whats your worst fly fishing blooper?

[flytire 0]

I was fishing a pond that was close to the side of the road and with an ill timed back cast hooked the bumper of a ford pickup truck doing 45mph.

 

it quickly spun me around and spooled me into the backing in a fraction of a second before finally breaking off. never saw that line again!

[bellevue.chartreuse.trout 0]

....wow, can't compare to that! Just a bat or a bird has been the most 'exciting' ride besides a good fish.

BCT

 

whoops, I should relate a different story as it seems this is more about equipment damage. Just as I was leaving the truck, one time, I closed the cap window on the rod a few inches up from the cork grip. I SAW the window hit the rod adn it buckle, but it 'snapped' back into normal looking place a second after it happened.

 

I didn't believe what had happened and hoped that I 'didn't just see what I saw'. Upon the first attempt at flexing the rod, it buckled and I knew it was toast! That was my ;'first love' fly rod a 3 wt. IM6 blank that I built. I think I had a 5 wt in the truck and went fishing with it. I tried to repair the 3wt. later but, that didn't exactly work out.

[mikechell 0]

Most of my fishing is in a boat. When fly fishing, I have 6 rods with me, each tied up with a different presentation or sized fly. My worst faux pas was after getting a fly hung up in some overhanging limbs. Not wanting to waste my buck twenty in fly tying material, I move up into the overhang and free my fly. Pushing back out, the 3 rods on one side of the boat got hung up in the limbs and (snap, snap snap) break at the first or second eye.

One saved fly ... $1.20 or less.

Three broken rods ... $200.00 give or take.

New swear words taught to the closest wildlife ... priceless.

[shoebop 0]

While steelhead fishing a few years back on the Manistee River in MI, I decided to take a break from the cold and went to the car to warm up. My Bro-in-law came with me. We set our rods against the back of the SUV and jumped in to warm up. While drinking some coffee we came up with a new fishing plan which involved moving to a new location on the river. Kent put it in reverse and backed out and we heard a crunching noise and we both looked at each other and realized want just happened. We jumped out to find both of our rods and reels crushed. It was too cold anyway!

[Fisherboy0301 0]

Have not broken a rod yet... knocking on wood haha

my worst blooper has been i was fishing with a friend, i picked up my small nymph to re cast, and a small sunfish came out of the water with it hah it came off in mid air, hitting my friend in the face and sliding down into his tucked in shirt! talk about funny!

[spm 0]

I was fishing a pond that was close to the side of the road and with an ill timed back cast hooked the bumper of a ford pickup truck doing 45mph.

 

it quickly spun me around and spooled me into the backing in a fraction of a second before finally breaking off. never saw that line again!

 

Great story, flytire. I'm still laughing out loud.

 

I may have told this story before.

There was this really cute conservation officer driving by the gravel bar just as I was wading in. I turned to give her a wave and my most charming smile, tripped over my own feet and went face first into the drink. She just smiled and waved as she drove on by.

 

s.

[wschmitt3 0]

The only rod I've broken was while climbing out onto some ledges to get into casting position to fish a pool I couldn't wade to. While climbing I needed both hands and had the rod handle clamped in my teeth and with out realizing it I pinched the tip in a crevice on the rock face while trying to extract myself from the bind I snapped the rod tip.

 

Beyond that there are pretty much just standard losses of footing in stream, hooking trees and bridges. I did one time break off the point of a hook when I hit a retaining wall on a back cast, I fished that fly for probably a half hour and failed to set the hook on a dozen or so strikes before I realized what was happening.

 

My favorite fishing story to tell people is something that actually happens all too often. Birds picking up my fly off the water. There is a couple short sections of riprap not to far from my house that a bunch of cedar waxwings have staked out because there is lots of insects and berries to eat. Every time I fish my way through this section they buzz me and fly right at me then quickly reverse direction. Its very very annoying but they also frequently pick my fly up off of the water. Every once and a while the dropped fly will get taken by a fish after it lands.

[FlaFly 0]

Glad you specified "fly fishing blooper".... I've got lots of spinning rod foibles!

 

But many years ago, when I was still young and foolish (I heard that snicker!) I tried wading in the surf, with a sort of streamer-ish fly with a spinner on it, trying to find a redfish. I had a lot of line out, false casting in preparation of casting for real, when I saw something tailing off to my left, so I quickly redirected my cast toward it. The fly hit me in the back at about 100 mph... thought I'd been shot. Fortunately I didn't get hooked... that would have been a long drive home.

[Piker20 0]

Hope this thread runs and runs. Loving all these.

[wschmitt3 0]

Piker20 - Where's your blooper?

[Chase Creek 0]

Not as classy as you other guys. I was wading a small stream in N. Michigan, when I decided to sit down on a log spanning the stream to take a break. I sat down, but lost my balance, and went over backwards into the water. Fortunately, I fish alone, so nobody witnessed it.

 

Later, I was walking back down a two-track to my truck, when my cell phone rang. Unusual, cuz the coverage up there is very spotty. I had forgotten to take it out of my jacket when I left the truck. I answered it - it was my wife (about 250 miles away at home.) We chatted for a minute, then a black bear dashed out of the brush maybe 20 feet in front of me, and into the brush on the other side of the two-track. It startled me, and I yelled "bear". Then the call dropped. Had to drive several miles before I could call my wife back and tell her I was OK.

 

Later in the afternoon, I was back on the stream. Stepped out to go around a sweep right into a rather large pile of bear scat. Glad I was wearing waders, and not dress shoes.

 

This all happened on the same trip, but still had a great time.

[Bryon Anderson 0]

I hope this thread keeps going too -- great stories. The only thing that could make them better would be video, although the mind-images are pretty amusing too.

 

My own worst "blooper" happened, not surprisingly, in the very early days of my fly fishing career. I had just learned to double-haul, and I was all excited to go back to a spot that I'd fished a week or so before with a buddy. We had found this really great-looking big-fish hole there which, due to local geography/hydrology and our incompentence as casters, neither of us had been able to reach with our longest cast. Now, armed with my new skills, I was just sure I could drop a fly in that hole and become the stuff that great fish stories are made of. I should have known to be careful what I wished for!

What happened was this: I got into position to make the cast, and I sent my buddy to stand near some trees that my backcast would have to avoid in order to not hang up. He was going to stand there and, using hand signals, let me know when my backcast was just shy of the trees.I start double-hauling away and having a grand old time filling the air with fly line and imagining myself as the "shadow caster" in The Movie, and my friend is holding his hands at chest level and moving them closer and closer together as my backcast lengthens and gets closer and closer to the trees. (Can't you just see what's coming? ) When his hands looked to be about a foot apart, I thought, "Okay, one more and let 'er go!" So I did one more backcast, watched the line uncurl behind me, and put everything I had into what was to be the delivery cast. "Poing!" went the line. "Aaaaaiiieeeee!!!!" went my friend. When I turned to look, I saw the strangest sight - my friend pitching forward, headlong, to land face-first in the shallows. Well, now, that is peculiar, I thought, still having no clue what had happened, which you, of course, have guessed by now: #4 woolly bugger through his left eyebrow. That's through, as in pierced. Talk about a long drive home.

Now this part you're going to think I'm making up, but I swear on all my fly rods it's true--just before I picked him up to go fishing, he'd been having an argument with his wife, who wanted to get her eyebrow pierced (this was the early '90's, you see) and he had given her holy hell for it, saying how stupid it was going to look etc., etc. So we walk in and he's got this bright purple fluff ball with silver tinnsel and chartreuse rubber legs sprouting from it through his brow, and she just lost it. I never saw someone progress through so many emotions so quickly--stunned horror, red-in-the-face rage, and finally dissolving into hysterical laughter.

When she finally calmed down, she performed the buggerectomy and we all sat around drinking too many beers and laughing like hyenas. Don't you just love happy endings?

[utyer 0]

Far to many to recount them all here, but I think this was my shining moment.

 

There was an old guy that frequented our shop who had a "secret" fly, and a method for fishing it. We finally arraigned a day to fish together. It was November or December, and there was a couple of feet of snow on the ground. I, being younger broke the trail on the way into the hole, and worked up quite a sweat.

 

I was shown the secret fly, and how to fish it. It was with a spinning rod, and about 5 split shot. He soon had two nice fish from under the brush along the opposite bank. I setup my fly rod a near as I could to his and started casting into the same brush piles. I soon hooked into a nice Brown Trout, and released it. Moot said I should keep on fishing that bend and he started walking carefully along the bank down stream.

 

After taking another nice fish I decided I should catch up with Moot. I could see that he had walked down stream through the deep snow, but I thought that walking down in the water would be easier. There was a lot of rip rap along the bank, and one of the rocks rolled out from under me. I went headfirst into the river. My waders were open (remember the sweat I had worked up going in?)

 

Waders full of water, I crawled out into the snow. I hollered to Moot, but he couldn't hear me. I shucked my waders down to get rid of the water, and put them back up again. I was soaked from head to toe. Temperature was about 30 degrees (nice warm day for that time of year,) but I knew I needed to get back to the car and find a way to dry off and get warmed up.

 

I finally caught up to Moot, and he tossed me his keys and said there might be some towels and a sweatshirt up in the car. He continued on fishing.

 

A day like this should be kept between the two of us, but no sooner had I got to the car and started to towel off, than a truck loaded with two other shop customers AND a co-worker pulled in BUSTED with my pants down. At least they had enough spare clothes between them to help out.

 

I learned two things that day: With great age comes great wisdom, and always carry a spare set of clothes and a towel. These are now permanently packed in the boot of my car. I am still working on the great age and wisdom part.

 

Needless to say, by the time I got to work the next day the story was spreading far and wide.

[Jaydub 0]

Broke a rod in the tailgate. Made a beautiful clean cut.

 

Drove across the state only to discover that the rod tube I packed was empty.

 

Probably the worst was in Alaska. I had a box of special flies for the trip in the chest pocket of my waders. I went into an outhouse to take a leak. I undid the suspenders, flipped down the top of my waders and you guessed it, into the hole went the box. (Another reason to love zippered waders.)

[Stmflies 0]

Last summer I was fly fishing for cutthroat. Wading along and slipped on a rock. I put my hand down to catch my self and my thumb jammed right between 2 rocks. I could tell it broke right away. I fished for a couple more hours anyway since it wasn't my casting arm even though operating the real wasn't easy but I decided to head home cause I knew the wife would make me go to the doctor since it was purple and almost double it's normal size.