What's Your Most Unusual Catch

[ukzero1]

A Pike on the pole at Smeatons Lakes Newark.

 

[squimp]

A really big (as in 4 -5 foot) long turtle when fly fishing for tarpon in Costa Rica. It hook half an hour to ‘land’.

As I have ginger hair my mates called me the ‘ginger ninja’ for the rest of the trip.

 

[62tucker]

A bat on fly gear!

Also had a bat. Casting a small worm under a canopy of trees. Hooked right in the lip. Scary things. Like a mouse with wings. Unhooked safely with forceps and put in a tree.

 

[Jimpanzee]

Hooking a fish is unusual for me

 

[Zerkalo]

I've never caught anything more unusual than a crayfish.

Though I've seen some people on here have caught lamprey, glad I've never had one of them, look worse than eels!

 

[rudd]

I have had some absolutely unbelievable blanks at times.......

 

[crackatoa]

Hooked a small perch which lassoed another. So had a 2 in 1.

 

[tincatim]

Nothing too crazy but in the past I’ve caught a mallard that I had to play in the air before getting it under control and landing it. Signal crayfish a couple of times, horrible things. And probably the weirdest thing was whilst waggler fishing many years ago, the bites had inexplicably dried up so I reeled in to check the hook bait and found a roaches eye ball on the size 20 hook! Hooked fair and square like an expander. I never did catch the rest of it.

 

[Chitterlings & Hodge]

Hooked a shrew on the river Salwarpe as a kid on BAA water.

As a kid my Dad caught an otter dead baiting for Pike, I think it was at Patshull

 

[adriang]

Pair of undies from the Thames earlier this season. They washed up alright.

 

[AdeB]

More of a near unusual catch, a Pelican had a go at my lure when I was holidaying in Antigua. So glad it let go!

 

[Louis D]

As others have said,

Several snapping turtles in Texas

Several ducks over the years but one in flight in Marlow Town centre on the Thames one summer evening.

Plenty of flounders up to around 8 oz around Keynsham on the Bristol Avon, quite a way from the sea.

Best was a catapult at Tunnel Barn Farm. Usual summer tactics, fishing shallow at 5 or 6 metres and hooked an F1 12" deep. At some point, the fight changed from clearly pulling against the elastic to a static (and lighter), dead weight. The bloke next to me started shouting "you've got to net your fish" when i clearly wasn't going for the landing net but then couldn't stop laughing when I swung a Matrix catapult in. I had the last laugh though - 205 lb, match win and bonus catapult. Result.

 

[tincatim]

How are so many people managing to lose catapults?!

 

[legs230258]

Two Channel catfish from the Tidal Trent some 26 years ago. A guy from Sheffield photographed the first one, which then featured in the Anglers Mail. They were black and smooth with spiked gills, tiny top fin, flat head with 4 long whiskers. I think they may have been put in the hot water area of the local power station before being flushed into the river. Someone said they were probably fish from a fish tank originally, but they were both big for aquarium fish. One was 3lb 11oz and the other 2lb 4oz. I have also had a 9lb Wels catfish out off the Tidal Trent on work when bream fishing. An absolute nightmare to get in, but a fantastic experience.

 

[CJROSCOW]

A terrapin at Stanley park lake in Blackpool. It was over a foot in diameter. I thought ot was a big slab to start with until i moved all the weed. Hair rigged sweetcorn on cage feeder.

 

[The Landlord]

A limpet whilst fishing off a boat in the Mersey estuary. My rod was bent double & it took ages to pull it free from the side of the boat

 

[Roger_feederer]

Nowt more than a moor hen. Got it in quick but gentle, threw my coat over it to calm it down (you want to cover its eyes), quick discorger and away it went a bit shaken but not shaken enough to stop trying to eat my ropey 10 day old slightly floatey maggots.

 

[davylad]

I was fishing the Humber with a mate, when we both reeled in, and were amazed to see an eel of about a pound and a half come up between us. We'd both hooked the eel in the mouth, not sure who would have weighed it in if it had been a match.

 

[62tucker]

Had a canny size eel take a slow retrieved sprat and hooked on a treble hook and wire trace.
canny mess to untangle and glad I had my greys side cutters to cut the wire.
A strange experience hoping for a follow off a pike to see a eel appear from nowhere and latch onto the spear.