We had some family friends who lived on a big farm in Iowa and we'd go visit them in the summers. One year we all go fishing on some little lake near them. We were using those big black barn crickets for bait.
I make a cast and it lands kinda close to a mallard hen. She sees that cricket and grabs it. She got hooked through the tongue and has hard as she tried, she couldn't get it out. I ended up reeling her in. Our friends had some ducks at the farm already, so we took her back to the farm, clipped a wing and she lived there for several years.
"Never try to fight an Old Dude. If you win, there's no glory; if you lose, your reputation is shot."
I was fishing off the coast of California and hooked a frigging pelican! Those damn things would follow us everywhere we went and were a royal PITA. I can see why some of those fishermen would get frustrated and clip their beaks (which is HIGHLY illegal BTW and I'd never do it, but I can sympathise). I fought with him a while hoping he'd get loose, but finally had to cut my line. I tied on a whole new rig, threw my first cast and ANOTHER one of those rat-bastards snatched my rig right out of the air! That sucker was in full flight and reeled off about 3/4 spool of line before I locked the reel down and snapped the line. BUT, they were NOTHING compared to catching a sea lion! But that's another story. Fishing around the California coast was always an adventure ... NOT fun.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness" - Mark Twain
A friend and I were fishing in the north coast of PR and he hooked a seagul. It took quite an effort from both of us to get the bird freed.
Had a beaver coming swimming by while casting for northerns so I thought I would be smart and give it a scare. My cast landed just beyond the critter so I thought when the line landed on it it would scare the beaver causing it to slap it's tail and head for the hills. That never happened. Instead it simply proceeded to swim away while peeling line from my fancy new reel. Thought for sure he would spool me and take the whole outfit with him down the river but thankfully the line eventually broke.
My grandpa was a big time fisherman, his signature saying was, don't buy a pole that's too expensive to slap a snake with.
Me and your Grandpa would have gotten along just fine. My best story is having an Osprey swoop down and grab an American Shad I was fighting. We both tugged back and forth a bit before he let loose. You should have heard him scream at me when I let that thing loose.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Raoul Duke
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