Best fishing experience

Hi all,
Which is your best fishing experience? Would love to hear.

I've got several. Where to start...

We were offshore of Port Mansfield, Tx. We caught a small fish, maybe 10" long. We put it on a king mackeral rig (2 hooks with no weight, on a stainless leader). The fish was bloated from coming from down deep so it floated. We threw it out and watched it.

A 6footish hammer head surfaced. It looked like a stealth fighter with its fin and back out of the water. A majestic kind of thing. Awesome. It slowly swam toward the fish. We could see the whole thing. It swam to the fish, took it in, and submerged,  all without missing a step.

It the proceeded to swim toward our boat( not visible, it was under water). Went under it, then out the other side. The line went slack. The line was cut. He never knew he was hooked.

We were on a private offshore boat. One thing thats worth mentioning is we dont hand off fishing poles, its a macho thing. You hook it you reel it in.

We were off an oil rig, 120ft deep, maybe deeper,dropping straight down. Pretty big equipment was used. My rod bent over. The guide came over and tightened my drag. I now had no drag.

"Wtf! Why'd you do that!"

"If he goes that way it's open current and you'll lose him. If he goes THAT way he'll wrap around the oil rig pilings and you'll LOSE him!"

So the fight was on. Lift the pole, reel as you lower it down. Hold on and do nothing. Lift up, reel on the way down.  I'm sore. This is man against beast. The beast is winning. My arms so tired i cant turn the handle anymore......  Then theres a big sparkly flash in the water. We can see the fish. Its no longer unknown how deep the fish currently is. WE CAN SEE IT! This created an adrenaline rush, I managed to turn thel reel some more to get the fish in. We landed it!

We catch big blue cats in the dead of winter here in AL.

In the winter you can go behind a certain dam near Tuscaloosa, AL and there is a side creek that comes in creating a 4-6ft deep shelf about 1/3rd its way out into the river.  
The big blues will come and stage on the down river backside of the shelf and wait for dead and dying threadfin shad to float by.


This cat was caught in less than 6ft of water with an outside temperature below freezing.

The water temp. being so cold the fish was pretty laid back in coming to the boat. Total fight might have took less than 5 min.

The scale showed 70lbs but he felt larger than that.

Pics and release on all these big cats.

If fishing for cats to eat myself I rarely keep anything larger than 16”. By the time you cut the head off it’ll fit perfectly in my jumbo skillet.

daily ish brought me here...

once when I was a kid I caught a sunfish by wiggling the tip of my finger just under the water and right when it bit I was able to pull him out of the water

another time I was canoeing in shallow water and a small pike jumped right into the canoe

the biggest small mouth bass I have ever caught... I was at the end of a dock and my Mom told me to tie my shoelace... I put the rod down and was tying my shoe when the rod lurched towards the water.. I grabbed it just in time and caught my biggest bass... 18"

I haven't fished in a long time... you need to buy a fishing license and I don't anymore but my nephews are now into fishing and the excitement for even small fish is awesome...they have caught a few nice sized ones too!

My best times fishing when I was young were those times spent with my grand parents. Now that I am a grandpa, my favorite times are taking the grand munchkins fishing..."Early to bed, early to rise, fish all day and make up lies" (I mean, tell stories of the big one that got away)...Telling lies has a negative connotation...Rules for fishing 1. Bait your own hook. 2. Take off your own fish. 3. You tangle it, you untangle it!...fishing is not necessarily about catching fish...it's about learning "life skills" (somewhere, there is a Latin saying from the 15th century to this effect)
Grandma always said, "you have to spit on your bait to get the fish to bite."...Grandma always out-fished me!
Carp guts make beautiful rose bushes...just sayin

My best memories of fishing were all about who I was with rather than what I caught.  I have many memories of time spent with friends and relatives who are no longer around.