The one that got away

Ever lose that fish right at the hole and sit there and shriek as you watch it swim away? You bring that fish up 20 feet and it gets off 6 INCHES from your hand!? No, not at the bottom of the hole, but 2/3 of the way up the hole! Yup, and I got a picture to haunt me of it.

Early last ice season, Good friend Mike who is very skilled with his camera, and I were out on a local lake catching smaller walleyes in the 12 to 18 inch range which are very common around the Duluth area when all of a sudden I saw a flicker on the bottom. Typically I’d think nothing of it but I quickly noticed black (empty) space in between what was once a small flicker and the bottom of the lake, and that means one thing; FISH!! The red mark rushed up and it was game on, for 99.25 % of the fight, until it came off above the hole and swam back down into the depths. When catching smaller walleyes or any other species of fish, and you finally hook into that fish in the next “category” if you will, it gets exciting!

So this year as our season is about to start, may luck be on your side when the big one comes thru the hole!! Does anyone else have any haunting stories about a fish they lost last year that they still think about today?

Yup. I can relate. I think the moment that sticks out the most for me was the big fish I lost, right at the holes, right at the close of one of the ice episodes last winter.

Here’s the link that will take you to that point in the video. http://youtu.be/Tpun8jmJxu8?t=25m19s

DOAH!

Never had that happen to me.
That instant replay slo-mo is some funny stuff!

Quote:

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Never had that happen to me.
That instant replay slo-mo is some funny stuff!

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NOOOOOOOOooooooooooo!

Whatcha’ gonna do?! Stuff happens.

I dont know whats worse, having that picture to haunt you or having your buddy not willing to go arms deep in the hole to grab your fish!

Even if you have a buddy willing to stick his arm down the hole for a trophy it doesn’t always work out. I hooked a huge walleye while perch fishing a year ago, he came running to help me land it because we knew it was big, the sequence goes as follows: fish in hole, buddy grabs fish as line busts, pulls fish nearly out of the hole almost completely onto ice, fish gives headshake, buddies hands slip, fish slides back down hole to dark unknown, I sit in shock and consider suicide! No picture to haunt me, but that fish haunts me dreams at night, we both put it at a mid to high thirty inch walleye by far the largest I would have caught…heartbreak, but it’s fishing.

It’s not an ice fishing story, but rather an open water story. I was fishing a mid-lake reef and we were catching 12″-15″ walleyes (not big by any means), but then as I repositioned the boat with the bow mount trolling motor I had a fish just WHACK my jig and crawler. I set the hook on the fish and I said to my fishing buddy to get the net ready because it was much much bigger than the fish we had been catching. After about 2 or 3 big line peels and head shakes, I finally got a glimpse of the fish that was tugging on the end of my line. The fish surfaced and I could tell that this would have been my new personal best Waldo and definitely mountable by anyone’s standards (atleast a 28″ fish). As soon as the fish surfaced it dove back down below the surface and then all of a sudden… SNAP. The bottom loop of the knot, that is thread through the eyelet of the jig, snapped and my trophy walleye swam back to the depths of the lake

Had a similar thing happen to me at first ice last year as well.

I was fishing a heavily pressured East Metro lake at dusk and was catching decent amount of Crappies and and the occasional Walleye. Out of nowhere, the Marcum goes blank and a large red mark appears. I twiched the rattle spoon once and she came up and inhaled it.

After a few runs, I was able to turn her head up through the hole, but during the scramble of getting my marcum, heater, and my dead stick rod out of the way (fishing by myself with no help of course), I caught the one loose treble on the corner of the hole and she popped free.

Not the biggest walleye i’ve iced, but it would have been of the better one’s I’ve caught on this particular lake. Figured she went between 25-26″.

James that was classic, kind of like this one. Go to the 6:20 mark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E64Hu1bxieA&feature=related

I can feel my wet arms even today from those last second dives down the hole. One thing that helps is a smaller hole. The smaller hole gives the fish less chance to turn.

My best one is the rare instance my wife went with me ice fishing and she wanted to eat fish. Luckily we got a flag and I landed a decent northern. As I stood up lifting it 3 feet straight out of the hole it came unhooked and fell like a javelin straight back to the hole. The look on my face must have been priceless. We laughed and grumbled about it for hours.

My most memorable loss happened on LOTW a couple of years ago…..my wife and I were on our annual 1st ice trip, we were amidst a solid mid day flurry of quality walleye as soon as my wife could say look at this thing on my graph…wham – sturgeon. Luckily she’s spooled with power pro, so I let her play with it for a while. As my impatience grows, I decide I am going to “help out” as this BIG sturgeon makes runs just under the ice surface, the line is scraping along the bottom of the hole, so I am now assisting by holding the line and trying to avoid a breakoff. As i “glide” the line I start to put pressure on the fish, because i just wnat to get back to walleye fishing! Then i got over aggressive and it broke off!

Naturally I really didn’t care as I wanted to get back to walleye catching, unfortunately my wife was a bit disappointed, as this was a big sturgeon, and she’s never caught one before, especially through the ice.

We’ve been fortunate to both catch and lose many nice fish together, but this fish will probably be the one she’ll always remember and most importantly never let me forget.

The one I remember is not the one that got away but the one that didn’t get away. My ice fishing buddy and I were chasing pike at first ice and had a pretty good stretch of flags/landings going. I was in the process of landing one, had another flag and then one of his flags went off. He’s a pretty calm guy too so I was a bit surprised when he shouted that I better hurry up. So, I horsehauled, as much as you can with six pound leader, the first fish in which wasn’t of any size. Got the second one coming, which again didn’t feel like it was much of a deal, when he repeats himself.

Once I got the second fish iced and back in the water, I get over to his hole and see that almost all of the spools line in in the water. After five or ten more minutes, he gets the fish close to the hole and we can see it’s pretty decently sized. There’s a little more give and take and he finally gets the head in the hole (thankfully it wasn’t thick ice), a 6″er mind you, and we can see the leader probably isn’t going to last too much longer given the deep hook. The line popped but the fish was still in the hole and the mouth was slightly open so without even thinking unfortunately, I thumbed it like a bass and slide it out onto the ice.

Blood, mostly mine, was going everywhere and I’m trying to get this “dumb fish” to open up it’s mouth to see if I still had the end of my thumb. My buddy’s laughing his butt off and calling me stupid but we finally get the fish off my hand. Luckily I only had a couple of punctures, nothing serious and no infection later, and we got the fish. If I remember right it was right around the 20 pound mark which was a good, not great, fish for this water. It’s funny to think about now and gives us a good story to tell but it really was a stupid move.

My brother and I were fishing late ice on Chequamegon Bay for perch. I thought I would go with some light line to see if it help the bite. The perch were on the bite, I lost my minnow and was reeling up to rebait when a 10 lb. salmon hit and never looked back. I watched my line and my bait Head for parts unknown. The fight lasted about seven seconds, what a rush.