Pro Bass Fisherman Catches Snake; Calls Wife

Pete Ponds, a professional Bass fisherman from Madison, Wisconson, was fishing with a friend when a moccasin swam close to the boat. Pete poked at it with his rod tip and ended up hooking in to the back of the snake with his favorite popper.

Now you’ve got a few choices here, but Pete is deathly afraid of snakes, so he did what any brave man would do in a time like this. He called his wife?

“I dragged that snake around about 20 minutes trying to get my hook loose or drown the snake. That didn’t work, and I wasn’t about to reach down there and try to get it,” he said. “So I did the only thing I knew to do. I called my wife, Kim, who was at home (on the bank at Caroline). She ain’t scared of snakes at all. She met us, reached down, grabbed the snake behind its head, got my Pop-R and let the snake go. Just like that.”

While I could write something funny about this situation it actually points out something that non-fanatics might consider strange. Why all this effort to get the snake off the lure? Why was it so important to keep the lure?

“Problem was, I wanted my Pop-R back. It’s the only one I had in that color.”

Whats the craziest thing you’ve ever done to get a lure back? I’ll bet it wasn’t calling your wife.

At the end of the day Pete is still a professional bass and is in the process of developing a new swiming jig that resembles a spinnerbait without the blades.

I fished with a standard flipping jig with a long 5″ double tail grub in a similar fashion for pike during our stay with Sportsman’s Lodge in Ontario. It even had filed down the sides of the head so it would swim better. The lure was effective and easy to fish through reeds and medium cover. Pete’s swimming jig will have a more fine tuned setup for bass, like a smaller hook, but will probably work great for pike too.

Urban Legends of Fishing

Fishermen have always been great story tellers. I grew up hearing epic tales of the one that got away and stories where the fish got bigger every time the tale was told. When I was about five years old I recall hearing a story about a young girl who used to swim in our favorite fishing pond. She swam there until one day a snapping turtle bit her toe off, and she never returned. As I child I believed it, and I refused to swim on the shore that the story supposedly took place. Looking back on the story now, its seems pretty far fetched, but back then I would have had no way to prove otherwise. Today however we have the internet, and you can look up just about any far out story you hear about. Of course, the internet is probably the main source of urban legends now, especially though email forwards.

My family and friends send me emails about all sorts of crazy fish stories, many of which are quite believable, but I have uncovered the truths for myself, as many have before me. Here some popular urban legends of fishing I decided to investigate.

Story: Strange deep sea creatures found on shore after the terrible tsunami of 2004. I got this one in an email that had several photographs of unique fish.

Truth: Not true! Most, if not all of the photographs were taken in 2003 to document specimens collected during the joint Australian-New Zealand NORFANZ research voyage in the Tasman Sea.

There certainly are some amazing looking creatures in the ocean depths.
Check out more crazy deep sea fish on Google.

Story: A fisherman and his wife find a catfish with a child’s basketball stuck in its mouth, keeping it afloat.

Truth: This one was true! According to About.com They used a knife to puncture the ball and the fifty pound catfish swam away.
This one really makes you wonder how that ball got in it’s mouth though. That catfish certainly had a big appetite if he was trying to eat that ball. There seems to be a lot of urban legends about catfish.
Most catfish prefer to eat peoples hands rather then a ball.

Story: State record catfish caught on Lake Texoma in Texas.

Truth: Not true! There really was a state record catfish caught in Lake Texoma, but the fish in this picture was caught in Italy. I came across this story by accident while surfing the best catfish angling site I have seen to date. I bet this catfish could eat a full sized basketball with ease!
You are probably wondering what these guys do with fish this big. Well, some people keep them to eat, many release them for another day, but a select few keep their catfish as dancing partners.

Story: Huge great white shark attacks helicopter.

Truth: Not true! This one was a pretty obvious fake, despite some nice photoshopping. About.com shows the two original photos used to create this urban legend.

I could be wrong, but as far as I know there are no great whites Sharks in San Fransisco. Believe it or not though, many sharks, including great whites, can jump extremely high. Take a look at these incredible photos on National Geographic’s website.

Story: President Bush and his father go fishing in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Truth: Not true! This one is pretty recent, and I think its pretty obvious that this one is a fake, although the editing is excellent. I found it on Infoshop.com, and it looks like this one was made to show Bush’s lack of caring toward the people of New Orleans.

Flooding in the British Virgin Islands

Today was pretty crazy. I had a job interview at eleven, so I left the house at nine and started walking in the rain. I had a change of shoes and clothes in my bag so I could change and look good for my interview. I walked quickly down our driveway which looked more like a river then a driveway. A nice local guy in a beat up Samurai stopped to pick me up and took me most of the way down the mountain. One we got near the bottom we hit a traffic jam and were told that we could not go any further. I got out of the car, thanked him for the ride and started walking. Once I got to the bottom I saw the road blocks. At first I figured there was an accident but then as I looked down to see water past my ankles I realized that it was probably because of the flood. I walked past the barricades and around the roundabout. The entire road was covered in a good five inches of water on the sides so I walked down the middle of the main highway as concerned citizens lined the sidewalk and peered out from their windows. I felt invisible. I expected the police to stop me or ask me to be careful, but no one really acknowledged my existence. After walking ten minutes I got to the nearest gas station, except it really wasn’t a gas station anymore, it was a pond. A terrific smell of petrol filled the air, and it was pretty obvious what all the commotion was about. The flood had somehow mixed and filled in the gas tanks causing the flood waters to become highly flammable. I stopped and looked around trying to figure out how to get passed the pond. On one side a bulldozer and other construction vehicles worked desperately to clear flood waters, I wasn’t going to make it past them. The other side was clear, except for water.

I stood quietly for a moment as a group of young Spanish kids in their late teens came up behind me, video camera in hand. I took a deep breath, inhaled the gas fumes, and started my my way across the pond. I knew full well that this was quite possibly the dumbest thing I had ever done, but I really do hate being late – for anything. The kids, gaining courage from my stupidity, followed behind me as I dredged through water that was now past my knees. At this point a woman near by started shouting at the kids, not me, to get out of the water, she didn’t even look at me. I continued walking undisturbed, the further I got, the less water there was. While working I heard fragments of the story behind the flood. Apparently a building, or retaining wall that usually holds and diverts water had burst.

I got into town with plenty of time to spare. I looked around desperately for a place to change, but just about every place in town was closed, with exception of course to place that had no bathrooms or places I could change. I found a stairwell that seemed to be quite, stripped to my underwear and changed into my nice clothes. Ten seconds later a large family came down the stairs and walked right past me. I waited a few minutes for a lull in the rain and made a quick dash to the building I had to be at for my interview. I walked up the stairs and and came face to face with a guy at the top of the stairs. He had surprise in his eyes and looked at me in disbelief. He then asked if I was here for the interview. I said yes, and he told me that no one was left to interview me because they had all gone home, or hadn’t even shown up in the first place. So I went though all that effort for nothing. At least he told me that I earned a few points for coming in. Lets hope that ensures me the job.

I’ll try and get some pictures of the damage around here tomorrow.

Snagged; When Keeping Your Lure is Worse than Loosing it

Every fishermen gets snagged at one point or another, and just about every fishermen deals with it in the same way. You pull on it, whip your rod up and down, eventually you loose your patience with it tighten your drag all the way and give it one last heave. Either your line breaks or the lure comes free. Occasionally when that lure comes free it will fly out of the water heading straight for you, and unless you have ninja reflexes like me, its going to hit you. Generally its not a problem with smaller lures or softbaits. Just don’t try it with a 14″ Jake caught in a tree less than 10 feet from you, OK?

Darren Williams, a 34 year old machine operator from Wrexham, learned that very lesson last week fishing with friends. His line became snagged and just like I described earlier, he pulled on it as hard as he could. Unfortunatly for him, he doesn’t have ninja reflexes, the lead sinker (and a big one at that) broke through his eye socket and lodged itself in his face. After a trip to the hospital and 5 hours of surgery the doctors removed the weight and repaired his cheek bones with a metal plate. Darren’s not broken up one bit about the experience and even keeps his “lucky” lead weight in his pocket.

“I was so lucky – if it had been a few millimetres in the other direction then I would have lost my eye,” he said.

“I was fishing when the line got snagged on something and as I pulled it, I just felt something hit me on the face and knock me to the floor,” said Mr Williams.

“To be honest, I didn’t know what had happened, but when I put my hands to my face they were covered in blood. But my mates ran over to me and they could see the tip of the weight sticking out of my eye socket”.

Link via Boing Boing

When Marlin “Attack”

Whoever says that fishing is boring should give marlin fishing a try. These majestic creatures can be found all over the world in warm waters. The Caribbean, Hawaii, and Mexico as well as many south American shorelines offer fantastic marlin fishing with fish that are often more then five hundred pounds.

I came across an article on firstcoastnews.com while reading up on marlin fishing and I found the wording a little strange. There is a lot of emphasis on the word “attack” but I’m sure this sort of thing has happened before, if not with marlin then with another species of fish that jumps a lot. Although it is impossible to determine whether this marlin really wanted to attack a fisherman or it was just a freak accident, science dictates that if you are pulling something towards you, it’s going to come to you. This marlin just came in a little easier and faster then anyone expected. Then again, Jon is the scientist, not me.
Photo via Marlin Nut

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