Fishing with a friend back in the 70’s when we were teenagers. I was worm fishing and he was throwing the infamous “Hellbender”. All of a sudden he sets the hook and starts carrying in like its the first fish he’s ever caught. He hollers out “ he’s fixin to jump “ well it did... that damn coot broke the water, took flight and never slowed down. We laughed and talked about the one that got away for the rest of the day. Good times...

Just relating a story my dad first told me 50 years ago. And to this day I always find an opportunity to tell it to someone who has never heard it.

It's a good one, for sure! I'm glad you resurrected it... I told it to a couple of young guys at work this morning. Had them 'on the hook' all the way up to the end! LOL

Took a buddy to fish pier lights on Lake Martin several years back. He brought one rod with (1) super fancy blinking red light crankbait and was gonna "show me how it was done". First pier light, 1st cast....one of those 3ft long black shadows reached out and grabbed his "magic" lure. The fight was on and lasted every bit of 5-6 seconds when the big stripe spooled him because he only had 50-60yds of line on his spinning reel. I'll never forget the look on his face as that fish swam off with his high dollar blinking lure in corner of its mouth.

This is one of my favorite fishing memories and probably the craziest thing I've seen while fishing. On my 15th bday my dad took me fishing in the TN river. We put in at Goosepond. Fished a while and decided to hit some spots close to guntersville. About the time we were coming around the bend at Langston, before you get waterfront, we saw a massive feeding frenzy. We pulled over and trolled up to them. Tied on some chrome rattletraps and absolutely slayed the white bass and hybrids for the next hour. We caught some good largemouth and even a couple really big crappie. Never seen anything like it since. This was the biggest frenzy I've ever seen and they didnt last long. I've seen small ones but this was on a different scale and it lasted a while. Anyone else ever happened up on anything like that before?

I heard Bill Dance tell it back in the late 70's. I've used it a lot too...

Pretty often where I fish

JBL, it's odd but fish school more actively on some lakes. I've never seen anywhere that compares with schooling activity on Toledo Bend.
If they school in a spot today, they'll be there tomorrow. Unless there is a radical weather change. Usually they will reappear within 30 mins of time they were there the day before. One year I had paid my entry fee to fish a tx and was boatless when the date rolled around. I had seen them schooling from the bank and the day of the tx, I told the boat owner I just wanted one hour out of that day. I had a limit when we hit that spot. I was ready with a crazy shad by CORDELL. I culled my limit with fish over 2.5 pounds from that schooling. And got a pretty good check too. The only other lake I know of with very good schooling is Clarkshill, located on Ga/SC border. Those fish school on blue back herring and the fish are BIG! They school on many lakes, but on these two you can get on a school and they will be feeding in that area 30 mins or more.
On Clarkshill, they mostly school on points.

TC, I remember the first time I heard that joke. I bit, hook,line and sinker. It's a great joke and needs to be spread.

I love schooling fish. This story is true and not really that strang but tree never the less. I was fishing a tournament on Martin it the late 80's I guess may have been 90'. I had drawn Rick Clunn's brother, half brother maybe, I think. We were fishing near one of Martin's many rock bluff places beating the bank basiclly. Fish started schooling behind us farther off shore. As I glanced pretty sure it was stripe I thought I saw a spot or maybe it was a largemouth but it was a bass. We were fishing jigs but I still had top water on one rod from early on that day because thats what we both were doing. . As I reached for it he ask what I was doing and I told him and he says I'm wasting my time, he was bass fishing. Well, as he watched, first cast I caught about a 3lb bass. Second cast another about like it. He is like Damit. Picks up his rod and proceeds to catch a big stripe as I re-tie. I make another cast with the same results. His next cast another stripe. As he was working changing to what I was fishing I caught one more and then the whole thing was over.

Hadn't thought about that event in years.

I've caught schooling largemouth on Guntersville several times, but the most fun I've ever had catching schooling fish was on West Point Lake in GA. We caught white bass on Zara puppies til we were tired of reeling them in.

two of us on jet skis checking fishing at Lake Purdy when my partner checked a boat with two topless girls in it. I motored over to see what he was yelling about, I heard him say " I'm not going to tell you to put your top on again". He wrote both of em a ticket for no license. After we left I told him it was my policy to let em go if they showed their tits!!!!! He replied they were a couple of lesbians. LOL. Write em up!!!!

When I was probably 14 or 15 I was fishing a pond with a buddy one afternoon after getting off of work at our summer job. This pond is about 15 acres and at the north end, a road runs across it that leads back to a little neighborhood. We were probably 200 or 300 yards from the road fishing in a jon boat and all of a sudden we hear screaming from back towards the road. 3 black guys come running down the hill to the pond and 1 has a broomstick, 1 has a hoe, and 1 is just running with the other two.

From where we are we dont know what is going on but they're all sprinting and hollering. By the time they get down to the pond, they've got our full attention, but they dont know we are there. Then they make it down to the pond and they all circle around on the road and are swinging broomsticks and the hoe l. I still wasnt real sure what was going on but about that time one of them saw us. So then they started yelling for us to come help they had a turtle hemmed up.

I'd never seen a big alligator snapping turtle at that point in my life, and I certainly didn't know they were a delicacy to some folks. We pulled the boat on the bank and got out we could finally see the turtle and he was huge. By the time we got over there the turtle was basically bayed up and didn't have anywhere to go. When we got there the weaponless fella ran down and grabbed our paddle.

That is where thing turned south for the old turtle. The guy with our paddle got him to latch on to the paddle and the guy with the hoe went to work. I guess while all that was going on the guy with the broomstick took off for the truck. I never saw him leave, but the next thing I know he was backing the truck down the hill. He backed right up to the turtle, they chunked him in the back, and they took off like they had 10 gold bars in the back of that truck.

Knowing what I know now, it probably wasn't too strange, but that was pretty crazy the day it happened

TC, his name is Randy Fite. He is Ricks Stepbrother. He was also a guide on Conroe. He was an expert with electronics back then.

TC, his name is Randy Fite. He is Ricks Stepbrother. He was also a guide on Conroe. He was an expert with electronics back then.
Fur I learned to fish a spook on West Point. The hybrids would school there. I've seen them one big school from the train trestle to the mouth of a big creek there and that is around 5 acres. That lake is full of those things. It used to be full of big bass(largemouth) over 8 pounds.

I think the craziest things I've seen are bass being in water - shallow or just nasty - that I wouldn't belive they'd be in. They're truly adaptable.

At the 2000 Bassmaster Classic in Chicago, I went out on media day with Ray Sedgewick. Because of the wind, everyone had to go to the Calumet River. Ray and I went to the harbor mouth because he wanted to see how bad it was on the lake -- it was scary-ass bad -- and then we fished in the harbor around old rusty pipes, metal, docks, collapsed steel and such. It also apparently was a dump/pump-out for someone's sewage system because there were tampons, rubbers and some of the most disgusting looking patches of floating mess in nasty water.

And bass were in there. Not many but we caught some. Gross as hell. I'm glad I was with Nixon on Day one running around marinas.

That was him Perch. Thanks for jogging my memory.

Speaking of schooling fish, a bunch of yrs ago, me and a buddy were out on Oneida Lake. We were fishing the inside turn of a big bay and I noticed a bunch of Terns diving in the water at the mouth of the bay. We went right out and it was a huge school of Perch minnows that they were feeding on. Well, it turned out that under all those minnows was the biggest school of Smallmouth that I've ever seen. We didn't count, but I'm sure we caught at least 50 before it was over.

buddy and I were fishing Bayou Lacombe near Perchjerker several years ago, way up where it is pretty narrow. We were killing the bass. We came around a bend and there were half dozen neckkid twentyish year old girls on a small dock. They waved, we waved. Brightened up a swampy day. LOL

In the 70's there was a bass guide on Lake Livingston named Randy Dearman. It seems Dearmon had a faulty Mercury Trolling motor. If he was near standing timber when he engaged it, any catfish in the area would try to climb up in that standing timber..It was crazy. big and small catfish trying to climb out of the water. I don't know if it was like an old telephone or put off some other thing that drove the cats crazy. When he stopped running it they went back to acting normal.

I guess you fished around that dock pretty often after that.