the river about 1/2 hour after daylight. Dad expalined the boat ramp was down river a few miles. The poor fisherman explained his reason for abandoning a prime fishing day so early, was they had overturned their drift boat and lost one of their 2 oars. His companions were waiting at the boat with what was left of their tackle and poles. They had pretty much lost everything when the boat got into some brush near the bank and all 3 three of them moved to one side of the boat to avoid the limbs. The outcome was 3 wet fisherman, 2 lost poles, lost tackle etc. etc. We gave them a shuttle to their vehicle so they could be on their way. While loading the boat on the trailer it was noticed one of the trailer tires was going flat. Not wanting to change the tire, the fisherman were in a hurry to get to town before the tire was completely flat. In their haste they did not tie the boat to the trailer. As they rounded the driveway onto the road at an excessive speed the boat fipped off the trailer onto the road. The boat landing on the pavement crushing one side of the fiberglass drift boat. The only remaining fishing pole was broke. After loading the boat back onto the trailer, they changed their now flat tire. While talking with them as they changed the tire I discovered they had borrowed the boat, poles and all from a buddy.

[Fred Uhlig]

Fishing the South Santiam River for steelhead in the 80's with my fly fishing guru, Roger Stratman (now deceased) when a new fly fisherman showed up for about 4 days in a row. He was a total novice- too small a rod, no steelhead flies, no tapered leader, no line backing and on and on. After a few days, Roger who was real hard to get information from, approached the young man and gave him some flies, tied on a leader and showed him how to fish the hole. As we watched him start to fish Roger stated that he was a seminary student studing to preach the word of God. He definitely had God on his side, because he immediately hooked a good size fish, which promptly beached itself on the shore with one screaming run. Good thing because without backing he probably would have lost the fish and his line.

[Deleted User]

Since the old DB will be deleted in the near future I will put forth a reprint of one story from there, that I wrote from some material of a friend and mine's, for new readers to enjoy.-- "A Matter Of Fishing Nomen Clature" (for mature readers)- This dude Nomen (not a convent term), sure has done a number on the often misunderstood English language. Especially when it comes to the different meanings of the same words in England and America. This is certainly true of fishing terminology; even within our own boundries. Why is it that in it's Northern ranges Chinook salmon are called King's? And in it's Southern ranges Kings are called Chinooks? Steelhead are often refered to as Ironheads, Steelies, Seagoing Rainbows, and even good ol' Head. I have seen bumper stickers that claim "There's no nookie like Chinookie", and "There's no head like Steelhead". Well, to those claimants I gotta say that either I just haven't learned how to enjoy my fishing like they have...or, by gump, they just plain don't know how to have sex! ~ And there's the matter of the Queen's English, as they call it overseas. So many differences. Such as our closet means toilet in England. Here in the N.W. we use the chicken term hen for a female salmon and the manly hunter's term of buck for the male salmon. In England they also use the term hen for female Atlantic salmon, but they use the rooster term cock for the male salmon. You can see why many linguologists have called for standardizing the English language for all countries that use it. However, can you imagine how that might go over with N.W. fishermen during the big fall Chinook/King season?? From across the Bay is heard the cry "HEY BOB! YOU SHOULD SEE THE HUGE COCK I'VE GOT ON OVER HERE!!"... Or, from across the ramp takeout parking lot "Man, ya shoulda seen the cock I had my hands on yesterday", to which a reply could come "Losin' that is nothin' to brag about. Come over here and look at my big cock!". As confusing as this language can be, perhaps it is best left as is. - Steve Hanson

[This message has been edited by RT (edited 04-21-2000).]

[cureless]

When I was a kid my family fished the Main Nehalem tidewater often. One occasion I will never forget we had completed our fishing for the morning and I was sitting on the dock waiting to leave. When two guys came up who were in a hurry to get fishing obviously getting a late start.

As one buddy was parking their vehicle the other motored out in front of the dock waiting for him to return. He was in a fifteen-foot aluminum boat with about a fifty HP motor that was having trouble warming up. Just as he passed right in front of me the motor stalled, this was before there were many electric starts so he began to pull the cord to start the motor he pulled the choke then pulled the cord several times without any success.

He started to swear and mumble under his breath. Looking over at me must have just made him mad knowing that an impressionable youngster was just feet away on the dock. With all the anger and strength he could muster he yanked the cord one last time pulling so hard the cord pulled completely out of the motor.

This caused the motor to come alive, the water erupted like a school of hungry Perana at a all you can eat buffet, The motor lifted off the back of the boat and sank to the bottom of the river running full throttle all the while. Then complete silence. He stood at the back of the boat still holding the pull cord, with a look of astonishment I will never forget he looked over at me as if to say “did you just see that”

Shortly his buddy returned still not a word had been said, he surveyed the situation seeing the pull cord hanging limp in his buddies hand he said “Hey where is the motor” At that I busted into a belly laugh. I was also smart enough to know at that point my life was in danger and decided to leave the dock. As I left and looked back the last thing I remember was the two of them tossing the anchor trying to catch part of the motor.

Certainly it is true that fishing does have its ups and downs.

[Jennie@ifish]

Repost from Mark, submitted by Jen with Picture http://www.ifish.net/Big_Fish.jpg
Every Autumn I anxiously await the fall storms that bring the coastal rivers up from their low summer levels. Depending on the
time of year and the amount of rain, Fall chinook will be entering these rivers. The Trask is the first river to get Chinook in large
numbers. In previous years I've learned that if the Trask is running with fish, the Wilson River will get a few stranglers. Practically
everybody will be fishing the Trask. This was the case in late September of 1995.

It started raining on a Monday. By Friday morning the Wilson River had come up three feet. I didn't have time to get my reel filled
with higher rated line, so I was stuck with 8 pound mainline.

I grabbed some shrimp on the drive down and arrived at the river just as it was getting light. I started drifting a shrimp through the
run. I meticulously covered the water as throughoughly as possible. I had been there almost three hours and had started to give up
hope. I then tied on a 10-pound leader with a pink acrylic pom-pom, 2/0 barbless hook and shrimp. I figured I would fish for a few
more minutes and then head up river. A few casts later towards the middle of the drift, I felt a familar bump. I hesitated for just a
brief second and then I set the hook hard. Instantly an irate "HUGE" Chinook thrashed and took off on a 50 yard run. I had just
hooked the biggest Chinook of my life. I applied pressure as hard as I dare knowing I had 8 pound mainline. For the next 15
minutes, I didn't see the fish. He made several runs up and down the river with me following him. Finally I started to gain some
line. It was like a tug-of-war. I'd gain some line and he'd go right back to the middle of the river. On the last run I felt that he was
getting tired and I knew I had to get him in or risk losing him. I grabbed the net and positioned it close to the shore and slowly
pumped him in to within four feet. I applied as much pressure as I could and slipped him into the net. The Buck was absolutely
huge and fresh from the ocean. I carried the fish to my truck with its tail dragging on the ground. I drove to the Guide Shop and
had him weighed. He topped out the scales at 42 pounds! If I lost that fish, it would just be another fishing story of the one that got
away.

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