It never ceases to amaze me how many weird, wonderful, strange, and unusual things Mother Nature allows us a glimpse when we’re out on our fishing adventures. Whether at a lake, pond, river or steam, while steaming out towards the horizon in the deep blue ocean or while surfcasting along a favorite shoreline, on occasion we witness things we’ve never seen before.
And on occasion, we’re blessed with things that happen that have never happened to us before.
This is the case for me during a recent camping/fishing vacation in upstate New York. I fish many freshwater bodies on Long Island quite often and there are occasions when these weird, wacky circumstances out in nature occur.
I’ve been chased by giant 8-point bucks at Connetquot River Park while flyfishing, as well as by snakes while kayak fishing some of my favorite area waters. I’ve had near ‘fights to the death’ with angry swans while fishing from shore and by boat alike, have had an enormous alligator snapping turtle swim between my legs while out in my waders at Wantagh Twin Lakes, and even had a giant bullfrog jump into my face at Massapequa Reservoir.
On the salty side of things, these occurrences obviously happen as well. Just last summer I pulled up my blue claw crab trap to find no crabs, but it contained two blackfish, a keeper fluke and a huge eel!
Now, I’m not sure why, but when I fish in upstate New York, these strange little occurrences seem to happen somewhat often to me; this particular trip was no exception. We always take these trips to the Copake, Rudd Lake and Taghkanic Lake regions, simple because I just plain have great luck fishing these areas. During this particular adventure, I watched a bald eagle snatch a fish from the lake right in front of me, and followed that up by catching an 8-pound largemouth bass and a 7-pound chain pickerel.
But it was the oddball triple-header that really had me wanting to share this tale.
It was a Wednesday morning, June 7, as I headed out on the lake in my kayak. I’d decided to take a break from bass and pickerel and have a little fun fishing for sunfish and rock bass with some worms I dug up. I cast out my unweighted hook with worm attached and right away hooked up with a sunny. As I was reeling it in, I felt a strange thump, and shortly after that, another.
It felt a little like dead weight so I assumed I’d amassed a ton of weeds while reeling back. What was actually happening below was quite a bit different. While I was reeling in the sunnie, a pretty big largemouth bass had attacked it; in turn, a hefty pickerel attacked the largemouth bass. I ended up reeling them all in!
What also amazed me is that they wouldn’t let go of each other, even once I landed them in the net onboard the kayak!
I knew if I tried to hold them up for the photo the line would snap, so I quickly paddled to a nearby shoreline, got out and took the picture.
Amazingly, when I did finally pry them apart, all fish were still alive and swam away fairly unscathed, even the poor sunfish.
Like I said, Mother Nature never ceases to amaze.
