Most frightening experience while fishing?

[anacrime]

got chased by a pack of bulls. was treed for like 15 minutes before i came down and got chased back up again.

[theophilus]

My greatest concern is always two-legged dangers- we seem so defenseless in our goofy vests and rubber pants-- yet the world beyond the sidewalk can harm your person as thoroughly as a faceless thug with a sharpened screwdriver. I may take offense at what appears to be random,but I prefer that over malice. For instance...

While fishing the Owens Gorge a couple years ago, in a stretch held dear but sometimes not well by rock climbers, I simultaneously heard "Heads up!" and the deep grumble of rocks falling. I always fish these nettle lined runs by wading up the middle of the stream, so quick movement was not possible. One boulder out of the many seemed laser guided, and there must have been a tiny red beam on the middle of my forehead, the rock just kept getting bigger and bigger and...I swerved left, it bounced right, and landed in the pool just a short cane rod's distance above me. SPLASH!! And then it bobbed to the surface, bumped my leg and floated downstream. Pumice!!

Another incident, while following my new passion for hunting turkeys...
Have you ever been convinced, I mean with all the conviction of those pests who ring your doorbell on Sunday mornings with their suits and tickets to God, that today's menu features...YOU! Bearanoia they call it up north, we can enjoy the same adrenaline rush down here, with large kitties. Two years ago I was sitting comfortably, back up against an immense oak, camoflaged head, face, body and toe, doing my best in the predawn darkness to sound like a lonely and oh-so-receptive female turkey. On a flat granite rock, let's say 20 yards straight ahead,I noticed a form, maybe a foot high and of indistinct shape. Through my slowly raised binoculars, to my transfixed attention, I stared into the eyes of a crouching cougar. It didn't know exactly what I was, but I was making all the right breakfast noises. Those eyes were piercing, almost hypnotizing,maybe they held mine for minutes, more likely seconds until suddenly, like a jolt of electricity my brain did the calculations of distance/speed/teeth/death. The binocs came down, the shotgun came up, and the cougar had vanished. Poof!! I let the sun rise fully, and walked back to the truck with eyes in the back of my head.

But thinking about it, in the safety of home, I think I would rather snag Koi in a golfcourse pond than hunt and fish in a world without risk. "Spice of life" and all that..

Doug

[castaway]

Whats wrong with fishing for Koi? The "wild" ones are darn hard to catch...

[fly addict]

Not catching any fish.

Mine would have to be when I fell through the ice on opening day on Diamond Lake in Oregon. I was lucky, as it was only about three feet deep where I went in. As I was thawing out in my truck another fisherman was not so lucky; he went in over his head. As I watch him struggle to get out I knew I would have to help him because there was nobody else around. As I went back out on the ice to help him some other people pulled up and slid a small downed aspen tree out to me that I then slid out to the victim in the water. He was able to hold on as we pulled him out. Needless to say I don’t ice fish anymore.

Mark

[CMFish]

I was fishing the BC near %^# !#$!# and was down deep in the canyon. In just 10 min of fishing I caught 3 little 10 inch bows. As I was working my way up canyon I felt the ground tremble a little. Then I heard thunder. I looked up and saw a few clouds and figured I had time. I continued to fish.

Then I heard and felt more rumbling! I looked up river and saw a 6 - 8 foot wall of water coming down the narrow canyon. I look right, then left and I had no where to go. I turned and ran down the stream and scrambled up the cliff. I turned back and noticed that the rock I was standing on had disappeared under the stream. Trees were floating down and crashing into rocks.

At that time, I got the shakes and realized just how lose I came to the end. I was 8 miles back and not a soul around. I will call the dam controllers before I go again.

RS

[tomsakai]

Last summer I was fishing Rock Creek near Missoula by myself. It was late in the day and I was hurrying to get to the next spot, walking on a trail right next to the stream. Next thing I knew I had stepped into a beaver hole or muskrat hole burrowed into the side of the stream and was in water over my head. Fortunately I made a quick recovery and managed to swim back to the bank (only 2-4 feet away).

[meb]

Here's the first ones that come to mind:

1. Stepped off a log and landed next to a quickly curling rattler. West Fork
2. Had a rock about the size of a basketball fall from somewhere high above and miss my head by inches. West Fork
3. Had a rock about the size of a large TV give way and roll as I stepped on it. I fell and it rolled over my leg. I thought my leg was broken, but it was only scratched, bruised, and bleeding. Umpqua
4. This was the worst. I was crossing a fast moving section of the Merced and lost my balance. I was sucked downstream a few feet into a chute that went under a car-sized rock. I was able to brace myself from going under, but not able to pull my feet out and was pretty much stuck for a few minutes. I panicked and used that "lift a car off the baby" strength that panic can call up and brought my feet out. I was shaken and shaking for a few hours.

Now if you asked my fishing buddy Rich he would have a different list because he's always telling stories of my falls and disasters. My best of him was watching him climb out a steep section of the Deschutes up a rocky berm only to fall backwards about twenty feet above the water. I thought for sure I was going to see him explode his head on the rocks, but he did a back flip, went into the water feet first, and didn't even break his rod. He was shaken and shaking for a few hours.

I hope those things are all in the past.

Mark

[Trootfisher]

I almost died last spring.

Not going to say where, but I was a solid 10 miles from the trailhead/parking lot, and standing by a big pool right near the end (on the way back from hiking up the creek) of my trip and a basketball-sized rock came tumbling down the cliff and whizzed right by my face- I felt the wind from it.
Happened so fast, I didn't realize what just happened until after it happened- no time to react and dodge the thing.

I'm sure if it hit me in the face I would have passed out at a minimum, but it also would have knocked me backwards into a 15 ft deep pool.

That gave me the heebie jeebies.

[Rockstar Fisherman]

Never had any too close of calls, but I will say my scariest experiences have always been when I've been cross country hiking.

Once I took a "short cut" from Moat Lake down to the Frog Lakes and came across boulders the size of small cars that wobbled as I leaned/walked on them. Another invloves cross country hiking above the Little Lakes Valley with my ex. Just kinda scary and usure as to if it were safe crossing the snow fields that were covering huge boulders, hoping over and crawling under massive boulders. You know all these things are actually MUCH BIGGER up close and personal than when you're looking at them from a distance.

Oh, and I've had 2 lightning scares at Sonora Bridge, that * area always gets hit with a thunderstorm!! But I've had worse lightning scares under non-fishing circumstances. Hope my scariest moments are behind me.

[Sheriff Joe]

Good thread, Ray! You coulda pulled an Aaron Ralston and cut your leg off...

Four come to mind, only two fishing related.

1. When I was 17 I spent the summer working at Philmont, the Boy Scout high adventure base in the Sangre De Cristos in New Mexico. One afternoon we were high on the Mt. Baldy ridge at about 12,000 ft, totally exposed. We saw a storm coming in, thunder all around, and made a run for the trees a few hundred feet below. A couple strikes of lightning were so close that there was no discernible gap between flash and noise, and one was close enough to knock my friend down. We stopped by a boulder right at the trees, threw off our packs, and lay down flat on the ground for 15 minutes or so, during which our pack frames began to buzz (back in the external-frame days), I smelled ozone for the first time, and I was sure I was going to die.

2. In Alaska in summer 2003, three friends and I took a hike to the Bomber Glacier in the Talkeetna Mountains. Beautiful hike, pretty far out there (by lower 48 standards, at least). Third day in, we shot a bearing to a pass, climbed up and over, and realized that we had to traverse a glacier to get where we wanted to be. It was maybe a half-mile or so across the glacier to the other side of the ridge, and we quickly realized that, even though the ice felt hard and stable, it was too steep to traverse across without crampons. We slid to the bottom, then walked to the other side of the glacier at the bottom, and I went up with my friend Rich to scout a route back up. The snow was much softer at the bottom, and I had to kick steps up a relatively steep slope. I was just mentioning to Rich, as we were about 100 steps up, that maybe this wasn't a good idea and we should probably have a rope, when my front foot fell through the ice, and the snow broke away to reveal a big-ass crack that went maybe 10 feet on either side of me horizontally and was about 30 feet deep. It started about person-wide, then narrowed to maybe a foot wide at the bottom. Just big enough to slide in and down maybe 20 feet and be totally stuck with two broken legs. I yelled out and leaned back against the slope, and Rich, one step behind me, grabbed me around the waist and pulled me back (into knee deep snow steps), and we slid down a few feet. Scared the S%*$ out of me, made me realize that we were way out of our league in terms of gear and preparedness, and is the only time I really felt like I would have died had someone not actively saved my life. Needless to say, we went back down, tromped out of the valley and around the ridge to the next valley, and up to our spot on dirt, not glacier.

3. Once in Sequoia with my sister and girlfriend (who became my wife), we hiked up to Twin Lakes. It was buggy and rainy, so the girls took naps while I scouted around the lake and fished. A few hundred yards away across the lake I came to a stretch of boulders about VW-Bug size. They were wet, I had my rod, and I wanted to get past them, so I found a rock with a sloping top that got steeper as you scramble up the face (maybe 15 feet high or so). I got on top of the boulder, put my rod in my teeth, took a running start and got most of the way up to where I had a toehold, both arms holding the top lip above my head, and I was semi-stuck. Just as I stopped moving and flexed my arms, my feet gave way and I slid down the rockface, dislocating my right shoulder. Most. Painful. Thing. Ever! It felt like the ultimate funny-bone smashing (in my shoulder), with huge white-hot pain, a limp arm, and that awful dislocated unnatural feeling. I sat down, took a deep breath, and put both hands in my lap and moved my arms upward. Sickening crunching, rolling shoulder ball-and-socket feeling, and it popped back in. Hurt like *, but could have been a lot worse if I hadn't been able to pop it back in, if I were alone, and if it would have been something that would have prevented me from walking. Lucky...

4. Once in Glacier, I was fishing around dusk by myself on a flat stretch of a river. Zoned out, focused on the water, in my own world. All of a sudden, a huge echoing "BANG" noise scares the * out of me, and I look upstream, and there's a big beaver, slapping his tail on the surface of the water to warn me. It scared the living crap out of me.....


Joe

[Papasequoia]

4. Once in Glacier, I was fishing around dusk by myself on a flat stretch of a river. Zoned out, focused on the water, in my own world. All of a sudden, a huge echoing "BANG" noise scares the * out of me, and I look upstream, and there's a big beaver, slapping his tail on the surface of the water to warn me. It scared the living crap out of me.....

[1mocast]

"Nice Beaver!" - Lt. Frank Drebin

(Sorry, I couldn't resist!)

[rayfound]

(Sorry, I couldn't resist!)

Its hard to resist beaver.

[Sheriff Joe]

"Thanks, I just had it stuffed!"

[Hatch71]

Ray.... That was a great post man.... This would actually be a great idea for a book. I just read through them all and it brings many things to mind. When your in nature anything can happen and you have to be ready. I fortunately have not had any of these yet while fishing because I'm still a new addict

But as a long time hunter and outdoorsman I always have several things with me. You have to have a basic kit with you at all times I don't care how hot it is there are many things that can fit right on a small poutch or key chain. You need a fire started, knife or multi tool, first aide, compass, small light (lED) and a couple of feet of Para Cord. These things can provide you with everything you need to create shelter. Now this is just a basic kit that can fit in your vest, Rump pack or what ever you carry your gear in. You should all look into this. Not a lot but can save your life. You can die with in feet of a road or town from the elements.

Chris