A New One For Me

[briansII]

Just when you think you've seen it all.....

I was swinging streamers on the local, and doing well. At the risk of giving all my secrets away the MO is to swing, then let the fly hang. Some varied stripping mixed in. I get the tell tail tap, tap, and then fish on. This fish is putting in a better fight than the last, and I'm thinking it's a good sized fish. There's not much give and take, since I'm using 2X, so I muscle the fish towards me. What the............?? I can see my streamer about a foot in front of the fish. I see line behind my fly, but I wasn't fishing a dropper. Quickly realize the fly is snagged. I want to get the fish released ASAP. Once subdued, I can see not one hook, but two hooks in the fish. One big, red, worm hook and one, small, red, treble. When I pull on the line, it's attached to both hooks. The fish's mouth is free to open, but both sides of it's jaw has a hook and line between them. Now I'm getting confused, until I follow both lines to a 3-way swivel. There's a loop on the 3rd tag of line that my fly was snagged on. All this time I am trying to get the hooks out, but they are barbed, and I am having no luck. Removing them meant ripping out(the big hook was thread through the jaw twice!) some serious flesh. Of course, not having forceps(lost em)didn't help. I decided to cut the line at both hooks. Before I could hold the fish to revive it, it shot out of my hands. BTW, this was in the special regs section(C&R, no bait or barbs), but could have come from the catch and keep area.

Later, I was wondering how I "caught" the fish. When I hooked the fish, it definitely felt like an "eat". Seeing where the fly was, it sure looked like I snagged it. My best guess is, the fish took a swipe at my fly, then I snagged it. Next guess is, the fish actually ate my fly, but I pulled too hard(popped more than a few off that day), and the fly popped out and snagged the old fishing rig.

OR

None of the above.

Saw the warden out patrolling yesterday. Yea!

briansII

[NorcalBob]

Same thing happened to me on the Russian River in AK. Except I didn't see one of the hooks (there were many) stuck inside his jaw with the hook point sticking out. End result, two inch long gash in my thumb from the hook point I didn't see in time.

[RJH]

Odd......yes.........surprising for that canal/ditch.........no. I'm sure you've seen the stuff that those guys throw down there, especially in the high water. I'm surprized that it wasn't attached to one of those pyramid surf fishing weights.

I haven't been out there in over a month (really good dryfly day)...... and 6k is more reasonable than 9k...hmmmmm.

RJH

[beachbum]

It's a mystery! I do that a fair amount in the surf. It's the reason I mainly just fish one fly, instead of a tandem rig. I like your streamer method. This looks to be a streamer year.

[Rockstar Fisherman]

I did something similar to this last year in a high back country lake that has big brookies and browns in it. I was stripping streamers from my float tube when I felt a hit, set the hook and saw that I had hooked the fish about 3 feet behind him leaving me to believe I had tangled into some broken off line he had coming from his mouth or something. Never got to confirm this as the fish came off pretty fast but I'm sure I had hooked into some broken off line attached to the fish.

[briansII]

Odd......yes.........surprising for that canal/ditch.........no. I'm sure you've seen the stuff that those guys throw down there, especially in the high water. I'm surprized that it wasn't attached to one of those pyramid surf fishing weights.

I haven't been out there in over a month (really good dryfly day)...... and 6k is more reasonable than 9k...hmmmmm.

RJH

It's not just the hardware guys out there. The fly guys are leaving tackle in the fish too. It's worse with the big, sluggo trout they are planting. Last year I landed a slug, and it had a double nymph rig in it's jaw.....nice flies too. I've collected all sorts of nice, and not so nice flies out there. There is one tree in the C&R section, that looks like a Christmas tree.

briansII