Particularly Memorable Takes

[Ryan Smart]

This is a pretty neat thread, I'm glad that I'm not the only one that remembers individual takes!

Last spring I was fishing a river in Northern Minnesota for smallies and was finding enough that I switched over to a popper. I caught a couple on explosive takes, but this one just sipped it off the surface, as gentle as a brown taking tricos on a spring creek. It was a memorable take because it took me an instant to realize my popper was gone from the surface, ans because it was the biggest smallie I've ever landed. Maybe there's a lesson there... if it had been a more obvious take, I might have set the hook too quickly and pulled the popper away!


A second really memorable take was on a big tailwater in Wyoming. I was nymphing and making pretty long casts out into the river. My indicator paused during the drift, so I set the hook and instantly knew this was a giant. As is typical with the fish in this river, it started to run, then jumped and seemingly turned mid-air to laugh at me, then broke my tippet. It was a darn memorable 3 seconds though!

ryan

 

[RCF]

Fishing for decades on a Blue Ribbon creek east of Missoula. This particular year there was still a lot of runoff making fishing more challenging. I went up to the sapphire 'mine' and walked in knowing there would be some side channels I could fish. Found a nice side channel, flow was reasonable and water was about 6" deep. If you know this creek you know it is slippery as snot. Felt with carbide tipped studs are mandatory. Due to overhanging limbs could not make a cast. So I stripped out some line and let it out. About 20' downstream I saw a huge flash of yellow. Fish on! I was firmly planted in the cobblestone until the fish started pulling me downstream toward the main channel. Oh S%&#. If I adjust my feet I will be falling in for sure. But I had to catch this fish. Well I fell in, banging my knee very hard on the rocks. As the fish approached the main channel I pulled as hard as I could. I was finally able to bring it in. A nice 24"+ brown trout. The largest I have ever caught in this drainage. My knee still reminds me of this fish periodically - the memories are worth it...

 

[Yardus]

I can recall hooking a monster 20 or so years ago at the base of "The Wall" that absolutely kicked my ass off the take. If you've had the pleasure of fishing here you already know that this place is a rare gem.

Threw a cast to within 3' of the shear rock face plunging into maybe 5' of water. One strip and game on. The fish ran right at me, went under my PT and headed back towards the launch halfway down the lake. After 75' of a palm burning run this behemoth breaches the surface skyrocketing into the sky with multiple spectacular aerial displays. I now knew right away that this had to be the biggest bow I've ever tied into. I just had to close the deal. The thing continued to peel another 75' or so of non-stop reel screaming awesomeness emptying the backing to sections that had never seen the light of day. It was about this time, with only a few raps of backing left, I realized that if I didn't do anything it was going to be all over shortly... While in a panic of the inevitable loss, I remembered something that I had either read or heard about slapping the real to send a vibration shock down the tight line to the fish in hopes of getting it to turn. This fish was seconds from breaking me off and or taking all my line permanently, so what the heck. I slapped the but of the rod hard and sure enough that hog immediately breached again at least a half a football field away from where we started. The fish gods smiled in my direction as it turned back at me when it reentered the water. With a subtle walk the dog approach, I got about 50' of backing on the reel before going back to the tug of war. Not sure if it was a coincidence or just luck but slapping the rod seemed to work. In the end I was rewarded with an easy 10+# absolute beast that was as thick as my thigh. You know the kind that is half in and half out of a fairly sizable net. My good friend got a embarrassingly great photo of me bare hugging the monster as It was all I could do to hold onto the thing as it thrashed about. Sadly the picture has been lost to the ravages of time but the memory will stay with me forever.

 

[Cabezon]

Last summer, slow day fishing for albacore with @Nick Clayton out of Westport. Hours of fruitless trolling trying to find feeding fish. Periodically, I would strip back my fly to the boat to ensure that it wasn't fouled or had picked up a strand of algae. The fly was just inside the edge of the boat wake about 30 feet behind the boat. I made one last strip as I was bringing the fly in when an albacore jumped out of the foam to try to grab the fly but the fish missed. Crap. Get the fly back ASAP. But as I made the backcast, I wrapped the fly around one of the rail stanchions by the mid-point of the cabin. Fortunately, @SilverFly was right there and was able to free the fly. Back into the white water. Strip, strip, massive hit. Fish on...
Steve

 

[kerrys]

Years ago I was fishing the now gone Lyman Bar that was washed away by the 2003 flood. This run was the hottest steelhead run in the state. People would start lining up an hour or more before sunrise to fish it. I was likely the upteenth guy to go through the run on that day. Working my way down my expectations of hooking a steelhead weren’t real high. I was likely daydreaming a bit when suddenly the line went tight and began peeling off my reel at a rate I had never experienced before. In less than a few seconds the fish was gone. I never saw it. To this day that few seconds was the most incredible take and run I ever experienced.

 

[Dr. Magill]

Probably my favorite eat from a tiger (although, you never forget your first). This was from several years ago. I caught this same fish a total of 4 times over the course of 2 years. A solid mid-40s fish (44"-48"). It had a distinct hump on it plus cheek markings. But, this particular day, it was hanging out on tip of this weed mat that reached up to a foot under the surface. I worked it for 15+ minutes from every single angle & on the second time working around it's world, I dropped the fly about 5 feet out, twitched it a couple of times, then gave one hard strip. One flick of it's tail and it inhaled the fly....so fucking awesome!

Cool picture

 

[Shad]

I have to mention 3 takes, because each was equally awesome in its own way.

1. Those who have fished the Sol Duc know it's CLEAR, so when something cool happens, you often see the whole thing. One spring day, fishing bait for springers and casting a spinner between anchor spots (some fly fisher, right?), I had a 13-lb. hen steelhead bolt out from behind a boulder and grab that spinner right as it was coming out of the water at the boat. The guide I was with was almost as impressed as I was. That fish WANTED that flashy-spinny thing!

2. My first saltwater sea-run cutthroat. About a 15-incher, but it hit like a freight train, burned my stripping fingers (almost cut 'em), and then went airborne. I've caught much bigger since, but I have yet to have another one hit me that hard.

3. Another sea-run, but in freshwater. I was fishing the water in front of a submerged log that I had fished several times before with no love, and I wasn't expecting anything this time either. Turned out about a 21-inch fish had taken up temporary residence there, and I saw it come out from under the log and absolutely destroy that bugger. I think I actually exclaimed (out loud) something like "holy shit pickles!" (You know it's a good one when you exclaim anything out loud while fishing alone, but it takes a really good one to make you say something that stupid.)

Ahhh... good eats!

 

[SilverFly]

Last summer, slow day fishing for albacore with @Nick Clayton out of Westport. Hours of fruitless trolling trying to find feeding fish. Periodically, I would strip back my fly to the boat to ensure that it wasn't fouled or had picked up a strand of algae. The fly was just inside the edge of the boat wake about 30 feet behind the boat. I made one last strip as I was bringing the fly in when an albacore jumped out of the foam to try to grab the fly but the fish missed. Crap. Get the fly back ASAP. But as I made the backcast, I wrapped the fly around one of the rail stanchions by the mid-point of the cabin. Fortunately, @SilverFly was right there and was able to free the fly. Back into the white water. Strip, strip, massive hit. Fish on...
Steve

Propwash tuna. It's a thing!

 

[swimmy]

Maybe not the most memorable but my wife snapped this pic Sunday. Kind of a cool shot.

 

[Greg Armstrong]

✂️ Juvenile Tarpon Fly Fishing

49 seconds · Clipped by Megalops_Ignobilis · Original video "A fish to end the day on" by Timothy Till

youtube.com

Most tarpon grabs are very fun. I love their runs and jumps.

Gotta agree on the Tarpon take.

I don’t have a lot of experience with them, but I was fortunate enough to hook two back to back in the mangroves while on my first trip for bonefish.

Sight casting to them, and the visual of their truly savage attacks on my fly…
and then those cartwheels they performed to free themselves are etched upon my mind forever.

I didn’t land either one, but I almost don’t even care.

 

[Bambooflyguy]

Some very memorable takes were coho fishing on the Naknek in Alaska late August......skating pink pollywogs (spun pink deer hair dries). Those fish would make a wake to smash them or Great White breach them from underneath! Unreal.......

 

[Bambooflyguy]

Here’s some other wild takes I’ll never forget......dorado on Clousers I tied. Cruising fast in a panga at Cabo San Lucas with two bonito teasers behind the boat and a frame with hoochie skirts in the prop wash.....11 weight fly rod in hand with a bunch of intermediate line stripped off hunting for dorados. Then you see some super fast slashing behind the teasers, next the guide reels in the hookless teaser and the dorado chases it near the boat....then it turns away and the guide yells, “cast! cast!” That colorful torpedo slams your fly full speed going away from you! Don’t want to even be close to that spinning knob on the Pate reel.....HOLLY S#IT!!!

 

[East Coaster]

I was fishing a small meadow stream that held wild browns, and was standing on the bank, studying the water. I only had a foot or so of fly line out past the tiptop, and the fly was dangling above the water when a dragonfly grabbed it and actually lifted the leader as it tried to fly away with its prize. I just stood there in disbelief. It dropped the fly (so no measurements or pics ), but it was a pretty memorable take.

 

[Brian Miller]

My 2nd Tenkara-caught fish really got me "hooked" on Tenkara.

Actually, just about any 11"+ fish take and fight in current can be memorable on a T-rod even though the increased leverage and "soft power" of the rod will tire and bring a trout to the net in the same or less time than a rod & reel.

And I have to include this...
Long story (that I've mentioned before) but a surprise as I was just fooling around passing time casting my son's 3 weight after I gave him my 5 weight rig that was catching quite a few stocker trout on his birthday.

 

[Mike Cline]

Several years back I was fishing with a friend in the Alfia river just East of Tampa. We were targeting Speckled Trout off the oyster beds that line the river shoreline. I was chucking a large chartreuse deciever on a 7 weight and 200 grain sink tip. When the fly landed just inches from the shoreline, the take was solid and a battle was on. Within seconds, whatever it was had me in backing and was racing for the middle of the river. After at least three trips around the boat and ten minutes into the fight, the fish finally revealed itself as a very large Jack. Eventually landed, the fish was not only memorable for its size, but from the extremely shallow oyster bed it was totally unexpected.

 

[Nick Clayton]

Two takes that stick out in my head both involve albacore.

Number one was the first albacore I got on a popper. Several guys on this forum were present on that amazing day.

Flat blue water, blue skies, and absolutely wide open albacore fishing. The guys in the stern were hooking albacore about as quickly as they could get their flies in the water. It occurred to me that this was the perfect time to pull out the rod I had with a floater and a slider pattern and try to achieve my goal of getting one on top.

I ran to the bow and made about 8 or 9 casts. Each cast I had a fish either chase and reject the fly, or on two or three casts I had a fish blow up on in and in my excitement I pulled the fly away before hookup.
Fishing topwater for albacore is different than any other topwater stuff I've done. Albacore don't follow the fly from a distance. You don't see a v wake tracking the fly. They come up from below, and they come at 30+ mph. On that clear day I could see well into the water from my raised vantage point on the bow. I would be stripping along, staring into what appeared to be empty water, when suddenly out of the depths would come a streak as a fish would haul ass right up to the fly and turn at the last second, or as mentioned two or three times they actually tried to eat it. It happens so fast. It's exciting ad all hell and I was kinda losing it with excitement with each cast.

On my previous cast, just as I was about to pick up and re cast, a fish shot up and blew up on my fly but I was too twitchy and pulled the fly away. I recast, and as I was stripping kept saying to myself "don't lift the rod. Don't lift the rod". Halfway thru my retrieve it happened, another fish appeared out of nowhere, moving at mach 3. It shot straight up and came completley out of the water, where I could see my fly in its mouth.
It hit the water head first, and I just help my rod tip low until I watched the floating fly line curve around, straighten out, and I came tight to the fish. At that point I basically lost my mind, screaming with excitement. That fish turned out to be a donkey. At the time the biggest I had landed on a fly rod. It was, without question, the single most memorable fish Ive ever caught.


The second take wasn't as exciting but is memorable because of how unique it was.

Again I was on the bow, casting a fast sinking line during some fast paced fishing. The folks on the stern were fishing live anchovies and keeping my deckhand busy as all hell with how quickly they were putting fish to the boat. We were nearly plugged up so I headed to the bow to play.

On maybe my 3rd cast, as the fly was coming up towards the boat, I watched an albacore appear at high speed, swim right up to the fly then turn at the same speed and head elsewhere. Rejected.
I had maybe 6' of fly line and the 6' leader out of the rod tip, just enough that with the fly rod pointed at the water the fly was maybe 5' under the surface as I was about to pick it up to recast. The fly was just sitting there and as began to move the rod to recast another albacore shot out of the depths, headed at high speed to my fly. I had no more fly line left to strip in, so with no other choice I did what I've done with coho so often and just pointed my rod down and held the fly in the water as the fish came flying in.

At this point I was fully anticipating another last second rejection but instead this fish did something I'd never seen an albacore do before. It came to a full stop. Rather than zip in and reject at the last second, I watched this fish just slam on the brakes. It came to pretty much a full stop right in front of my hanging fly. I honestly didn't know they could brake like that. Albacore have to swim forward to breathe. Slowing down their forward momentum is just something I've never witnessed, but this one did it. It stopped right in front of my fly as if it was inspecting the quality of my tie. It stared at my fly for what seemed like an eternity but what was likely a second, maybe two tops. I held the fly there, fly line in my left hand ready to strip set in the unlikely event that the fish ate the basically motionless fly.

The fish moved its head left, then right which kinda put the fish between me and fly so I couldn't really see what it was doing, but I watched its mouth open slightly and it moved forward just a bit, so I took a short, slow strip on the fly line as the fish started swimming away and down, and suddenly I was tight. Then the fish went back to being a normal albacore and started swimming down at a high rate of speed. I had a ton of loose line to deal with since this fish ate at the very end of my retrieve but somehow I was able to get it on the reel without snagging anything with loose line. A few minutes later that fish joined its brothers and sisters in an ice bath on my boat.

I'll never forget how that one went down. Watching that fish come to a full stop, inspect my fly, then ever so gently eat it is an image that is just burned into my brain.

 

[PhilR]

Damn, Nick, those albacore takes are something. Mine is also albacore. Was on my first tuna trip, and we were trolling and trying to convert troll hookups to a fly/bait stop. Instead of waiting to clear the troll rods after finding some players, I decided to just start casting my fly. Leaned over the gunnel, threaded the fly under the outrigger, and sent the cast behind the boat. Two strips and a tug, another strip and fish on.

My first carp take was pretty memorable, too. Spotted a feeder churning up the bottom. Walked up to maybe two rod lengths, and dropped my fly a few feet away. One slow short strip to get his attention, and he was on it. Fish took off like a rocket, and showed me my backing before I could slow it down. Faster, stronger run than my Oahu bonefish.

 

[Matt B]

I'm really enjoying this thread. Reading others' takes on takes helps me remember other memorable takes of my own that were just a couple rows back!

 

[gpt]

first pacific sail in Costa Rica. a choregraphed movement from the mate pulling the teaser and me presenting the fly, bam and away went 200 yds of backing in the blink of an eye. without an experienced mate, this just does not work very well as i learned in Australia black marlin fishing. years of experience doing this is the key and they were really tuned into granders not fly fishing. oh well, live and learn.

 

[clarkman]

One of the larger smallies I got this morning thought she was a musky. Followed most of the way to the boat, refused. Next cast, same thing only when I gave it a hard strip and stalled the fly out 15' from me, she crushed it.