What's the coolest thing yuou've seen on the water

[Crankbait]

What’s the coolest or most memorable thing that you have seen while being on the water whether you have a picture or not. Mine happened while I was living in Tampa on an estuary called Allen’s creek. I was skipping a fluke under some mangroves and all of a sudden I felt something blowing on my hand! Looked down and saw this huge thing looking up at me. I was so into skipping that I didn’t notice a ten foot baby manatee looking up at me…..scared the crap out of me! He was looking up at me like “are you my moma” Anyway it turned out to be the wildest moment I’ve had on the water. Sat on a sand bar for 45 minutes feeding a baby manatee grass and mangrove leaves. He/she even followed me back to my dock where I gave him some water from the hose….Awesome I’ll never forget it



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqt2UKVfm3s

[Tavery5]

That is very cool Crankbait, they seem very interesting. One of the places that Pro Reel and I fish has elk. The guy that owns the place has a dozen, maybe more, adult size elk, they are crazy big, and very beautiful. It is always fun to see the big buck of the heard puff his chest out and bugle like crazy.

[mrmuskie5]

That is awesome! Well i have a few good ones but one comes to mind that happened last year. Mine isn't quite as happy as yours. So me and my buddy were out casting bucktais on this big point hunting for miss muskie, it was right before goose season so the the points were covered with geese. Me and my buddy hadn't had a bite , follow, nothing. I decide im gonna cast right in the middle of all these geese, when my lure hit the water is was like someone thru a cherry bomb in the lake. At this point i figured A muskie just engulfed my bait..... wrong... all of a sudden i see a goose trying to fly with all his/her might but not moving... then we start to see a head of what looked like a 45" plus muskie clamped down on the feet of the goose! This goose pulled the muskie half way out of the water before it let go! It was like a dog with a chew toy! This was just crazy.

[joedog]

Two experiences, no pictures.
First when I was like 16 I and friends were pike fishing with live suckers and those cannon ball size red and white bobbers. A crane flew down and grabbed the sucker and flew away, taking bobber and all with him. The sight of this huge bird flying thru the sky with my bobber trailing behind was a sight I'll never forget!
Second, I was bass fishing and just rifling cast after cast not really caring where it landed because I was at a new lake, no electronics on boat and I was surronded by water so I really wasn't trying to fish any special point or area, just covering water paying little or no attention to where I was throwing . Next cast went thru a group of flying water pigeons (seagulls). My line wrapped around one and down it came, very pissed off! I felt bad and decided I would reel it in and untangle it. What a mistake! The closer the bird got the more pissed off it got and when I got into the boat all hell broke loose. This bird clawed me, bit me, flapped me you name it, it did it. I had cuts and scrapes and puncture wounds from head to toe. But I was determined not to let this bird fly off or swim off wrapped in fishing line. Well got line removed and off it flew. I promised my self if it ever happens again that pigeons going to be supper on my grill not out crapping all over everything.
Thats my story and I'm sticking with it!

[kennethdaysale]

After some thought I think there isn't enough bandwidth here to post them all, I have been blessed to see many "cool" things from the bow of a boat. Thousands of sunrises and sunsets so remarkable and unique that even the smallest doubt tucked away in your mind about intelligent design seemed to vanish in their presence. 10 point bucks slipping down to the waters edge, half hidden in that heavy morning mist. Two big toms squaring off to earn what all big toms want. Great Blue Herons standing patiently in the shallows spearing fish and then giving you that look like "watch and learn grasshopper". A 14" bass guarding a bed against a relentless hoarde of bluegills with a determination to defy the odds that makes you proud of him. Huge softshells hooked up in mating rituals 5 feet from the boat completely unashamed. The strange sound of beavers dragging limbs and slapping tails on a hot moonless night in august. The look on a little boys face when instead of reeling his first fish in like his daddy just told him decides to just run up the bank with his pole over his head hollerin. The look on you buddys face when he realizes he's just pitched his jig into a wasp nest. The look on your sons face and the feeling in your heart when he finally makes perfect casts with his new baitcaster. The feeling of amazement and relief you get when after releasing a fat 5 pound bass, you just cannot remember what you were so worried about yesterday.

[WatterBoy]

For me it's seeing loons and eagles up close. They are both such amazing birds. The coolest one so far came from earlier this year when my dad and I saw this loon take down a good-sized Rock Bass.

[keithdog]

First of all Crankbait, I am very jealous of your experience! That must have been an amazing interaction you had with the manitee. I wish I'd been there. I have two stories to mention. Once I was fishing near the opening to a bay early in the morning when I heard splashing behind me. I turned around in time to see a doe and her fawn swimming across the bay opening a short distance behind me to reach the opposite shore. That was the highlight of the day. Another time early one morning just before sunrise, I watched a duck struggle in a battle with a fish that was trying to take it down. Not sure what kind of fish it was, but I was close enough to see that it looked like a huge bass that was right near shore. Whatever it was, the battle lasted a good minute or so with the duck and fish both creating one heck of a ruckus.

[bassinbob]

I have two. One on the water and one on the shore. I was out fishing in my boat and had the pleasure to watch a young bald eagle circle above me for about 2 or 3 minutes. Wondering if he was going to dive bomb me. The second was a night a few friends and I spent on shore camping out. We had just finished fishing and got into our sleeping bags under a thousand stars. We heard an owl off in the distance. I started to answer the owl using the two hand method of whistling. After about 10 minutes that darn owl was in the tree right above our heads. Being in our teens and not sure what to do we just put our heads under our bags and waited till we thought it was gone. After that my friends wouldn't let me call in anymore owls.

[Scott the fishman]

Thats a cool story my most memorable story would be one i was cat fishing with a friend and we found a dead bluegill pretty big too and put it on our line made a long cast and it wasn't sinking and then a hawk cam swooping down trying to grab it. I yank the rod as hard as i could and lucky got it away from the hawk

[pro reel]

I've seen a lot of cool things while fishing. I think that sometimes half the fun is just watching nature up close. I have 2 experiences however that really stick out. One was with my wife many years ago when we were night fishing in a narrow cove at tableRock lake. We very close to a steeply sloped bank when the night silence was broken by the biggest ruccus you could imagine. I'm fairly certain it was 2 very ticked off bobcats in a fight, or one bobcat fighting some other animal. The thing is, it started way up at the top of the hill and over the next few minutes of screaming and thrashing sounds the 2 animals were slowly rolling downhill through the trees directly above us. I was scrambling to get untied from the tree the boat was tied 2 and fired up the motor just in time to get away when we heard the splash of these 2 cats hit at about the spot we had just left. That seemed to take the fight out of em and they scamperd back into the brush, but the wife was quite ready to head for the cabin.
The 2nd most memorable time was also at Table Rock. I had taken a freind on a weekend trip to my dads lake house. We took the boat out the first day and went to a good spot that I knew of. We were using flukes and skipping them under docks. In that gin clear water you can watch a fluke slowly sink clear down to about 15 ft. Several small bass would come out and just look at the fluke but wouldn't grab it. My friend had just made a great skip cast up to a shady side of a dock. We were both watching his fluke sink and looking at the small bass that came out to look. Just then, from way down deep, we both saw this huge gaping wide white busket mouth charge straight up from the depths of the lake. We could see that this monster bass had opened her mouth wide as a coffee can and it seemed to take several seconds for her to reach the sinking bait. We got to see the whole thing as the little bass scatered and she enhaled the fluke and then turned to charge back down to her deep hideout. Just then my friend reared back and set the hook only to discover that he had forgotten to tighten his drag knob and it was set completly loose for storage. The reel screamed as it let line out with no resistence at all and that giant bass simply puffed the fluke out of her mouth and was gone. I was rolling on the floor of the boat and he was about to cry. That bass would have gone an easy 8 to 9 lbs

[nofearengineer]

Glendo Reservoir in Wyoming...I was probably about 12 years old. Beautiful sunrise as the fog evaporated off the water. The entire lake (a huge lake too) seemed like absolute glass. I almost felt bad we were disturbing it with our jon.

Jackson Lake (also in Wyoming)...again about 12-13. The water was so clear you could count the pebbles 50 feet deep. Only yards off the western shore, staring straight up thousands of feet to the top of Mt. Moran, a big chunk of ice-tipped granite.

Kind of strange that I didn't catch a single fish on either of those trips, but they still stick in my head.

[bamabassman]

can't top the manatee bud. won't even try. as far as what type of animal i thought was a wonder, i'll go witht the otters lisa and i watched a few years ago playing in the river while we were fishing. then watching the osprey dive and catch dinner for her babies on b.b. comer bridge. awesum.

[F16 1UB]

I agree with bamabass, can't top manatee story but 2 weeks ago at Lake Weir my partner had a pickerel on a 1 Knocker. He was hoping it'd shake off so he held it near the boat when all of a sudden about a 3# bass made a swipe at the bait. I heard the splash and he said "Did you see that". Just before I was about to say no the bass did it not once but twice. The pike had both trebles in his mouth and the bass on the 3rd try held on to the lure while my partner tried to lift both fish out of the water. Of course the bass released and swam off. I've seen & caught 2 bass on the same lure but never saw one just hold onto it motionless.

[Crankbait]

I don’t know if the manatee experience will ever be toped…. These are some awesome stories. I don’t care if you fish, hunt, or do both how could you not want to preserve our natural resources!

[kennethdaysale]

I don't know..have yall seen that vid from Cali thats been on the net lately where the whale the size of a school bus breaches right next to the little boat? I bet you couldn't drive a straight pin up their a** with a sledge hammer at that moment

[tim4081]

Just a couple of the many cool things I've been blessed to see. Earlier this year I watched an eagle circle near our boat and then he dove almost straight down to grab his dinner not more than 40 feet from the boat. A couple of years ago my son and I were fishing early one morning when we noticed a pair of otters nearby. We sat our poles down and watched them for at least fifteen minutes as they played around with a floating soda bottle. But probably the most memorable was one early spring evening when we spotted a whitetail standing just a few yards onto the shore. She was in a very secluded area where you could only see her from the water. She just stayed there for some time and began making some rather strange sounds...we were really wondering what was wrong when suddenly she let out a loud bleat and dropped a fawn. She turned to clean it and then nudged it to its feet to take its first shakey steps....will never forget the wonder of that day.

[Crankbait]

Originally Posted by kennethdaysale

I don't know..have yall seen that vid from Cali thats been on the net lately where the whale the size of a school bus breaches right next to the little boat? I bet you couldn't drive a straight pin up their a** with a sledge hammer at that moment

I saw that….first I didn’t think it was real.

[Backwater Charlie]

There was a time when I had been fishing an ultralight rig and caught a very small bluegill, maybe 4-inches at the most. I was fishing at a culvert that ended a backwater at the local lake. Anyway, I was just goofing around and dipped the little fish back in the water, still attached to my hook and start moving it around. Out of nowhere a big SPLASH happens. I pull back and see a nice 2 or 3lb bass fighting like hell. I wrestle the fish around for maybe 30 seconds and then he runs in toward the tunnel, catches my 4lb line on the jagged wall of the tunnel, and snaps my line..

[TN_Bassin]

The coolest thing I've seen didn't happen to me but to a guy fishing out club tournament a few years back... He caught a baby alligator on a texas rig and brought it to the weigh in to show everybody... Keep in mind this is Tennessee and we don't have many alligators here!!! I guess someone had it as a pet and let it go when they couldn't take care of it anymore. It was about 3ft long. Not mature but still a sight to see when you're fishing the Cumberland River.

[MississippiBoy]

My dad and I were fishing an old oxbow lake off the Mississippi years ago, in amongst a bunch of cypress trees. All of a sudden, Dad says, "Look at that!" There was a little chipmunk hanging on to a cypress knee, right above the water. He was stretched out as far as he could reach, trying to get an acorn floating in the water. We had been watching for just a few seconds, when all of a sudden, a monster largemouth comes flying up at 90 miles an hour, water splashing everywhere, and takes the little guy under in an instant. Me and Dad about hit the floor....we couldn't believe our eyes.
About the time we get our senses back, I look back down, and I see that big ol' bass come back and put another acorn right by that tree.....

[Crankbait]

Originally Posted by TN_Bassin

The coolest thing I've seen didn't happen to me but to a guy fishing out club tournament a few years back... He caught a baby alligator on a texas rig and brought it to the weigh in to show everybody... Keep in mind this is Tennessee and we don't have many alligators here!!! I guess someone had it as a pet and let it go when they couldn't take care of it anymore. It was about 3ft long. Not mature but still a sight to see when you're fishing the Cumberland River.

Now that's cool!!!

[Crankbait]

Originally Posted by MississippiBoy

.
About the time we get our senses back, I look back down, and I see that big ol' bass come back and put another acorn right by that tree.....

Come on MBoy.....you had up until this part

[3dkicker]

Saw someone's pet albino peacock/hen walking on the shore on the Potomac. Yelled to the bird if it wanted some bread, like I do to ducks at the ramp, and it came running over to the boat. Took a pic but didn't come out too well. Old cell phone with bad camera.

[Crankbait]

I totally forgot about this until reading some of your posts…. When I was kid probably 7 or 8 I used to cross through a tunnel running under a road to the National Geographic Building in Gaithersburg, Maryland…lots of wildlife. We found another drainage tunnel further back and used our nets to see what fish we could catch to take back to our local creek. As we ran the fish out of the tunnel into a small pool the fish started to jump over the rock waterfall running out of the pool. As they fish were flopping over the rocks northern water snakes started coming out of the rocks and were eating the fish. We were just staring jaws dropped. It was like National Geographic Explorer! The next day I borrowed my dad’s 35mm Yashia Twin lens reflex camera yup old school we did the same thing and got some cool pictures. I have to see if my parents still have those pictures. That was cool!!!!