I’m reminded of some of the unexpected fish I’ve landed after seeing this bit on a wildlife biologist that caught a fish he’d stocked nearly 25 years earlier.

Surprised is a better word, like the 12″ trout I caught out of Hat Creek that had three flies stuck in his face. To add insult to injury, two of them were the same size and pattern – a Copper John variation. It was six bucks worth of trout if you’re counting, and nice of him to tell me what pattern was completely irresistible.

I hooked a fish on another outing that gave up much too quickly, after landing it I found the reason, an Osprey had hit him sometime back and it was missing a silver dollar size chunk of flesh below the dorsal fin. It was healed over, but the spine was visible. Trout may be vulnerable to pollutants but they can still take a licking.

My best work was the fish I landed without a hook, starting with “the impossible lie” – one of those casts you dream of making, you know it’ll cost $20 worth of flies to attempt. Fifteen dollars later I made the cast and a fish ate it. With half the line downstream in a belly, there was no way I could set the hook. Somehow I managed,  and when I got the fish close I saw what happened, the fish had rose over the leader and my slow strike caused the fly to catch the leader on the other side – a neat lasso that slid into the gill plate and stayed as long as  the fish stayed below me.

But the all time favorite was something witnessed during El Nino. My buddies and I were fishing for rock fish in the San Francisco Bay. The fellow next to us hooked a fish and reeled it in – we saw him lift it out of the water by the hook snell. He turned to us and says, “Weird, it’s a purple Stingray thing..” then collapsed as if poleaxed.

We pull him out of the water, and he’s able to stutter, “E-e-electrified.”

We never did figure out what he’d caught, but we weren’t about to grip anything we hadn’t eaten before, especially Purple..

Technorati Tags: Purple stingray thing, Copper John, bizarre fish tales, Tin Cup