Back in high school I bought myself a fancy new fishing outfit that I was mighty proud of. One night while attempting to catch a lunker along comes a beaver. I decided to show how well I could cast so proceeded to sail my jig to a point slightly in front of the beaver's offside. My thinking was that once the line settled on the beaver it would spook & slap it's tail for our amusement. The line nicely settles across the beaver but no tail-slap follows. Instead the beaver dives, feels the sting from my hook, and then proceeds to get out of Dodge which causes the line to quick commence to peeling off of my spool! I frantically tried to get the jackknife out of my pocket so I could cut the line before the beaver pulled the whole thing into the river but I am here to tell you that doing so was no easy task. Luckily the line broke before the beaver spooled me but I had to quit fishing as there wasn't enough line left on the reel to make even half of a cast.

Lesson learned.